Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Gears of War
Monday
November 27, 2006
If you missed it on Saturday night, USC put on quite a performance against Notre Dame. I'm no PAC-10 fan, or a USC fan, but they looked really good on both offense and defense. Dwayne Jarrett tore up ND's secondary. I think Ohio State will beat USC in the BCS Title game (there's no real national championship so long as there's no playoffs in Div. I-A college football), but USC is probably the best choice for a BCS Title game. Plus, it screws the Rose Bowl on its "preferred" matchup, which I always like to see, since I loathe bowl game loyalists.
Nashville has been great during my extended visit. Spending time at my parents' house was nice, and being over here at my brother's place is always a fun time.
My Dad and I went to the Titans/Giants game yesterday. We planned ahead and intended to take one of the shuttle buses from Greer Stadium, but when we got to Greer there was one bus and a line of people swarming along the sidewalk, around the entrance, and well back into the parking lot. We decided to ditch that plan and, instead, park near the stadium.
At the cost of $20, we gained access to parking... which was a long, narrow drive through pot-holed pavement to a crowded area near a set of train tracks. It wasn't exactly prime parking, and my Dad said that he wanted to leave early "unless it was close" to ensure that we could make it out in a reasonable amount of time.
So, with Tennessee down 21-0 at the end of the third quarter (and the Giants on full grind-it-out mode), we left.
Naturally, the Titans rallied in furious fashion in the fourth quarter, scoring 24 unanswered points with Vince Young leading the charge back and serving notice to the NFL that he has arrived. At least I have the ticket stub and can say I was there, though I missed the good part. I hate when that happens.
Matt has a game for his XBox 360 called Gears of War that is addictive, if not maddening, fun. It's a four-on-four war game that blows away anything I've ever seen before in the genre. The big shots remind me of the classic arcade games from the early 1990s that featured lots of over-the-top blood and gore, before legislators found that they could rally against that as another way to bamboozle the masses. The online interactivity was fun, though with me being a new player, I had a bit of a learning curve (and I'm still nowhere near as good as Dustin is at it.) As I got shot for the 5th straight game, I have to admit it was frustrating to think that somewhere, some 13 year old kid was thinking, "Man, I pwnd you there!" But the game is so fun that it keeps calling you back for more. Very nice!
By the way, lookout PlayStation 3. XBox 360 has some really fun, exclusive titles, and doesn't have a ridiculous backorder on its machines. If I wasn't moving into Matt's house early next year, I'd consider buying a 360 for myself, and I've been a PSX guy since the beginning.
Christmas spirit is in the air here, as last night Matt set up the Christmas tree and various decorations were put into place. It was high comedy with Matt trying to place the brand new Christmas lights on his tree. He went cheap on them, and as a result he landed a strand that didn't work properly (and had to be unwrapped by Matt.) Dustin and
Whitney and
Jon and I all laughed long and loud about that.
Tonight we watched the Packers/Seahawks game on Matt's HDTV, which was a real treat. It was snowing in Seattle (a first for a Seahawks home game), and seeing the snow fall with that high-def quality was breathtaking. Combined with the holiday element (the tree, the roaring fire, etc.) it was a very cool scene.
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