Every Other Day Day of the Week Is Fine, Yeah

Mondays, as a general rule, suck. Since they took away Laguna, Arrested and Prison Break, they've sucked more. Big Monday college hoops and How I Met Your Mother have sort of made things better, but really, there's no redeeming quality for the day that brings classes back to you and takes away the glorious free time of the weekend.

I'll try to ease the Pre-Valentines Day pain a little bit.

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Of all the Brokeback (still need to see it - I've got a general sense of Oscar laziness right now, as I'm still reeling from the fact Munich got nominated for Best Picture over Hustle & Flow - this is by far my favorite. Livey, Official Blog Back to the Future Expert, calls it genius, so I can post it without fear: Brokeback to the Future.

(As this movie is about two weeks old, I think I've probably already posted this, and it's at least been in the away message. But whatever, it never hurts to watch it twice.)

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I am torn: Norah Jones will apparently be making her big screen debut, but in a Wong Kar-Wai film. Kar-Wai's resume includes In The Mood For Love, one of my least favorite films of all time. Obviously, I'll see it because it's Norah, but I wish it wasn't by the same guy that brought us Mood.

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If you're free this evening from 7:00 to 9:00, be sure and check out ESPN, where two of the best teams in the best conference in America - by far- will be clashing, as number one Connecticut rolls into Philly for a showdown with number four Villanova. UConn's coming off a 42 point - 42 point - drubbing of a hot Seton Hall team Monday night, while Nova has been playing some close games recently. Things might get ugly, but this will be an interesting game, and potential Final Four preview showcasing the best team in the country.

And please, don't try to argue with me that Duke, rolling through the ACC is better than UConn. The Big East, night-in and night-out, is heads and shoulders above anything the Atlantic Coast Conference can put out there. As soon as Chris Paul and the UNC Crew defected to the draft, you knew Duke was going to dominate the ACC regular season. They returned two All-ACC players while the rest of that team moved on. They're just doing what they're supposed to be doing - blowing out the Virginias and Marylands of the world - so they can get their one seed and the easiest available path to the Final Four.

If I set the Over/Under on "Number of ACC Teams To Reach The Sweet Sixteen" at 2, what would you choose? Exactly. On that same hand, if I set the Over/Under of "Number of Big East Teams To Reach The Elite Eight" at 3, can anybody comfortably take the under? As long as UConn keeps winning in the Big East - and tonight will be quite the test - they're number one over the Dukies.

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Congratulations to Rob Arseniadis, Dillon Hall's Dance Commissioner, for a fantastic Stache Bash on Saturday night. We apparently set some sort of record for couples at an ND dance - 200ish, I believe - and everyone had a great time. Granted, we were bowling, so I was going to have fun, but it would have been a good time even without Jess and I dominating Chad and Poczatek. Stache Bash '06 was a definite success.

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The OC was okay Thursday night. Loved the fact that Johnny's dead, liked the new girl, but now they're taking a month off? There's not enough interest there, especially after the time-slot change, to keep any momentum they might have gained from finally ditching Johnny and possibly moving Ryan away from Marissa, so expect ratings to continue plummeting. In fact, they might plummet so far that FOX will cancel their sudsy show, leaving it free to pick up by the CW. Muahahaha....

Also, on the matter of Marissa Cooper, Grey's Anatomy has quite a few Marissa-like tendencies for terrible logic and pointless arguments. Addison's screaming at George, who at least appeared to be brainstorming and who ended up solving the problem anyway, and Izzie's breakdowns, which were less Marissa and more "Eric Bana in Munich" on relieving stress through sex. Decent part two to "Code Black", but nothing superbly exceptional.

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I'm selling my Daniel Craig stock, as now Rachel McAdams has turned down the new Bond girl role in Casino Royale. They still don't have a Bond girl, and more importantly, they don't have a villain, the most crucial rule. A good Bond villain can make a bad Bond movie watchable (Christopher Lee in Golden Gun) while a bad villain keeps a bad Bond movie unwatchable (see: The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day).

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It's good to see Bode Miller has backed up his drunken ramblings so far at the Olympics, coming in 5th in the downhill. Maybe things would be a little more interesting if I didn't already know the results - and it's not like I'm looking for them, as they're the frontpages of both the ESPN and SI.coms - but the Olympics aren't really doing it for me this year. I'll watch the hockey once it gets going, and don't mind the downhill, but anything that involves judging I look at with a very wary eye. With college basketball season reaching the stretch run and primetime television in sweeps, I just can't be distracted in the primetime by events that happened ten hours previously.

And just for the hell of it: "Jeanne Pietrini!!!"