The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Ugly

I think I’ll work backwards and start with the Ugly.

University of Utah football is Ugly. I watched the first two games. They looked unimpressive in one while winning and looked dazed and confused while losing in overtime. The win over Northern Colorado wasn’t impressive since Northern Colorado should have never played Utah. When you only manage to achieve 114 yards of total offense in fifty plays as Northern Colorado did, it was not an impressive victory for the Utes.

Utah lost to Utah State for the first time in fifteen years.

Horrid performance.

The players seemed to lack any semblance of enthusiasm. They had no energy or spirit.

The play calling was insipid and unimaginative at best and a crime against college football fans everywhere at worst. Utah lost its starting quarterback for the second year in a row to an injury to his same shoulder.

Utah had two choices, a senior backup and a true freshman. I would have gone with the senior since he would have known the offense. Head coach Kyle Whittingham and his rookie offensive coordinator decided they would use both. In one four down series, the senior played the first play and the freshman played the next two plays. The punter played the fourth down.

There didn’t seem to be any consistency.  

The offensive coordinator is a rookie, just three or four years removed from being Utah’s starting quarterback. Last year, he was the quarterbacks coach.

I guess Whittingham figured he was ready for big time football after carrying Norm Chow’s play book for a year.

I’m beginning to think Whittingham is running on a record that was built on Urban Meyer recruiting classes.

Utah is now playing at the top of the mountain in the PAC 12 Conference. They need to start thinking about getting a head coach and staff that is ready for the big time.

The other Ugly is the University of Oregon home football uniforms and helmets.

The Good

My old high school team is now has two victories against no defeats.

Excellent.

Two weeks ago, my school defeated Eagle Rock. My favorite former wife went to Eagle Rock. I decided not to mention the game since she was a flag girl in high school. This last Friday, they defeated Crescenta Valley.

I am now celebrating being “cancer free” for a year!

Epic.

Doug and I had lunch on Friday. We went to Albatras in Lake Forest. It serves large portions of Mexican style food. I had a carne asada burrito. Doug had a chicken burrito. They were both excellent.

Theater time

I went to see a play last night at a regional theater.

It was musical, Jekyll and Hyde.

I will be the first admit I was skeptical that Stevenson’s tragedy could be turned into an effective musical. I was wrong. It was a very fine performance with enhanced staging and sets. The show is leaving Southern California after the current run for Broadway where it will be a revival. You could tell there was some money behind the production.

The singing was excellent although I thought it was over amplified. Maybe I just have sensitive hearing now that I am getting old. I didn’t know any of the cast. The male lead was played by Constantine Maroulis and I am told he was a contestant on American Idol. The female lead was played by Deborah Cox.

Numbers

The MINI managed to reach 38,161 miles. Nice. August was a good month for top down driving. I drove for 29.25 hours; that brought my year to date total to 148.00 hours and total top down time to 442.25 hours.

The blog had 473 visitors for the month and 4,626 visitors for the year to date. The total number of visitors is now at 66,925.

I participate with SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence]. My credit total is 151,100. I would have more credits except for that stupid Windows Vista that didn’t play well with SETI. I think I lost six years of credits when I left Windows XP for Vista.

Odds and Ends

One of my former students said I sound like Dan Patrick, the ESPN sports personality. Maybe I should listen in some day.

Another student said I reminded him of Tommy Lee Jones in a way.

Fascinating.

Be well and stay happy.