The Lightning Round -- Weekend Wrap Up

Wow. This was a busy weekend, both from a blog posting perspective, and from a real-life perspective. An engagement party. Two football games (and two victories). Seeing a movie for the first time in ages. And watching quite a bit of television as season premiere week continues. So, in case you missed it, here's a rundown of the posts from the past three days.

On Saturday, I wrote about the season premiere of the fifth season of Las Vegas which wrapped up the storylines of the characters of Nikki Cox and James Caan and introduced us to new casino owner Tom Selleck. It was pretty good, though I will miss Caan.

I also watched and wrote about Michigan's struggle to beat Northwestern on Saturday. And the more I think about it, the more similar Michigan and the Detroit Lions are. Good offenses, poor defenses, and both games Sunday were flipped, with the defense holding the team in despite poor offensive performances, only for the teams to wake up in the second half and win by double-digits.

Saturday night I ventured out to the movie theater (for the first time since watching Fracture during the spring) and watched and reviewed The Kingdom. I'm partial to anything staring Jennifer Garner, and after not being such a big fan of other, Middle Eastern/Current Event films (like Jarhead and Syriana) I was a big fan of The Kingdom. Poignant, powerful, action-packed and exciting. Even the humor worked. It's getting mixed-reviews (at best) and it was beaten out by The Rock's kids movie at the box office this week, but do yourself a favor and check out this movie. It's worth it.

Then Sunday was sports day. The Detroit Tigers wrapped up their season with a win and Magglio Ordonez won the batting title, Curtis Granderson put a bow on his amazing season by pushing his batting average over .300, Placido Polanco got his 200th hit of the year, and Carlos Guillen knocked home RBI 100. And Pudge Rodiguez may have played his last game as a Tiger. I had some quick thoughts on that too.

And then, finally, the Detroit Lions set an NFL record by scoring 34 fourth quarter points to defeat the Chicago Bears and improve to 3-1 on the season. The Lions are not an elite team, by far, but they are tough, and show a lot of heart, and after being nowhere for three quarters, they scored five touchdowns in the final fifteen minutes to stage a come from behind victory.

And with that, time to get some work done before Shark starts at 10:00 and Lions wrap-ups begin on the local news at 11:30. And Ebert and Roper review The Kingdom, and more, at 12:30. The weekend never stops.