johnzo

I like the consistency in the Skywalker dudes, how they're all whiners. Luke was going into Toschi station, Anakin hates sand, Kylo Ren is being torn apart and needs to talk to his -security blankie- grandfather helmet. This is how I know Rey will not be a secret Skywalker, she lacks the necessary whininess. It seemed to work okay for Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter and Neo and so forth. And let's not get into this "true fans don't like TLJ" thing. I'm a ******* giant star wars nerd (though I didn't read much of the EU beyond the Zahn books). Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in a theater -- I was six -- and it messed me up for life. I will put my star wars trivia skills up against anyone. And I will never call Episode IV anything other than Star Wars, because that's its name, goddammit. For me, the Last Jedi divide is between people who have a template in their heads for what a Star Wars movie HAS to have ... it's gotta be about dynasties struggling for control of the force, oodles of secret backstory, epic space battles, a very tight plot with continuously escalating threats, plucky heroes succeeding against all odds, jaw-dropping lightsaber fights, etc. The Force Awakens was exactly that movie (minus jaw-dropping lightsaber, I guess), and it was pretty decent, but it was also really safe and stale and lazy. Another trench run destroying another Death Star? Try ******* harder, JJ. What I want is something that is enough like Star Wars that I recognize it but also something that's fresh enough that it's still surprising, and TLJ was exactly that, so it worked great for me.

4-44 over the last three seasons. Good thing there's no relegation in the NFL, the Browns would be playing in the AFL6 by now.

48.5% of the Alabama voters chose the guy who believes in imaginary voter fraud in imaginary places. I dunno about you guys but I'm voting for the killer asteroid in 2018.

And just one more thing I noticed on second viewing: this is really a film about women trying to teach men lessons. Rey tries to reawaken the conscience in Luke and Kylo Ren, Leia and Admiral Holdo teach Poe to know when to hold em and when to fold em, Rose teaches Finn that it's not about who you fight, it's about who you fight for.

I'm really stoked that Rian Johnson is getting a whole Wars trilogy to himself. I'd like to see the Star Wars movies go like the MCU where there's lots of different takes on it .. the psychedelic all-the-colors 70s space rock Guardians of the Galaxy, the epic giant blockbuster Avengers/Civil War movies, the zippy comedies like Ant-Man and Deadpool ... even Dr. Strange had a cool feel all its own, with all those Dark City x 10000 effects... Marvel has done a good job differentiating the feel of the MCU movies and I'd like to see lots of filmmaker nerds who grew up on Star Wars re-interpreting it and freshening it in the same way.

Saw it again tonight, liked it even better. Thing I caught this time that I missed before was Kylo Ren's offhanded thing about Rey not being able to project herself to him, the effort world kill her. That's why Luke died /disappeared / whatever at the end ... he used too much Force. And holy crap those scenes on Krayt were beautiful .. white salt churned to red then scorched to black, the silhouetted walkers, the command ship overhead .. Luke going out to meet them ... just gorgeous. Also really liked the parallel between Star Wars and this movie with the Jedi .. both times, the old Jedi sacrifices himself in a distraction so the next generation can get away aboard the Falcon. The magic of this movie for me is how it showed me these old Star Wars story beats and makes them both familiar and surprising. It wasn't a comfortable pair of old shoes like TFA was.

Hamilton has put themselves in a tough spot .. they're humping Manziel's leg while their best current QB is a free agent and Collaros is a spendy non-option. Nightmare scenario for them: Collaros is cut/traded, Manziel signs, Masoli goes elsewhere and they can't find a decent FA QB. Having Manziel under center for the first snap of the season would be madness, unless he is indeed some kind of Doug Flutie level talent.

Not so much strictly about Manziel, but we've got a whole thread in General Discussion discussing the endless list of guys who have been recently named and shamed. Warren Moon himself has some stink on him, he paid to make a cheerleader problem go away in 1995, he had a DV charge that same year (his wife testified that she started the fight, the case was dismissed) and he is currently facing some creepy allegations from an executive with his marketing firm. (and I'm not sure how credible those accusations are, but Moon is on a leave of absence from Hawk broadcasts, so he or his bosses are taking it seriously) So yeah, you add lots of high-profile dudes getting accused + a culture (in the US, at least) of enabling sex crimes among football players and I have to wonder if we're going to hear about a CFL coach or team pulling some Briles **** for their players.

Manziel is still dealing with a domestic violence rap in Texas and might not have even been able to play in the NFL if he hadn't been cut -- as of 2016 he was under investigation under their domestic violence policy with a six-game suspension being a possibility. So he's got some stink on him. I remember all the angst about how the CFL was a refuge for addicts when Ricky Williams came up here (which I think is pretty stupid, but reporters love headlines) I bet Ambrosie is anxious about headlines about how our league is a refuge for spouse beaters. Thus, the highly public process where Manziel is educated about his expectations. If he screws up or steps out, the league can say it tried and then just wash their hands of him.

Things have changed. Look at Justin Cox or Art Briles. Neither of them were ever convicted of a sex crime, but both guys were banned from the league. And those guys were both pre-Weinstein! (I don't think either banning was unjust. Cox had a rep + a domestic-violence adjacent rapsheet and Briles was caught enabling sex criminals and has never repented or tried to make amends. The CFL is better off wihout them) Anyway, back to Manziel. Dude poses a unique risk to the CFL when you multiply the post-Weinstein climate by his humongous profile. His CFL shot was a story on NFL.com this morning! I can't believe a failed NFL quarterback still pulls headlines like that. J. Football is gonna be the biggest story in the CFL no matter where he's playing or who's playing QB on his team. If that yuuge story transforms into "CFL quarterback beats girlfriend" then that's a big problem for the league. It's totally within the commish's responsibility to make sure that the words "CFL" and "domestic violence" never appear together in a headline so I don't mind him doing his due diligence and making it crystal clear how Mr. Football is gonna behave as a CFL player. I think the CFL will be hit with a sex crime reckoning someday, probably sooner rather than later. I always think of JBR saying that there are tons of Briles in the NCAA, enabling lots of players to get away with lots of heinous ****, and those players aren't gonna straighten out just cause they're getting paid in a weird foreign country.

Yeah, there was that final semi-clinching backup vs backup game against Calgary where our D beat up Buckley much worse than their D beat the Fever. That was a surprise, given how good the Stamp D and Buckley had looked previously. I thought we were toast in that game. That was such a weird game to watch. It seemed like Lapo chopped our playbook down to something that you could run at a high school in Spain. Never seen a win where a QB passed for 89 yards before. Lefevour starting was a hell of a slap in the face to the heir apparent D. Davis. Hey, speaking of Bomber free agents, I wonder if DD is going to be a free agent this off-season? back to the topic at hand, since all Bomber threads are about Richie Hill regardless of their title ... something like 30% of our points were generated off turnovers last year, so all this talk of our O winning despite our D doesn't ring true for me. Sure, if our offense goes to ****, we're not gonna win as many games ... is there a team in football that this is not true for? We had the top-scoring team in the CFL last year, but there's no way we had the best offensive coaching or the most dominating talent. We had the top-scoring team because our ballhawks repeatedly gave our offense short fields, or scored themselves. (and also because we'd try a field goal from anywhere inside the 50 yard line, but that's a post for another topic)

Yup, best of the season to all you blue n' gold freaks, and thanks for another great season at MBB. May 2018 be a year of peace, happiness, and a Bomber Grey Cup!

yeah, it hasn't happened recently, but back in the day when teams would regularly carry two good quarterbacks, it did happen. Damon Allen didn't start his first Grey Cup victory, in 1987. Dunigan started, but got hurt. Danny McManus didn't start the West Final or the Grey Cup in 1994, but he won both those games. Kent Austin was either hurt or ineffective, I can't remember which. The 2005 Esks won out with a tandem. Ray wasn't injured but he struggled in the playoffs. Maas came off the bench to win both the semi-final and the final and then Ray blew the doors off in the Grey Cup. Similar story with the Riders in 1989 -- Tom Burgess won at least one of their playoff games and then Austin won the Grey Cup.

Isn't that the fault of the OC, though, for not running a more diverse offence? Or is the point here that Mirer had such a limited toolset that he couldn't do anything except those 4-5 passing plays? Gotta rewatch some BC games this offseason and see how Lulay played differently than Jennings -- they were a completely different team with Lulay in and I think their offense was more diverse than the huck-it-and-pray stereotype we hang on Jennings.

It's astonishing to me that a defense of 11-12 guys running at game speed can look across tens of yards that are crowded with gigantic fast-moving bodies and can make decisions and adjustments based on what the QB's hands and eyes are doing. Just amazing. It's also real interesting that an accomplished QB is harder to teach than a talented but inexperienced guy. Is that something you see in the NFL too, or is that something that's unique to Canada because our weird rules totally screw up a QB's instincts?

Great answers, guys, thanks a lot for schooling me. That thing about the receiver's mouthpiece .. man, what a giant tell. Bet that guy always had a seat held for him at team poker games...

Yeah, all that carping about Obama exploding the debt seems a little hollow now. Though, to be fair, neither party is super interested in fiscal responsibility. The Republicans are okay with deficit spending due to tax cuts or military spending. The Democrats are okay with deficit spending on social programs.

From your mouth to God's ears, man. And I suspect you're right, but I keep thinking of what Churchill said: DPRK are lunatics and Trump .... well, Trump doesn't seem like the kind of guy who can de-escalate a conflict. The US military is moving into a first-strike posture, and DPRK is jumpy -- if either of them pulls the trigger, then no one knows where it stops. Sometimes it seems like Trump and Tillerson are working from the Nixon / Kissinger Giant Lance playbook -- a mad dog president at home and a milder functionary who goes abroad and says "hey, enemy nation, you have to behave because the president is off the chain and who knows what he'll do if he's provoked?" And that worked against the Soviets because the Soviets were rational actors who weren't getting high on their own supply and also because the world was insanely lucky. But against Kim? (more about Giant Lance: https://www.wired.com/2008/02/ff-nuclearwar/)

Why is it so important that Rey has some big secret origin? We see all kinds of Force kids in the prequel movies and given how Jedi aren't allowed to mate or love, those younglings must have come from plain old non Force parents... I know that JJ Abrams teased that Rey had some mysterious pedigree but remember, this is the guy who made Lost -- he's great at setting up mysteries but not so much at paying them off...

Also, Jesus ******* Christ the North Korean situation is scary. China appears to be gunning up for a war -- if the USA + ROK go it alone against DPRK, suddenly this could be a hot superpower war.

Republicans got their big tax bill through. As a salaried wake earner, it doesn't do a lot for me. My taxes will go down a bit temporarily and then pop back up in 2027ish. I'll be able to buy a new cymbal or two with my savings. As an (small-time retirement savings) investor, I suspect I'll see some benefit. The stock market will love this. The GOP wants to do Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security cuts next, given that they've now kneecapped US federal revenues for the next ten years. They also want to somehow spend more money on the military, which is, by all accounts, completely fubarred by previous (bipartisan) budget cuts. I'd rather have the social services and working aircraft carriers than the tax cut. And yes, I know I can voluntarily send the govt more tax money, but voluntary tax remittance is kind of an unsteady revenue stream that you can't really plan programs around. The plan is polling very badly and appears to be viewed ad a giveaway to the investor class ... will be interesting to see how much class war stuff we see from the Dems next year.

So people have been saying that the reason that Jennings slipped so badly in 2016 is that defensive coordinators have solved him -- they've figured out how to defend against him and he hasn't adjusted or can't adjust. Others are predicting the same thing will happen once Bridge starts playing regularly, and that the same thing happened with Casey Printers a decade ago -- another guy who made a big splash and then flamed out. What kind of tendencies and tells do DCs look for when they're figuring out a QB? If you're putting together a book on how to defend a particular QB, what will that book contain?

Brandon Bridge signs for another year with the Roughriders. Good signing for them, he looked like he was coming along nicely for them next year ... will be very interesting to see if Jones pursues another QB or goes another year with Bridge / Glenn, maybe with Bridge moving into the starting role?

"We stuck by you when you did things that hurt us before" lol nerds

I've seen a lot of folks complaining about this and I don't get it. The Force will often pop in to help out untrained force sensitive folks in mortal danger ... Luke against the Wampa ... Luke against the Death Star ... Rey against Kylo Ren and her stormtrooper guards. This just felt like more of that. Not saying that people are wrong or anything, I just don't understand the objection given how we've seen this very thing a bunch of times in past movies.