Michael Hopcroft

Did Coors Field go back to being a launching pad for the Rockies' opponents. I the Strat-o-Matic/Action Baseball leagues I've been in, Colorado pitchers haven't exactly been a prized commodity because the games' rating are based on the previous season's statistics and pitching in Coors tends to inflate those.

Apparently one of the key witnesses in the Texas case has also been gunned down in his apartment. This is chilling. It might be coincidence, but it will take some doing to convince me of that.

Black Plastic, the 2019 album from virtual band Savlonic (actually the creator of Weebl's Stuff and his wife). It's good techno-funk. It is a good album, and a decent follow-up to 2016's Neon. neon is when Savlonic stopped sounding like a comedy act and started sounding like an honest-to-goodness band. The lyrics and videos released for Neon suggested the band was going through a bad breakup, which was thankfully not the case. So it's fortunate that Black Plastic is not a continuation of Neon. I also heard the new single from The Who. For heaven's sake, Pete! If you don't want to tour, don't!

And suddenly the NFC West got a lot more interesting.

Super-technology in refrigerators, microwaves, and toaster ovens. NT: What the super-technology in your new Gatchastani-manufactured microwave oven actually does.

Franz Liszt's Héroïde funèbre, a tone poem released in 1850 commemorating the horrors of Hungary's failed revolution two years earlier. Although Liszt was Hungarian, he was rarely in the country as an adult. Most of the time he lived in France or Germany. The way he described the work in its program indicated that it could be interpreted as commemorating either side, because as a touring musician and composer even he could not afford to tick off the Hapsburg dynasty that rules Austria and Hungary.

I don't think any cop with a brain would view eating ice cream in your own apartment as an appropriate cause for an (off-duty) officer to use deadly force. And the ten-year sentence is ludicrous. She should have gotten at least twenty. And if what she had posted on her Pinterest account was any indication, no rational police department should have let her anywhere near a firearm.

Q: Speed limit? Drive as fast as you want! This is Montana! A: When you're smiling, the whole world wants to know what the hell you're up to.

Peanut Butter that can double as superglue, clown makeup, or reactor shielding.

I see some of the same problems with BoP as I see with Joker, actually. I don't think I could stand watching Joker because he is at the same time dealing with some stuff I deal with, but in a terrifyingly reprehensible way. Namely by extreme, murderous violence. He looks like the sort of guy who would shoot up a church or a school just because he felt like it. That he would do it with style makes it even worse. The reviews I've read indicate that Thomas Wayne (Batman's father) is in the film, portrayed as a real rat. Most of the Joker's victims and potential victims might well be portrayed as "nasty people who had it coming". Not to say Joker will be a bad film in the creative sense. Just the opposite -- Joaquin Phoenix is generating Oscar buzz.

I wonder if discussions of the movie and of what I refer to as "Joker Syndrome" (the belief that any mentally ill person you meet is an inherent threat) belong in another thread.

Not that far. the AP top five, in order, is Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State, and LSU. Three of the five are in the SEC, and there are two more SEC teams (Auburn and Florida) in the top ten. The highest-ranked PAC-12 team is Oregon at #13. a one-loss Notre Dame team is ranked #9, one ahead of a Florida team with five (!) wins.

Being Lord High Executioner of the town of Titipu. NT: Subtle signs the President of the fictional central Asian state of Gatchastan is out of his mind. (Other than, of course, being the President of the fictional Central Asian state of Gatchastan)

Q: You realize of course you just failed a Perception roll? A: Dude, I'm right here! The guy in makeup with the gun!

Q; Why do the all-natural ingredients in this granola include hemlock seeds? A: No cat has two tails. All cats have one more tail than no cat. Therefore, all cats have three tails.

Being the District of Columbia's "delegate" to the House of Representatives (DC was established more than two hundred years ago and still has no actual representatives in Congress. Delegates can speak on the House Floor (although they are rarely asked to) but cannot vote or introduce legislation.

Theatre chains are increasing security, at least for a while, during the run of the new DC Comics film Joker. A few years ago, a man claiming to emulate the Joker shot up a theater in Aurora, Colorado that was giving a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. fears about copycats at the release of the new film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix in a possible origin of Batman's nemesis ("If I must have a past, it might as well be multiple-choice!") going from failed standup comic to mass-murderer, are real enough that some chains are prohibiting costumes altogether at all theaters showing the film. Joker is rated R and pulling down 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not going to see it, because it would trigger me in innumerable ways and people are scared of the mentally ill enough as it is. It's the sort of thing that could make people in need of care decline or refuse to seek help out of fear of the social consequences.

Hello?

Q: I know you appreciate your husband being quieter, but how will he eat now? A: I knew this was the wrong day to quit eating Ho-Hos.

It actually surprised me that Oregon beat Stanford. The Cardinal have usually been their Kryptonite because they play hard-nosed, smash-mouth football that tends to grind down the flashy but less physical Ducks. well, this time Oregon did punch them in the mouth, and kept on punching them in the mouth again and again until they crumbled. Next is a bye weekend, followed by what looks like a very big game against Cal.

I saw Downton Abbey last night, so I could tell my mother (a real enthusiast, who happened to be stuck at home sick) whether the movie was any good. for those who are completely unfamiliar, Downton Abbey is a British TV series about the Crawley family (hereditary Earls of Grantham) and their domestic staff in a changing England of the early 20th century. The series ran six seasons, and my mother loved it. Naturally she wanted to take me to the movie, but with her illness I had to go in her stead. The movie is sumptuous, to be sure, well-acted, and dramatic. It is also virtually incomprehensible if you do not already know who these people are and why they are supposed to matter. And I can't help but have the sense they don't. Their privelege will not last. Apocalypse is coming to the Crawleys in the form of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and no amount of starched collars, courtly dances, and regimental parades is going to save them. The plot of the film centers around a visit by King George V, portrayed as jovial and a little bit clueless -- a mediocrity who knows he's a mediocrity and has come to terms with it, and with the adulation he receives but doesn't really deserve. Meanwhile, the nobles scheme about a disputed inheritance, useless trinkets worth a year's pay for most workers start disappearing, the staff engage in a petty intrigue against the arrogant interlopers who follow the King around everywhere he goes, and there are oblique references to the recent "troubles" in Ireland and to 1920s legal homophobia. And it remains unclear exactly what the Earl of Grantham actually does. What is his function in English society and government? Does he even have one?

There seem to be a plethora of really, godawful, bad teams in the NFL this season. The only thing preventing the Jets and Dolphins from both going 0-16 is that they play each other twice before the season is over. It appears that the Dolphins' front office has decided that to tank is the way to go -- deliberately put a bad product out on the field in the hope that it will give them draft picks and cap room for a rapid rebuild. We've seen this before -- remember "Suck for Luck" in Indy (and what that ended up getting them)? It just hasn't been this blatant in a long time, and the team has absolutely failed to get the fans to buy into the idea. Although the fans seem not to care about that sort of thing, this is doing a lot of harm to the careers of the players now on the Dolphins. Their risk of injury increases from being continually outgunned, the film other potential teams judge them by will show them completely outmatched, and this could shorten and even end pro careers before they even get a chance to begin. I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but a few years ago I heard the average NFL career is about three and a half seasons. And this is extended due to the longevity of the Bradys and Mannings of the football world. So booing these guys during their home games would be literally adding insult to injury.

Q: Say, I may be a lowly Amazon delivery driver, but even I've notice we've been sending a lot of disembodied human brains to 771 W. Romero Drive lately. What gives? A: So people weren't satisfied until everybody is armed all the time. Look what that's got us so far!

Q: Man, you got hurt really bad by that bull. How did you start it? A: Cybernetic Enhancement. It does a body good.