A call for greater precision in game fish records

Breaking news from Lake Biwi in Shiga Prefecture, Japan--the world's largest bass has been caught. Sort of. On June 2, 1932, George Perry caught a 22 pound, 4 ounce, largemouth bass in Montgomery Lake in Telfair County, GA. Seventy-seven years later, Manabu Kurita caught a 22 pound, 5 ounce, bass, and thus tied Perry for the largest bass caught.

It's officially a tie because according to International Game Fish Association rules, the new record weight must excede the existing record by at least two ounces.

This makes me wonder, what happens if someone caught a 22 pound, 6 ounce, bass? It excedes Perry's record bass by two ounces, but not Kurita's. Would Perry still be tied for the record?

Or, if someone caught another bass weighing 22 pounds, 4 ounces, would it be considered tied for the largest by weighing the same as the smaller of the two tied for the largest?

Some things just don't mix

At the beginning of Friday night's Battlestar Galactica, Doc Cottle informs us that once the bleeding in an important character's brain is stablized, they can bring "the brain guy" from Inchon Velle to remove the bullet. Later, we hear this brain guy's voice. Oh my god, it can't be. It is! Who plays this brain specialist? John Hodgman. John Frakking Hodgman.

What's so bad about that? John Hodgman is hilarious. Battlestar Galactica is not. If I didn't know who John Hodgman was, maybe I wouldn't think this was so wrong. I think the words he said could have been funny on the page. But he just does not fit in the BSG world. I feel bad for saying.

But, apparently someone did think to ask him if there were any hoboes in the fleet, to which he replied that it was impossible to tell because the hoboes look like us now. This works great. Just not on the show itself.

Crappy New Year, ABC

It is sad that my first blog post of the new year must be a rant, but I feel ABC's coverage of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest needs some comeupance.

First, at about 11:53, there's this look back at Miley Cyrus's 16th birthday party at Disney World and how wonderful it was. And you too may spend your birthday at one of the parks of the Disney. No one will televise it, thank god. Nothing says corporate synergy like New Year's Eve.

Second, there was absolutely no mention of my favorite part of this New Year's--that extra second added at the end of 2008. The ABC clock went straight from 11:59:58 to 11:59:59 to 12:00:00. Where was 11:59:60? I remember the one in 2005 being acknowledged.

And then ESPN celebrates the New Year with a guy jumping a motorcycle onto the top of the Arc de Triomphe replica at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, and then he jumped off. Oh, he's overcome Tourette's syndrome to do this, too. He gave the post-jump interview as the medical crew bandages his hand which was almost certainly broken and cut to the bone. I think missed the guy who wants to be the first to do a backflip in a pickup truck.

Yes, WIS-TV, I understand that you must run a weekly test broadcast of the Emergency Broadcast System with its red banner across the top of the screen and the beeping and the blocking out of the sound. But, why do you have to do this during Chuck? And why do you have to do it four times during Chuck?!?! It's not like I can rewind the DVR and hear what they said. Do you really want me to watch it online? I could probably do that if it's what you prefer.

Is it wrong? Part II

Argh! I was celebrating heartily when Pittsburgh's kicker Jeff Reed kicked a field goal with 15 seconds left to put the Steelers ahead of the Chargers 11-10. It wasn't that I'm a big Steelers fan, but no game in the history of the NFL has a game ended with the final score of 11-10.

However, the Chargers in desperation threw laterals back and forth on the final play, the last of which, after it hit the ground, Steelers safety Troy Polamalu picked it up and ran into the end zone as time expired making the final score 17-10.

Wait--breaking news! As I write, the officials are reviewing this play. Since it occured after the two-minute warning, the booth official can choose to review the play. He did, and they found that the fumble that Polamalu recovered was an illegal forward pass. This mean the play was dead when it hit the ground, and therefore the touchdown comes off the board, and the game is over. That pass was clearly a backward pass, but I think the small one prior to that one did go forward slightly. Thus, the first ever 11-10 final is secured!

Now we just need for the Steelers or Chargers' playoff chances at the end of the season to come down to net points.

Is this wrong?

Is it wrong that I cheered when CBS just showed me Cincinnati kicker Shayne Graham missing a 47-yard field goal against Philadelphia? It's not because I'm a Philadephia fan because I cheered just as loudly when Philadelphia's hail mary following it fell incomplete on the final play of overtime. Yes, I was cheering for the first NFL tie game in six years. Woo-hoo!

Sign of the times

I keep forgetting to blog about something I saw back in August in San Francisco. Think back to those halcyon days of yore, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,431, I saw what seemed like a great indicator of the economic disaster of the time: high gas prices. As I walked along the Embarcadero, I saw a white stretched limousine version of a Hummer for sale by owner. My god, has it come to this?

Obscure Scrabble words at work

With the official paperwork filed first with Broward County and then with the Bengals and the NFL, the an irritating Cincinnati wide receiver has official approval to wear "Ocho Cinco" as his name on the back of his jersey. I see this an opportunity to use one of those severely underutilized two letter Scrabble words and will henceforth refer to him as Chad Ocho Cinco né Johnson.

There are a couple of great comments on the ESPN articles hoping that Ocho Cinco né Johnson gets traded (as he demanded in the offseason) to the Rams, who have retired the number 85 for Hall of Famer Jack Youngblood.

I would prefer that one of his teammates, say T.J. Houshmandzadeh, changes his last to Ocho Cinco so that Ocho Cinco né Johnson would have to put "C. Ocho Cinco" on his jersey.

Hm, but if I could get Ocho Cinco né Johnson to sit down for a slice of za on a table made of aa cooled by an oe, no od could stop me from saying "um, uh, er, ay."

The strange thing is that Ocho Cinco ne Johnson has fewer letters than Dutch soccerist Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Of course Ocho Cinco né Houshmandzadeh would have them both beat.