Dave

I liked the game better when it was called Super Bowl 42.

I don't know what you mean by "make it." He's one of the most significant indie rock dudes around. I saw Shellac last time they came to Brooklyn. Awesome show.

I agree NYC is awesome and amazing, but that fact doesn't mean it's not also filled with douchetools.

Positive Albini? He has a lot of positive things to say about cooking. He has a food blog. Don't know if that helps. Steve Albini's food/cooking blog. A friend and I find it hilariously odd.

I kinda get what you're saying, because he can be ascerbic and grouchy, but the targets of his rage, more often than not, deserve it.

I went with this lot for season 2:
The Christmas Invasion
New Earth
School Reunion
Girl in the Fireplace
Rise of Cybermen/Age of Steel 2-parter
The Idiot Lantern
Impossible Planet/Satan's Pit 2-parter
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday 2-part season finale

Skipped the others. The werewolf one, which explains the origins of Torchwood, could've helped for continuity's sake, but I thought that was an easily skippable episode.

The Christmas Invasion - It's shot weird. The lighting inside the Tyler home is a bit off. Too orange and soft. The episode doesn't really get going until Tennant wakes up. When he does, he creates a memorable Doctor very, very quickly.

New Earth - One of the things I really liked about this is the whole concept: hospital using clone-slaves to cure every disease in the universe. Just solid sci-fi. And the compassionate resolution to Cassandra's death rounds out the Doctor's moral compass as aligned earlier in the ep.

School Reunion - Lame villains, but the examination of the Doctor's companions--both femaile and canine--was amusing and characterful. We get to see the consequences of the Doctor finding and leaving companions. The interaction between Sarah Jane and Rose is very good; their transformation from competitors to gossipers with a common foil was cool. Mickey comparing himself to the dog was, of course, awesome.

Girl in the Fireplace - Love story told in a condenced way. Very cool. After the season finale, this episode comes to mean a lot more. It's the actuality of what the Doctor has been warning Rose about: he doesn't age; she does. I didn't get the same long-term foreshadowing at first.

Rise of Cybermen/Age of Steel 2-parter - I'm not particularly fond of these two, but they're necessary for continuity for the season finale. The Rose and Rose's dad business was handled well and avoided predictable melodrama. Mickey finally came into his own as a character. I thought the guy was a terrible actor until these episodes.

The Idiot Lantern - This was a great example of taking a sci-fi premise and tying it in to both a historical event (the coronation, and, separately, the notion of informants) with mundane family drama. Ultimately, it plays into the Rose/father thread throughout the season.

Impossible Planet/Satan's Pit 2-parter - Really good build-up. Small let down. The end doesn't quite justify the build-up.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday 2-part season finale - Good stuff all around. I covered this when I posted about the second season.

I didn't get to see last week's Houston/Baltimore game until after the 49ers/Giants, but everybody told me Flacco played terribly. Watching the game and expecting the worst, I didn't think he was that bad. Not great, but not bad. Against the Giants last night, however, he was bad. He looked rattled and hurried. Missed several open receivers. He still played well enough to win the game, and I don't know how Lee Evans dropped that pass in the endzone. The gamewinner.

The 49ers never really established a running game. They set themselves up for a lot of long 2nd downs. The defensive line on both sides played great. The punt, punt, punt sequence at the end of the 4th quarter was a downer. And obviously the game would've been different if Ted Ginn hadn't been injured.

Manning handled the pash rush better than Alex Smith, who fit my expectations of him perfectly: one good game, one bad game, rinse and repeat.

Pats/Giants is my least favorite game of the four possible combinations. It doesn't really work for me as a revenge game or as a good rematch. The Pats near-perfect season was its own unique situation. This doesn't build on it for me. That said, I think the Giants are going into this game in much better shape than the last one. They should be the favorite here. That two weeks off will help Ahmad Bradshaw more than any other player, and even though the Giants aren't a running team, he will be able to do some damage against the Pats defense.

The Giants look a lot like 2007 (Jan 2008) when they started playing well only at the end of the season and made a huge run in the playoffs. Nobody is playing as well as they are.

My guess is that the 49ers/Giants game will be the better of the two next week and will be a better game than the Super Bowl. (The week before the Super Bowl is always the last weekend of football for me. The Super Bowl is more event than game. Tedious, distracting event.) It should be a good championship Sunday. I'd pick Pats and Giants because I still haven't seen Flacco shine in the postseason and because the Giants are on fire.