Five Years Later: What's really changed?

What you see in the background of that image there is what I refer to as "my journal." I bought it at a Borders or some other bookstore back in 2004, primarily for class when I was back finally finishing college. When I bought that hardcover item, I imagined that I would fill it out quickly and rush to replace it—repeatedly.

And nearly seven full years later, despite the binding falling apart and giving the appearance that it's been opened with far greater frequency, I'd say I'm a little more than halfway through it. Journaling every single day, as it turns out, is a routine I just never could get into.

Of course, the excuse that I make for not writing my private thoughts down on a more regular basis is because over time, I've developed a number of other places to publicly record them. My Tumblr has occasionally become one such venue for me in the past couple of years, but this particular blog has been another for five years now, today.

While I've made a note of this anniversary on one previous occasion, I don't think the past three years on BMC have really allowed me to post another "greatest hits" sort of series of links. Still, I do think it's appropriate to kind of look back, briefly reflect on what's happened and then get back to moving forward.

Things I made while offline: Sid Vicious

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A charcoal and pastel sketch of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious

Oscar Nominee Reaction: A Perfect Ten (in the big category, at least)

Even I was a bit surprised to see I got all 10 of my predicted Best Picture nominees correct, and my overall 39 of the 45 nominees in the "Big Eight" was two better than how I fared last year. And indeed, like I had anticipated, when the nominations were announced that morning, I'd already seen seven of the pics.

So a quick visit to the Redbox took care of two more, and now I'm down to one last film that, as it turns out, is opening up at theaters in my area this weekend. So for once, I'll actually be able to fill out my hypothetical ballot and post reviews of all 10 nominated movies before the ceremony. (Last year, I was about two months behind in doing that.) At least, I should be able do all that in time this year.

Of course, there were a couple surprises in this year's nominations, but I suppose the one lesson I need to make a point of remembering is this: Mike Leigh gets nominated for his writing, not his directing or the performances he gets. I should have remembered this lesson from two years back, actually.

Final Thoughts on 2010 Chicago Bears: We have nothing to complain about

Keeping in mind what I had said at the beginning of this season, more specifically the not ruling out the idea of the Bears finishing in last place in their division, the fact that the team got all the way to the NFC Championship was a most pleasant surprise—regardless of the end result. This team thoroughly defied my expectations this past year, and if you wanted to attribute most of that success to luck, I wouldn't argue. And I suppose that would only be fitting that in the end, the luckiest team in the NFL all season long finally had the worst turn of fate possible, when they lost man at arguably the most important position any team has.

Naturally, Jay Cutler not being able to finish the NFC Championship led to immediate speculation and plenty of phony, overly macho chest-thumping about playing through pain. When the word "pussy" was able to be said or printed, it most certainly was. I wish I could say that it was uttered strictly by ESPN personalities who seem to make it a point to be as stupid as possible, but unfortunately I saw even some friends of mine that were supposedly fans of the team pinning this loss entirely on what they believed was a quarterback's personal decision to sit out the rest of the contest with the Packers.

I've already had my say on this, and I'll stand by those comments. But for the sake of this blog, a few thoughts on the year in general:

Oscar Nominee Picks: Or, "What I'll be trying to see in the next month"

Actually, thanks to my wonderful girlfriend's wonderful taste, I've been to the movie theater for actual good movies more often than in years past and thus will have probably seen a majority of the Best Picture nominees when they are announced tomorrow morning. Still, I'm almost certain that there's going to be a few movies nominated that I will either have to go way out of my way to catch before the broadcast or already have been in theaters and won't be out on DVD until afterward.

With football season now only being one game away from over, it's about time to transition over to something new to plaster this blog with, so get set for the movie reviews, folks. What gets nominated and I've already seen will probably go up first, but before we get to that stuff, here's who and what I'm guessing gets nominated tomorrow morning—with thoughts and commentary on the individual categories to probably follow in a later post:

Things I made while offline: Al Pacino in "Serpico"

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A charcoal collage of Al Pacino images from the 1973 film "Serpico"

Conference Championship Picks: Cookie Cutters

It's possible I'd heard about it previously this year, but it didn't really register for me until this week that the NFL had redesigned a few logos this season—most notably, the trophies it awards for the Conference Championships about to be played. Perhaps it's just because I'm a cynical bastard, but the new designs resemble something more along the lines of what I'd see used to make Christmas cookies.

But the "cookie cutter" reference seems appropriate this week with the two early line favorites being popular consensus among most of the experts I track, and worst of all, being the exact same pick that Sports Illustrated scribe and Brett Favre ass-licking society president Peter King had forecast at the very beginning of the season. So if I'm pulling for any of the other three possible scenarios for any reason aside from my obvious fandom hoping for one of the two which would include the hometown Bears, it's to deny that tubby retard the joy of saying, "I toldja so." (We can always remind him that he also had Carolina as a Wild Card team.)

I'm perfectly happy to admit how wrong I was about my own predictions for this NFL season—more specifically the beloved Bears, since the team is now but one win away from another Super Bowl appearance. This year's team has completely defied many people's (myself included) ideas of what the team could achieve, and in what has been essentially an unpredictable season for the NFL, nothing could seem more appropriate than having the most popular prediction be completely wrong.

The Bulls' Second Quarter: Everything's coming up Rose's

For a team that's been at full strength for just nine games thus far this year, the Bulls have still looked pretty impressive when a lot of excuses could have been being concocted. Instead, I continue to be thankful that Tom Thibodeau's coaching this team and you needn't look very hard to see what effect he's had on this squad, as when it's on, the defense can be among the league's best.

Joakim Noah hasn't played since shortly after I posted the last quarterly update—and now he might not be back until March. Carlos Boozer finally did start in December, but just missed the Memphis game the other night. And still, despite problems with two big pieces being banged up, the Bulls keep on winning.

Looking over this last stretch of 20 games, the list of opponents doesn't seem quite that daunting, but who's really going to argue with the results? The only team with a bigger lead in their division is the Lakers, and while the Central might not field any more playoff teams other than the Bulls, it's certainly looking like Chicago will have home-court advantage for at least the first round of the playoffs.

Things I made while offline: Claudia Schiffer

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A pencil sketch of model Claudia Schiffer 

Divisional Playoff Picks: Let's not get ahead of ourselves

There's already two divisional rivalry rubber matches set for this weekend over in the AFC, but around where I live in the Chicago area, many people are already giddy at the prospect of the Bears hosting an NFC Championship game against their longtime rival Packers next weekend. So while the Seahawks aren't nearly the moneymaker for local brokers that Green Bay would be, the games still have to be played and there's two teams that have alternate plans for what indeed would probably be a record television audience for next weekend if the Bears were to host the Packers.

To this Bears fan, there's been a little too much talk about that possibility. It's the not first time this scenario could play out that way, and it sort of leads me to believe that the amount of speculation about that NFC Championship game might make nice bulletin board material in the locker rooms of both the Seattle and Atlanta clubhouses.

The Chicago Tribune today ran a feature comparing this year's Bears team to the 2006 team that made it all the way to Super Bowl XLI. It's a little hard for me to believe that I was still in the first year of blogging here on BMC the last time Chicago was in the playoffs, and I apparently hadn't gotten into the predictions business as heavily and regularly as I've done in recent years. As best as I can tell, I didn't even talk about my Bears until they'd clinched that Super Bowl appearance. And then my couple posts probably jinxed them.

So forgive me for being a little more hesitant about buying too heavily into this Bears-Packers hype, since I seem to think that all the talk about it is only going to mean that next week's matchup will involve one, if not two, different teams. The divisional playoffs come first and just like 2006, let's concentrate on the possible joy involved in beating the Seahawks.