Trogdor, by Kelley. It took her less than a half an hour to create this masterpiece. Unlike me, who took three hours to for my StrongBad pumpkin. Look at the detail on that big beefy arm. She is quite the artist.

On to the usual Sunday footballness…

“Out for the season with a knee injury, defensive tackle Tony Williams strikes the muscleman pose to signal a ‘Be Strong’ attitude as he leaves the field on a cart.” (Cincinnati Enquirer)

We head to Nashville today without one of our defensive tackles, who’s lost to us following a cheap chop block. On ESPN, Williams took the high road. He’s a bigger man than me (obviously), I would’ve taken out a professional hit on the guy that threatened my multi-million dollar career. If I had one, that is. These aren’t the same Titans, though, so today could be a winnable game.

I got seven right in Week 6 and Week 7. Let’s see how Week 8 is any kinder.

Titans over Bengals
Jags over Texans
Cowboys over Lions
Cardinals over Bills
Eagles over Ravens
Packers over Redskins
Vikings over Giants
Colts over Chiefs
Seahawks over Panthers
Broncos over Falcons
Chargers over Raiders
Patriots over Steelers
49ers over Bears
Jets over Dolphins

The Eliminator game that the folks on NFL Countdown looks really fun. You pick one team to win each week. You can only pick one team once per season. If your team loses, you’re out. Thus, the name, Eliminator. Once everyone is gone and only one is standing, that person gets a win and everyone is back in again. The one with the most wins at the end of the season is the overall champion. Next season, I think we ought to get a group together and give it a try. Should make good stuff to brag about in our blogs and comment sections.

“THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, before the dawn of man as we knew him, there was Sir Santa of Claus, an ape-like creature making crude and pointless toys out of dinobones and his own waste, hurling them at chimp-like creatures with crinkled hands regardless of how they behaved the previous year. These so-called “toys” were buried as witches, and defecated upon, and hurled at predators when wakened by the searing grunts of children. It wasn’t a holly jolly Christmas that year. For many were killed.”

It’s been a few weeks since we checked the quote standings and we’ve got a new face on the list: baba ganoush. Whoever that is. It just goes to show you, anyone can join in even late in the game. Baba went from last to 8th in just one week. And that’s not the only movement going on.

Quote Standings
MOe 29
Johnny 27
Amy 22
Kelley 21
Jeff 15
dupree 12
Kerry 9
baba ganoush 3
Erin 2
Zandra 1
Rinnert 1

Moe’s got a two point lead over Johnny now and Kelley is just one behind Amy for third place. dupree’s threatening Jeff for fifth and Kerry is almost into double digit land.

You, too, can be on this list. Just click on the comment link and type in your guess for that day’s quote. It’s that simple. Quote Fever: Catch it!

It’s been a while since I mentioned a top list lately, so here’s one: entertaining moments. Yeah, that doesn’t sound vague or anything.

“This is stupid. I wish we weren’t penguins and that our show wasn’t cancelled.”

Bruce Banner is a research scientist trying to find a way to tap into the hidden strength that all humans possess. Then, one night in his labratory, an experiment went wrong, causing him to be overexposed to gamma radiation. Now, whenever angered or distressed, the mild-mannered scientist finds himself transforming into a powerful seven-foot green creature known as The Incredible Hulk.

I took that from the intro to the Incredible Hulk TV show almost word for word. I had to change the character name back to Bruce Banner, though. I have no idea why they changed it in the TV show. Anyway, this movie is pretty much follows this scenario. But gets the name right.

FF type: Story
The film follows Dr. Bruce Banner in the first five minutes following his accident up until he first “Hulks out.”

Production Quality: (4) Pretty good digital camera movie with some nice special effects at time. I really like the zooming transitions. But their reach exceeds their grasp at the end.

Performances: (3.5) The lead guy is fine, but the soldiers weren’t cutting it for me so I docked half a point for that.

Fan quotient: (4) Eventually, everything is understood. But you have to know what happened in that lab. If you don’t know the character’s origin, it leaves you in a confused state for a few minutes.

Entertainment Value: (3) While I think it was done pretty well, it is not something I would encourage everyone to see and really have no urge to ever see it again. Once should be enough for any viewer.

FF obtainment: (5) The film has a website and I also found it at iFilm. Multiple sources gets full credit in this category.

Hulk: Reaction: 19.5 out of 25.

The score indicates it’s worth checking out, but once should be sufficient.

I’ve only been sticking to live action Fan Films to review, but I may reconsider after glimpsing the Clerks-like Heroes again. Man, that is funny stuff.

“Hulk want Slurpee!”

Unfortunately, just got some bad news regarding X-Men 3: no Joss Whedon.

The Iron Man movie, apparently, is on the hot track again. I just hope they keep the same theme song from his 1960s cartoon show (found on this page).

Finally, after a long stretch of disappointing stories, some JLA goodness is hitting the stores this week. Although, I was kind of hoping for more from Kurt’s first issue. So, I guess just this one dissapointing story and then we kick off the good stuff. I mean, this issue was fine, but we were promised the JLA vs. the CSA. And we get some filler issue instead. Not Kurt’s fault, unless the cover was his idea.

Some good returns for comic fans. At least, this one. Lost in all the Avengers Dissassembled hoopla is the return of the Thunderbolts. The real ones, not the Fight Club wannabes. Yet Another Comics Blog brings us good news: Power Pack is back. Chuck Dixon returns to Nightwing for a six issue run describing Dick Grayson’s transformation from Robin to Nightwing. Looks like I’m back on NW. At least, for this stretch.

Marvel collected Neil Gaiman’s 1602 series. It’s something I would recomend to anyone, regardless of comic interest. But in hardcover form? Wait for the trade paperback.

Bloggity-Blog-Blog pointed out another blogger’s observation about those of us who blog about comics. Ringwood points out that we become secondhand sources of Newsarama blurbs. Guilty as charged. I used to profile interesting titles, break down character histories, and even did some reviews. If I start blogging again more about comics, I’ll try to put more personal input and less Newsarama links.

But, that will probably be after football season. Definitely not now, during this stretch of 19 consecutive days of football on TV. Yeah, I’ll be busy.

“Tony Stark makes you feel he’s a cool exec with a heart of steel.”

Where has October gone? While the month has flown by, I was able to get in a little holiday-themed activity.

I carved this Sunday night while enjoying an evening of Weird Travels on the Travel Channel. Thanks to Christie for pointing me in the right direction so I could try and recreate the web-series star in pumpkin form.

Here’s the one Kelley made, on the fly and completely of her own design. She finished this one and another one in less than half the time it took me to do my one.

Only a few more days to cram in more Halloween goodness and then I’ll have to wait another year for my favorite holiday to come around again. At least we get some Haunted History this week on the History Channel.

Then after Halloween, everyone will be drawn to Burger King’s chicken fight.

“Y-you’re asking me if they ever made an episode of Sesame Street where the Count kills someone and feasts on them for sustanace? No, they haven’t done that!”

Yeah, I know I’m supposed to list a bunch of items and how much they cost first. But we’re all pretty much familiar with this joke so I figured I would just jump to the punchline.

I may be a little short to be a Stormtrooper, but I’m pretty giddy following last night’s win. Lots of fun as we took advantage of the national stage and did not emberrass ourselves. A bunch of us gathered at Dave’s house to watch this historic evening. (That’s him on the right side of Jeff’s pose-thing.)

Dave’s wife, Jill, supplied special Bengal cupcakes for the festivities. They were orange frosted with little “W”s for wins. Or those are bats for Halloween.

Chad Johnson apparently took offense at my criticism last week and the defense played well. With most of the game’s breaks going our way, we partied like it was 1989.

Bengals are now 2-0 in primetime. Despite the obvious edges favoring Denver, we put together a complete game. It really helped the coaches made more aggressive play calls and hope this keeps up in Nashville on Sunday.

Hopefully, this will bode well for future MNF games. Denver’s poor performance on defense hurt me in both of my fantasy leagues, including my first loss on CBS Sportsline one through work. But I’ll take it if it means good things for the real team I’m a fan of.

Despite the fandom, I picked Denver to win, unlike Johnny.

Still haven’t seen most of the highlights from Week 7 but I do want to congratulate dupree’s Dolphins.

“Tough little ship.”
“Little?!?”

Well, it happened earlier than expected. And it would have happened last week if not for the novelty of a Monday Night Football game in the Queen City. Wow, it’s been 15 years since MNF was in town last. September 25, 1989. That wasn’t too long after Reagan left office. Yeesh.

But the Circle of Cincinnati Sports is turning more quickly than expected. It begins in the spring, with the excitement of Opening Day and a new Reds season. By the All-Star break, the Reds are usually out of contention, so anticipation grows for the Bengals. Then when they are three or four games under .500 by Halloween, it’s time to look at the University of Cincinnati basketball season. After UC is bounced in the second round of the NCAA tournament, we start looking to the Reds. Circle of Cincinnati Sports begins anew.

But the Bearcats aren’t supposed to be that good this year. Maybe our attention will shift to a Xavier team coming off an Elite 8 appearance. Only one local hockey team to occupy us as there will be no Cyclones this year. Could be a long winter around here.

Back to football. Despite Monday Night Football not coming to Cincinnati in the 1990s, MNF still affected the franchise in a very strange way. We might have been able to keep Boomer Esiason that second time around and avoided the Akili Smith disaster.

Is it time to bench the current franchise QB? Kitna should start: Fact or Fiction. Fiction. I said before and still believe CP needs time and experience to develop. This year is lost. But it would be even more lost if Palmer wasn’t learning and develloping.

I’d use this space to give up thoughts on yesterday’s wild pack of games, but I haven’t seen Primetime yet so I’ll have to wait on that.

“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The best known of course is, ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia!’”

It’s Sunday, but I’ll get to the NFL in a moment. With the Red Sox and Cardinals facing off tonight in the World Series, I really feel our country missed out on a gold opportunity. If the Astros had won, I feel we could have avoided a lot of the chaos and confusion that is bound to dominate our country for the next few months. With Houston taking on Boston, we had the chance to not only decide the champions of baseball, but the leader of the free world. That’s right. Whichever team won, we put the candidate from that home state in the White House. An Astros victory would be four more years of former Texas Governor Bush, a Red Sox win upgrades Massachutes Senator Kerry to U.S. President.

Okay, go ahead and laugh at the stupid idea. You have the luxury of that now. But when this election is forced to go through another drawn-out process of uncertainty due to rampant voter registration fraud and all the other exploited parts of our electoral process, maybe you’ll reconsider. By then, it will be too late. It will be in the hands of chad counters and Supreme Court judges instead of stand-up dobules and backdoor sliders. Personally, I’d take my chances with the guys calling balls and strikes than those counting ballots.

Okay, enough pseudo-politics. On to football.

I guarentee the Bengals will not lose today. Boy, that joke hasn’t gotten old since the inception of the bye wee… wait a minute. They already had theirs. So why aren’t they playing today? Oh, yeah. Monday Night Football. Heh, when was the last time John Madden announced a Bengals game? While I guarentee they won’t lose today, tomorrow is another story.

Colts over Jags
Eagles over Browns
Chargers over Panthers
Ravens over Bills
Bucs over Bears
Giants over Lions
Vikings over Titans
Rams over Dolphins
Falcons over Chiefs
Patriots over Jets
Saints over Raiders
Cowboys over Packers
Seahawks over Cardinals
Broncos over Bengals

And how ’bout them Bearcats? After stinking it up against winless Army, we roll over Memphis. Maybe we can actually play football at UC.

“I like to rhyme, I like my beats funky, I’m spunky. I like my oatmeal lumpy.”

I just wanted to wish Bryan and Gretchen all the happiness in the world. Well, I guess Gretchen can’t be too happy considering I posted a picture of her but I’m sure she’ll get over it. She will will be too busy trying to keep Rinnert in line that she won’t have time to plan revenge on me. I hope.

“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”

Like I said yesterday, not a lot of time to spend on this. But I did want to give you the head’s up on this romantic comedy. Or romantic horror movie, maybe.

Sure, we’ve seen Jason Vorhees go camping, we’ve seen him chop up unsuspecting teenagers, but what’s his dating life like? We find out in Chasing Jason. But don’t let the movie title fool you, there’s no Kevin Smith influence here.

FF type: Story
About 7 1/2 minutes, much of it told in flashback form. Very leisurely pace. It takes it’s time unfolding a pretty amusing story.

Production Quality: (4.5) Pretty good. Looked like an independent film. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something missing that would make me give this a five. Or maybe some of the Jason effects bugged me.

Performances: (4) Again, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I couldn’t give this category a full-blown 5. Everyone was good, but there was something that was nagging me. Maybe some inconsistency. I don’t know.

Fan quotient: (4) Some of the jokes require you to know some horror movie cliches. Despite this, still lots of stuff to laugh at.

FF obtainment: (4) I found it at iFilm. Google had no other listings available.

Entertainment Value: (4) I enjoyed watching it, and would suggest to others they see it. But it doesn’t hold up as well upon further viewings.

Chasing Jason: 20.5 out of 25.

That definitely means check it out. And while you’re watching, be sure to keep an eye out for a special cameo from another horror icon. And it’s not who you think it is… I think.

“Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?”