There weren't a lot of them, but since I wanted to follow up on a couple of things, here's a post for that purpose.
We didn't see any movies over the weekend, and never even thought about it, despite being out running various errands most of Saturday afternoon. Harry Potter 4 did fine even without us though, notching the 4th biggest opening weekend in US history. It made
$102.4m in the US, with another $85.5m worldwide, setting opening day weekends in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. Reviews are still strong too, so perhaps Malaya and I will see it next week. We can't get out before then, since I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon and won't be home until next Tuesday.
Also over the weekend, there was football. I'm not going to revisit
my whole long "the AFC playoffs are decided already" post, but to no one's surprise, there were surprises.
The 5-4 Chargers and Chiefs are now 6-4, thanks to a pair of dominating performances in games they were supposed to win. The 6-3 Jacksonville Jaguars (or "jag-wires" as they call them down south") are now 7-3, though their game in Tennessee was more competitive than expected. And the 7-2 Bengals/Steelers are now both 7-3, thanks to losses against Indy for Cin, and at Baltimore, for Pittsburgh. So now there are 3 teams at 7-3 and 2 at 6-4, with one division and 2 wildcard spots to divide between them. I'm ruling KC out thanks to their outrageously-difficult schedule, and ruling Jax in thanks to their outrageously-easy schedule. It gets interesting between Pitt, Cin, and SD though. Yes, SD has a somewhat harder schedule than the other two, but Pitt is looking horrible with their QB injured, and they play undefeated Indy next weekend.
If
Pittsburgh can't manage a win over the moribund, formerly 2-7 Baltimore Ravens, how are they going to cope with three straight games @Indy, and then home to Cinn and Chicago? They could easily be 7-6 at that point, though they'll more likely win one to make it to be 8-5, before visiting sporadically-good Minn and Cleveland, and closing with a freebie hosting Detroit. Ten wins seems quite possible there, which would be quite a debacle after opening 7-2. The problem, as far as San Diego is concerned, is that Pittsburgh beat them head to head, and thus gets the first tie-breaker. So even if Pitt slumps to 10-6, SD would have to win 5 out of their last 6 to beat them out. Good luck.
Imagine if SD had beaten Pitt, though? SD would now be 7-3, Pitt would be 6-4, and SD would own the tie-breaker, leaving Pitt in need of a two-game collapse by SD to catch them for the wild card. Of course SD should really be 8-3 or 9-2 at this point, with 5 blowout wins, 1 close win, and 4 very close losses, so they can hardly start blaming others for their troubles.
Cincinati has an easier schedule than Pittsburgh, and their QB is not injured, so while it's easy to reflexively assume they'll revert to Bungles fashion, it's far from sure. They've got very winnable home games left against Baltimore, Cleveland, and Buffalo, but even if they sweep those they'll need to win at least one on the road against Pittsburgh, Detroit, or KC to get to 11 wins and a pretty much sure playoff spot. Not all that treacherous a road, but not the cake walk Jacksonville is set to enjoy, at least.
I almost wish the upcoming games were unknown, since it would be more fun to see things unveiled gradually. As it is, with such completely unbalanced schedules the whole thing seems almost preordained. Especially for Jacksonville; they can play like glorified-shit and go 12-4, from this point.
