you can say is that Devin Hester is, as always, amazing. Jesus, the guy is only in his second NFL season, and he’s already a legend. He is revolutionizing how people think about special teams, and I have no doubt that he will play a big part in the history of the league.

being played in Detroit today. Wide receivers are dropping passes (like they’ve been doing all season), the running backs are just not getting it done (also like they’ve been, er, not doing all season), Griese is an at-best lackluster replacement for the dangerously self-destructive Rex Grossman, and there are penalties all over the place. About the only positive thing you can say is that the D looks solid, if not spectacular. Which is actually something of a miracle, as the secondary is simply decimated by injury.

That said, as ugly as this game is shaping up to be, the Bears are holding on to their 4-point lead by their fingernails.

In other news, how about that Tony Romo? God, he’s good. Now pay attention, boys and girls: the Cowboys are my early-season NFC champion favorites.

Also, speaking of the Cowboys, I have to say I love that Pepsi Max commercial with the yawning offensive coordinator. Ha!

about WP’s new tagging feature is that it seems to be unpredictably capitalizing my tags, which makes my OCD nuts. Either do it consistently, or not at all. Yeesh.

making changes to the category structure on this blog. I had previously been using the categories somewhat like tags, but it was clunky at best. Now that WordPress 2.3 has introduced the new tagging feature, I’ve removed all subcategories and made the category structure a flat one (though that may change as I rethink my post organization), and used tags to replace those subcategories.

Unfortunately, idiot that I am, I did this all manually, instead of using WP’s handy-dandy categories-to-tags feature. This would have saved me hours. God.

Final score: 115-105, in my opponent’s favor. I didn’t win, but my team did turn in a respectable performance.

Well now that that’s over, it’s time for the best game of the week: Cowboys vs. BEARS!

26 points, and it doesn’t look like the situation will improve anytime soon. Sigh. This calls for a beer.

Of all the times for Philip Rivers to throw an interception…He lost the game to the Packers today, 300+ yard passing game or no.

killing me here. Touchdown pass after touchdown pass, and not a one of them to Wes Welker. Sigh. I’m currently trailing by 4 points; I gotta hope Ocho cinco has a great day today, and that Big Ben and LT kick it up a notch.

not starting Philip Rivers today, especially judging his performance in comparison to Ben Roethlisberger’s in the first two weeks, but he is having a great game today. And Big Ben is, sadly, not.

And what about LT? He’s had a very slow start this season. What’s up with that?

Smokin’ Aces – 4 stars

Even though I guessed the big a-ha like 10 minutes into this movie, I really enjoyed it¹. Smart, well-made, a Tarantino-style shoot-em-up with an actual plot² and a simply amazing cast: what more can you ask for? You know, I really have to start researching movies a bit more when I see interesting trailers, because if I had when I first saw the trailer for this movie, I would have learned that it was directed by Joe Carnahan, of whom I’ve been a big fan since I saw Narc‘s premiere at The Best Sundance Ever (2002), and consequently seen this movie a lot sooner. Very nice. Plus, it’s an honest-to-god R-rated movie, of which there are far too few these days.

¹ Probably because they didn’t end the film with the big a-ha (in my opinion, no one’s really gotten that right since The Usual Suspects and Primal Fear), but instead showed the fallout from it.

² Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction: often imitated, never duplicated. I mean, you’ll get the occasional standout: Snatch, Out of Sight—but far more are like Layer Cake, which is to say, awful.

The Painted Veil – 4 stars

Saw this one a while ago. An understated, elegant period piece based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel of the same name, this movie was just what I like to see in a drama: serious star power that takes a back seat to the storytelling. Ed Norton, indisputably my favorite actor working today, turns in—as always—an excellent performance. Reminiscent in tone to another favorite of mine, 1997′s The Wings of the Dove (this one based on a Henry James novel), this movie is a worthy addition to your queue.