Lovely Weather

-Boy...ice, rain, cold, wind, sleet, some snow.... This is the stuff that, when it comes around, makes me ask myself why I choose to stay in St. Louis. Of course, there are many excellent reasons why...but I ask myself anyway. And if I hear Cindy Preszler ask me to use caution while driving in bad weater one more time...like I'm too stupid to know that...I might move to get away from her.

-The Rams made another contribution to the growing love affair between St. Louis fans and the Blues this weekend. If someone running the Gateway City's NFL team had to ask people to buy a ticket based on entertainment value alone, nobody would be showing up at the EJDome at all. Just because it's the NFL, the arrogant ownership/management gets away with putting a pathetic excuse for a product out there every week. Oooh.. I sound a little bitter. No, it's just the long-time Blues announcer in me coming out. I'm as big a fan of the Rams as anybody. But it gets frustrating to sit through the stuff we've been fed the last few years.

-Rams part deux... Pat Summerall and Brian Baldinger were the announce-team assigned to the Rams game today for Fox Sports. Baldinger does an OK job. But, Summerall, the former legendary lead-announcer for CBS needs to just enjoy the game as a fan from now on. If you watched the game, you know what I mean. He consistently got player names wrong by either misidentifying the player or mispronouncing the name. Many times he would have no clue about what happened on a play until Baldinger jumped in to help him. There were long stretches of silence, only crowd noise, while plays were unfolding...some of them big plays in the game. I'm not sure exactly why he's still doing games, except that his name brings a certain amount of prestige from the old days. Mr. Summerall, we know you've recovered from problems with substances...and that you once were the best...but none of us can go on forever. And we found out today we'll have to "enjoy" this same team when Mizzou meets Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. Whoopee!!

-What the hell?? 6 people shot...two of them killed..in separate shootings at churches today. Couple that with the Omaha mall shootings of earlier this week and you begin to wonder if the country isn't full of whackos with guns. Oh it is...sorry, I forgot. Kevlar clothing and mandatory helmets in public are on the way.

-Who knew when the Patriots beat the Rams in the Super Bowl a few years back that we were seeing the start of a dynasty? Tom Brady could get elected President if he wouldn't have to take a pay cut to accept the job.

-We watched the 1984 production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott last night. I think it's my favorite of all time. Scott was a perfect Scrooge, and the production was concise and well-acted by all. It keeps me in the right frame of mind this season...and occasionally I'm able to call on it other times of the year as well. Dickens did pretty well with that one. By the way, Scott died in 1999...what a wonderful thing to be an actor whose work lives on forever.

-When did the Mike Huckabee bandwagon get rolling? Seems like he's the fair-haired boy for the GOP right now.

-And there's something "icky" about hearing Oprah trying to talk "street" to the crowd in South Carolina who came to see her at the Obama rally. Can you get away with that these days? Change your speech pattern to match your audience? She talked white-person english to the crowd in Iowa one day...then black-person english to the mostly African-American crowd in the south the next. Seems just a little disingenous doesn't it? I guess they were accusing Hillary of the same thing a few months back. I'm thinking somebody is going to call Oprah on it at the national level like I just did.