Movies, sports, babies, delivery problems, gas prices, junkets and ESL

Lost returns next week. That should rule. Love that show. Bill Maher's show returned last week, but is a bit limited with the writer's strike still going on. The strike might effect the Lost season as well.

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I'm a pretty big NFL and MLB fan, and in particular I've long been a Yankee and Cowboys fan. I kind of like the NBA, but the referees seem to influence the game too much and defer to stars to an extreme. I'm not sure Michael Jordan ever didn't get a foul called in a big spot. Both the teams I really care about had seasons that ended with utter disappointment, and that's been the case for a long time for those teams. The joy of following these teams seems kind of fleeting with the really lousy ending, yet I've often wondered why the movie industry doesn't take something from the realm of sports -- the element of surprise. That's what gets people to keep coming back.

Who would have thought the Giants would be headed to the Superbowl with three games on the road? Who saw a broken down Chargers team beating the Colts? If the Giants do somehow beat the Patriots, and lord I hope they do, it would be the biggest upset since Joe Namath's Jets upset Don Shula's Colts with Unitas as the back up until late in the game. The overwhelming majority of movies are completely predictable, and I think we're in as big a movie Dark Ages as we are a musical Dark Ages. The movies that most stick with me had surprise to them: The Usual Suspects, The Player, The Sixth Sense and Pulp Fiction come to mind.
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Walking in a baby store, after 35 years on Earth without the need to do such a thing, or seeing a bassinet in your apartment, thanks Boni Gomez, to be filled soon is a really strange and nice feeling. In some ways, the fact that I'm about to be a father to a newborn still hasn't sunk in, despite my wife now being in her third trimester.
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Blockbuster all of a sudden started charging my credit card if the movie isn't back on time. They say they will refund it, but it's still annoying. On the subject of annoying, I ordered Cynthia an ipod for Christmas from Circuit City, who sent it Fed Ex Smart Post, which doesn't deliver here. Two months since I ordered it and it isn't here. When I complained a few weeks ago, they told me it would come in through the post office. Sure doesn't seem that way. Wal Mart did the same with part of my order. The stuff sent the simple way through the post office arrived long ago. Why they had to complicate matters is beyond me and extremely annoying.
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The price per barrel on oil dropped about 10 percent in a week as the U.S. economy continues to fall apart. If the reverse happened, Shell and Mobil would have raised their prices already. Let's see how long until they drop the gas price, or even if they do at all.
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Lots of people talked to me about my last column. One person noted seeing government vehicles in the rally. Did anyone else see that? Given the nonsense going on, with Bill Weiss pointing out the CPA junket, I'm not sure if that even rates on the outrage scale.
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PSS doesn't have ESL classes. I continue to have a large influx of Korean students with zero knowledge of English mixed into a class that is designed to get students ultimately ready for college level reading and writing. These students need ESL classes. I have no faith it will happen.