Sunday Potpourri No. 48

College Scoreboard

It was a generally satisfying day of results for my college football rooting interests yesterday, even though some of them were playing against each other.

Air Force clinched the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy with a convincing 31-12 win at Army.

The win also made the Falcons bowl eligible at 6-3. The Black Knights fell to 5-4 and probably need to win two of their next three games to secure a bowl berth.

Navy also became bowl-eligible with an exciting 28-27 win over Notre Dame in Jacksonville, Florida.

Now 6-2, it is possible that Navy might edge back into the Top 25.




As expected Boston College got rolled at home by No. 7 Louisville, losing 52-7.

On the plus side of the ledger, my best friend Skip's No. 12 Penn State Nittany Lions blasted Iowa 41-14 at Happy Valley, which is really a two-fer for me. On top of that, both Nebraska (lost to Ohio State 62-3) and Kansas (lost to West Virginia 48-21) got convincingly drubbed.

"That explains the relative lack of cursing. How about today?"

My beloved Kansas City Chiefs are playing without their starting quarterback and their best running back, so I make no promises whatsoever...

Don't Be Such a Buzzkill, Kid

From the wry comic strip FoxTrot, by Bill Amend, which you should read every Sunday.

Until Next Time...

I went to the movies on Friday in no small part because it was what would have been the 36th birthday of my late best friend Matt, who died in 2008. One of the things I miss the most is going to the movies with him, something we did with great regularity even after he moved to another city. Friday was the first time since his death that I've celebrated his birthday with a trip to the movies...

When we first met, in the fall of 1995, he was already a huge fan of the band Pearl Jam, of whom I was only dimly aware. He conducted an extensive campaign to convince me that they were the greatest band ever, and found my resistance to the notion puzzling. Not that I didn't enjoy their music once I began listening to it, I just enjoyed other artists and bands more.

One bone of contention in particular was our divergent views of the band's second album, Vs. I thought it was a good album of rock music, Matt thought it was a total masterpiece. I'm not sure he ever recovered from the shock of hearing me call it merely "good," but he never stopped trying to convince me I was wrong.

On November 6, 1993 Vs. hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, a position it would hold for six consecutive weeks. It was the first of the band's five No. 1 albums, and it set a record for most sales in the first week of release that stood for many years.

The album contained several songs which became rock radio hits and concert staples for the band, including "Go," "Dissident," "Animal," and "Daughter," which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

It used to bug Matt that my favorite song on the album was acoustic guitar-tinged "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town." Although the song was never released as a single, it got a lot of radio play and peaked at No. 23 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. He used to joke that I only liked the song because I wanted to date the elderly woman in the song's lyrics...

Today's send-off is the 2011 remastered version of the song, from the band's YouTube channel. Enjoy...