Power's out. No post today. (Hard to type in the dark.) Thanks, President Trump.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: trumps america wriphe.com

In 2014, Georgia Tech won in Sanford Stadium on a last second collapse by Georgia. Two years later, here we are again. Mark Richt was fired exactly a year after his mistake. Is Kirby Smart on the same path?

First of all, a word about Georgia Tech. The much maligned Paul Johnson brought crafty play calling and superior discipline to Athens and beat a team with superior talent 28-27. Congratulations. See that it never happens again.

Now back to Smart.

Before the season started, a friend asked me what I thought of Kirby Smart as the new head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs. At the time, I wasn't nuts about some of the bad habits he brought over from his former employer (including hiding from the press, influencing the Georgia legislature to exempt his program from sunshine laws, and resisting the transfer of student athletes). However, I said I'd wait until the season ended to render an opinion. The season is now over, and I remain less than optimistic.

Fact: Despite playing all four of them most years for the better part of a century, Georgia has never lost football games to Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Florida, and Georgia Tech in the same season before. Not under Richt, not even under Donnan. Add in that we only squeaked by Auburn because they ran out of players and it gets worse. That's an incredibly inauspicious start to the Kirby Smart era.

All season, I've heard about how Georgia is losing because its talent is lacking. Somehow, that never came up while Richt was coach. Smart started the season with Heisman hopeful Nick Chubb, his talented roommate Sony Michel, and the most talked about quarterback recruit in the SEC. He ended the season ranked 12 of 14 SEC teams in total points per game. Maybe former Defensive Coordinator Smart needs time to adjust to learning to coach offense, but his defense still finished 7 out of 14 SEC teams in total points allowed. Maybe, as his defenders claim, Smart doesn't have the players with the skill sets necessary to play "The System" he brought over from Alabama, but that's not the fault of Richt or the kids he recruited. That's on the coach who chose a system and failed to adapt it to suit the talent he had available.

I hope that the problems of 2016 represented growing pains for a rookie head coach learning on the job. The good news for Smart is that it will be hard to do any worse in 2017. That is, unless he's determined to lose to Auburn, too.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens football georgia tech kirby smart mark richt sanford

If you're a Kindle reader looking for a way to kill some time this Thanksgiving, I've got a present for you.

Until November 26, you can download digital copies of my second and third books for free from Amazon.com.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Black Friday, everybody.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: a quest before dying books holidays prince thorgils war thanksgiving the wizards of ranaloy walter work

With the foreknowledge that if there's anything more boring than hearing other people's dreams, it's hearing their reviews of the movies they've seen, I present my take on the first four movies I've watched this month:

95. (1033.) The Unknown (1927)
This is a silent horror film in which Lon Chaney plays a sideshow freak who has no arms who starts an affair with his assistant who hates men with arms. The Shyamalan twist here is that he really does have arms! Actually, it's pretty darn good, which you would have expected if I started by telling you this was a Tod Browning film. The man was the original Tim Burton.

96. (1034.) How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Golly, the plot of this sequel to a kid's movie felt awfully dark. It telegraphs loss and regret at every turn. Really, it wants to the the Empire Strikes Back of dragon training movies but with far less charismatic villains. Fittingly, I watched it on November 9, the First Day of the President Trump Era and felt it was thematically relevant.

97. (1035.) The Best Man (1964)
Henry Fonda made some of the best movies. Advise & Consent, Fail-Safe, The Ox-Bow Incident, 12 Angry Men, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Swarm, this. Loved it.

98. (1036.) The Great Gatsby (2013)
This is the Baz Luhrmann version. To his credit Leonardo DiCaprio makes a pretty good Gatsby, and Tobey Maguire a great Nick, but I can't say I loved the film. Luhrmann tries too hard to create a visual parallel to Fitzgerald's lyricism, and the visual effects get in the way of the story. I'm especially dissatisfied with the way the ending unfolds on the screen, which I feel saps some of the gut punch of the book's tragic finale. I recommend that you read the book instead.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: comic strip poodle strip poodles

Final score: University of Louisiana at Lafayette 21, UGA 35. It wasn't that close.

Let's see, what else was memorable about the game? It was really windy. The pregame included another flyover (C-130?). By the time we took our seats, Isaiah McKenzie had already scored two touchdowns.

Hmm. Was there anything else?

Oh, right. Black jerseys. No big deal. Can we let that go now? Please?

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens black fashion football georgia louisiana lafayette sanford

It hasn't rained at my house since September. That's probably my fault. My birthday was in September, and the one thing I asked for was a new rain suit.

Sorry, Georgia. I'll take the blame for the rain. Trump is still on you.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: georgia trumps america walter weather

Word on the street (ok, word via NFL.com) is that Jared Goff will be starting at quarterback for the LA Rams when the Miami Dolphins come to town this weekend.

I think that's probably a bad idea.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, Goff was the first overall pick in the 2016 draft. That means the Rams thought he wasn't just the best quarterback available, but the best player available this year. The Rams have taken an old-school approach to rearing the young quarterback and let him ride the bench while he learns the ropes. Most teams these days throw their new quarterback prospects out on the field immediately to see if they sink or swim (*cough* Miami Dolphins *cough*). But not the Rams. At least not until now.

The reason I say this might not be the right week to start the Jared Goff experiment is because the Dolphins aren't the sort to play nice with opposition quarterbacks. No team in 2016 has spent more on their defensive linemen than the Dolphins (by a margin of nearly $4 million!). In the past 10 weeks, the Dolphins have broken Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Ben Roethlisberger, accomplished journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Tom Brady stand-in Jimmy Garoppolo. Is that the sort of meat grinder you want to put an unproven $20 million man in? I wouldn't.

So why this week? Maybe coach Jeff Fisher thinks that his previous starter, Case Keenum, is too important to risk feeding to the Dolphins' D-line. Maybe Fisher is frustrated with Goff and wants to punish him. Whatever the case, good luck, Jared Goff. You're going to need it.

Comments (3) | Leave a Comment | Tags: dolphins football nfl quarterbacks

Last week, Dungeons & Dragons was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. Obviously, I think this is a great thing.

(Hint, hint.)

But more important than any novels I've written about a role-playing adventure I created, this special occasion gives me the opportunity to remind you of Tom Hanks' greatest performance.

This movie is Mazes and Monsters, the 1982 classic based on the right-wing paranoia that Dungeons & Dragons was destroying childrens' minds.

Drink it in. That man has won two Academy Awards.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Tags: dnd movies rpg tom hanks youtube

Auburn was ranked 9. They were favored by 10 points. Yet they haven't won in Athens since 2005. Do I have to tell you what happened next?

The evening started well, with a rare US flag display in one end zone and an F-16 flyover. Then the fellow who sits next to me showed up drunk. A fight broke out between two UGA fans a few rows in front of me, and then a second scuffle erupted when someone spilled his nacho cheese on someone else's jacket. However, things didn't really get ugly until the teams started playing football.

Auburn began the game with a truly dominant rushing attack. Their first drive was derailed only by a fumble. Their second drive resulted in seven easy points. Georgia, on the other hand, had nothing. They couldn't even get a break on a clear pass interference non-call. Bulldogs fans were not happy. Through halftime, the score remained 7-0. It looked like the sun was setting on what was left of our season.

Then, after halftime, Auburn inexplicably moved away from their run game. Instead, they devoted themselves to a passing attack that was more pass than attack. Auburn eked out only 37 yards in 22 passing attempts for the game and never scored another point. (Next time Auburn fans want to make an argument about firing Gus Malzahn, this should be exhibit A. If quarterback Sean White was nursing an injury, why ask him to do more?)

Meanwhile, UGA intercepted and returned a pass 34 yards to tie the game. Auburn continued to struggle while, in consecutive drives, UGA managed one field goal, missed a second, then made a third. UGA won, 13-7, without ever scoring a single offensive touchdown.

In 2016, we'll take what we can get.

(Special thanks to Friend Randy, an FSU fan who bought me a Coke before the game started and another after the game was over. That's friendship!)

EDIT 2016-11-13: I've been informed that television audiences were informed that Auburn stopped running the ball because they ran out of healthy running backs. All I can say about that is that the running back attrition wasn't obvious to those of us in the stands. I still think Malzahn would have had more success calling running plays for the quarterbacks instead of passes, but I'll have to trust he knows his personnel better than I do.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: athens auburn football friends georgia randy sanford