Pilot's Log

NFL Season.

The regular season schedule came out this week, so tonight I went to Yahoo!Sports to make a quick survey as to who plays who when. It's tough to be a fan of one or two teams when you don't live in the home city. I'm a fan of the Steelers in the AFC and of the Buccaneers in the NFC (granted to mundane levels); east Tennessee TV is going to concentrate its efforts on two AFC teams in particular (the Tennessee Titans and the Denver Broncos--the latter because of favorite son quarterback Peyton Manning, who was traded there from the Indianapolis Colts a few weeks ago) and two NFC teams because of the national marketing (the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers). CBS carries most of the AFC games and FOX carries most of the NFC ones; NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network carry the rest of the regular season games. The Steelers have three NBC showings this year, one ESPN one and their NFL Network game is against--the Titans. The Bucs, OTOH, have just the one NFL Network game against the Vikings.

What's weird is that the Titans DO NOT play the Broncos, the Falcons OR the Panthers in the regular season at all in 2012. Granted, with 32 teams and only 17 weeks in the schedule (and everybody getting a bye week) it's bound to happen every so often. But that means since there are no showdowns there are no synergistic instances when a Sunday timeslot will open up for CBS or FOX to program a game that has nothing to do with any of the Gang of Four.

I'll need to look at the schedule again as if I work for the local CBS and FOX affiliates.

At the Rusty Wallace Toyota dealership in Morristown, the showroom has on display this driving kit set of Mr. Wallace's; the helmet visor has his autograph. (For those of you who don't know NASCAR, he had been one of the stars on the track till just a few seasons ago; he's now a trackside personality for FOX Sports' coverage of the races, and his "ride" has since passed through the hands of Kurt Busch to Brad Keslowski.)

I tried taking a few photos of the suit overday for research and planning purposes, but as you can see, it was too bright around for me to avoid capturing reflections from the display case glass.

The other day, I went to Gatlinburg to window shop and to just plain avoid the noise and chaos of the renovation being done to Rather Manor's bathroom. At a sports memorabilia shop, I found some keychains of FOX Sports' robot mascot Cleatus in various team colors. I may buy one eventually, but I feel little urgency.

I'd thought, on the way back to the house, to "stat" him out for wargames, as the keychain figure was of a good size for CAV, Heavy Gear and other games I could play. While looking to get started, I found something that I'd been looking for for weeks but kept missing--a concept for a marketing campaign. (I had NOT misfiled it...just that I had changed my mind about where it belonged, and the other parts of my imagination didn't get the memo!)

Back in the Nineties, I was trying to get hired by a company that imported model kits from around the world. At the time, it was the height of the real robots genre of anime, and this company sold South Korean knockoff/bootleg versions of the popular model kits of the day. My thought, as an alternative of the cliche practice of making mecha into Transformers automatons, was to make a deliberate alternative continuity in which there could be hints of the "real worlds" but not infringe on existing anime properties.

I never came up with a title for this idea. When the CAV game came along, I adapted some of my concepts for my own use, but haven't done much with it. Like many sci-fi wargame continuity creators, I am loathe to make factions "good" or "evil"--although some concepts are easy to make one way or another.

Anyway, I've come back to this because now I have the resources to take the overall concept into new and more interesting directions. Suddenly I have NINE political factions to make livery, insignia and themes for and a galaxy to redraw.

Team Lotus: #20 Jarno Trulli and #21 Heikki Kovalainen



Lotus Renault GP: #9 Nick Heidfeld and #10 Vitaly Petrov

CBS Announces The Cancellation of Seven Prime-Time Shows including Numb3rs.

Granted, the show ended with the high note of Charlie marrying his long-time lover Amita and taking a new assignment at Oxford, but I will really miss its presense. Rob Morrow is moving on to ABC's The Whole Truth, which looks to have a lot of topspin. David Krumholtz' follow-up Tax Man wasn't picked up by FOX, but I imagine FOX will keep it handy as a possible replacement, the risks being what they are these days. The others in the cast are already showing up in guest roles in other series, so the news isn't so bad...but I'll miss Numb3rs.

Meanwhile, I hear that The Big Bang Theory was picked up for syndication, so it'll run "daily" re-runs in addition to its weekly CBS prime-time slot. I'm not a fan myself, but I know a lot of people who are. (My prime-time of choice now is CHUCK and Criminal Minds.)

"It is impossible to be overinformed from watching television. Informed about all the wrong things, yes, but not overinformed."--Tepid 12:07

I had to endure about an hour of FoxNews this afternoon in a waiting room at the Mountain Home VA Hospital. Luckily it was just the headlines.