Michael*

Our women's rugby teams play in regular clothes whereas the lingerie league does have helmets and some knee pads, but not much. It just got started as a novelty, but no one actually intended on it evolving into actually having talented athletes. I can't stand to watch it due to the plight myself. It is somewhat of a strange thing in sports in that its one of few things that so many female sports fans love without having a real professional avenue for. Another group of women underrated due to their attire is roller derby. They have great skill, dedication and it is also very physical too. Well, they're just short shorts, but not demeaning actually. Its probably moreso underrated due to not that many people being interested . I mentioned earlier that intergender, recreational flag football (whereby taking someone's flag counts as a tackle) is big time recreational fun here and there's even different celebrity games where the women hold their own against the men head to head. Maybe that's something to build on. I still maintain that the lingerie league should just be replaced with a flag football league.

 

In the NFL, I pull for the Houston Texans. They have a bit of a strange history in that they are a decade old expansion team and yet there is actually a debate over who their root team was. The original team named the Texans was the Dallas Texans but they went belly up and soon became what are now the Kansas City Chiefs. The Houston Oilers thrived for awhile but soon moved to Tennessee and there was no Houston team. They then became the Tennessee Titans and there was no Oilers. Then, about 10 years ago, the Houston Texans sprouted up and some debate over whether they are from the Dallas Texans or Houston Oilers as a root team . Either way, they're okay. They had promise last year and are filled with inner turmoil and are overall average to maybe above average. There's some talent here and there, but in a team with 56 players on a team, it doesn't go as far as it would in basketball or hokey and if they made the playoffs at all, I'd be shocked if they won a game. In basketball, the Houston Rockets are also average. In football, I tend to root for Mexico over the U.S. because I have some afro-Mexican relatives and other-Mexican in-laws ect. and figured I'd let that be the Mexican team I support since I go straight America for the Olympics. I consider myself to be a loyal fan. I don't flip flop, but I can't say that my primary enjoyment in the sports is based on said teams. As a matter of fact, there are some games I guess you have to be a fan to even sit through. To make matters worse, they always have updates of other more exciting games that are going on at the same time .

It's a strange thought that a sports team could suddenly up sticks and move to a new state, teams here are so intrinsically linked to their locations. I suppose it's a bit different over here though, it is of course a much smaller country and every town, village, back lane and stream has its own team. It has happened once before, in 2004, when Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes and became known as MK Dons. They initially claimed the history of Wimbledon as their own, but had to stop doing so later because the original fans, understandably upset about their team moving away, boycotted the club. Those same fans then went on to form their own team, AFC Wimbledon, who started at the lowest rung of the game but have since worked their way up to the professional leagues. The two teams actually had their first ever meeting last year and as you can probably imagine, it was a pretty fiery game.

Without wishing to hit you in the face with too many questions ( ), what would the official reasoning tend to be for a relocation? Attendances, public interest, that sort of thing, or something else? For those whose state suddenly doesn't have a team, does the game become less popular in that state? Or would the fans still root for that team, even though they're located elsewhere?

No I wanted to so hard, but I haven´t been in cinema for like...phu, half a year at least. It´s either no time or no money how about you??

 

Yes, I don´t see your replies very often We have veeery similar taste in women then I´m just very dissapointed now about Bregje - can´t really find any other work than VS

Unfortunately not, I missed it the cinema so I'm having to wait for the DVD release. The reviews I read at the time were almost all lukewarm, but I'm still quite keen to give it a whirl.

It always seems to be the way for a model when VS comes calling, doesn't it? Their VS stuff completely swamps their other work, which is kind of a shame as you don't really get the same level of variety afterwards.

So, who else are you liking at the moment?

So how would you rate the batman games?

In order of preference, I'd have to go City, Asylum, Origins.

I've been playing Origins quite a bit this past week and it's definitely a little rougher around the edges than the previous two, but I guess you'd expect that as it's been placed in the hands of a new and somewhat unproven studio. The fantastic foundations laid by the original developers are still intact though, and broadly speaking, I think it delivers pretty much everything that made the first two games such fun. The plot and the recurring theme of mobsters being supplanted by super-villains like the Joker is excellent, as is much of the voice acting.

I'm confused:  What does a soccer game/team have anything to do with the Kiev encirclement and the conquest of the city? I mean, Kiev itself was at the center of the largest encirclement and cauldron battle in military history.  25% of the city also went up in flames.

 

What kind of questions do you have?  I do know a bit about Barbarossa and have a lot of reference material on it.

The book is an excellent read, it transfers the dilemmas of the war into the frivolous world of sport; how the game was seen both as a means to motivate people, and as an outlet for political protest in an environment where life was almost worthless. It pretty much all starts at a bakery managed by a sports-daft Ukrainian guy, who forms a football team made up of all the former pro stars (obviously, the professional game would have been put on ice during the war) to play in a ‘friendly’ tournament set up by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Kiev, in which the Kiev team twice outperform and pretty much humiliate a team representing the German Luftwaffe.

Now, the official line is that the Ukrainian players won a match that they were supposed to lose, and died for it. But the author seems unable to fully square some of the information with the ‘mythology’, if that makes sense. The story questions whether the team actually was torn apart because of their victory, as many of the players apparently continued in Kiev, while some were sent to Siretz on the outskirts of the city, where three were executed (a part described in harrowing detail in the book).

So I really didn’t fully understand how half the team managed to survive the camp at Siretz (according to Wikipedia (which I know is far from the most reliable source ), there was a revolt towards the end of the war, in which 15 prisoners escaped, and the remaining 300 were executed). It leaves the reader with very little idea of which players and relatives escaped the occupation, or whether or not they even survived the war. Even writing that he doesn't know would be better than nothing, but instead it feels a bit like a chapter is missing at the end.

I just checked out the new Batman game on youtube and overall 'Arkam City' was much more creative and interesting IMO.  There is a lot of memorable imagery.  Arkham Origins looks like it was made on the cheap by utilizing the old software.   And they didn't really create a living Gotham....  too bad.  But the story looks like a comparably straightforward sort of narrative, and not overly convoluted.

Although it was brief, I like how they did Joker, Bane and Deathstroke  

Who are the 'fake' banes?  What is that all about?  And why does Bane want revenge against Batman?

Also, I liked their Bane design better than the Arkham City (ridiculous looking) one and even the one TDKR.  Hardy's Bane was not 'Bane-y' enough for me and Arkham City's Bane was too much.

The pipes are really painful looking!

spoiler:

 

In order of preference, I'd have to go City, Asylum, Origins.

I've been playing Origins quite a bit this past week and it's definitely a little rougher around the edges than the previous two, but I guess you'd expect that as it's been placed in the hands of a new and somewhat unproven studio. The fantastic foundations laid by the original developers are still intact though, and broadly speaking, I think it delivers pretty much everything that made the first two games such fun. The plot and the recurring theme of mobsters being supplanted by super-villains like the Joker is excellent, as is much of the voice acting.

 

Oh yeah, at the half way point our season is considered to already be over . We needed the last game to stay 'in it' and we lost . No problem with questions on my end as I enjoy asking them myself . For one, any thoughts on Mexico vs. New Zealand? Packing up to move is rare for the NFL. Generally such relocations are a team ceasing to be and then starting up somewhere else. When it is the case, generally lack of attendance or what is perceived as such anyway. The standard is higher for the NFL than the NBA as the worst NFL teams are in the black (due to its greater popularity here) whereas it isn't the case with the NBA. Generally attendance falters for some when a team is bad for a really long time, but some may argue that it may only hurt ticket sales due to the expense of the tickets rather than the actual fan morale. Others of course would counter that such is still enough to move on if it seems profitable. For the most part, there are many teams who have never had significant success for long that still sell out and have crazy fans. As a matter of fact, Oakland Raider fans are as passionate as any in the sport and they haven't had lasting success for decades. Overall, it seems that a new team is more likely to sprout up than one just move altogether. The most famous is the Baltimore Colts literally moving overnight in an 18 wheeler to Indianapolis to become the Indianapolis Colts. The Baltimore Ravens (the current champions) replaced them and have won 2 superbowls to their 1, but the fans will still
never forgive them for it.

I had to leave the Mexico New Zealand game because it was out of hand, but they ended up scoring 2 more times after that .
 

I just checked out the new Batman game on youtube and overall 'Arkam City' was much more creative and interesting IMO.  There is a lot of memorable imagery.  Arkham Origins looks like it was made on the cheap by utilizing the old software.   And they didn't really create a living Gotham....  too bad.  But the story looks like a comparably straightforward sort of narrative, and not overly convoluted.

 

Although it was brief, I like how they did Joker, Bane and Deathstroke  

 

Who are the 'fake' banes?  What is that all about?  And why does Bane want revenge against Batman?

 

Why did he inject himself and turn himself into an even bigger freak?

 

Also, I liked their Bane design better than the Arkham City (ridiculous looking) one and even the one TDKR.  Hardy's Bane was not 'Bane-y' enough for me and Arkham City's Bane was too much.

 

The pipes are really painful looking!

 

spoiler:

 

Yeah, it's essentially more of the same Arkham-style gameplay with a dash of cautious innovation thrown in. It doesn’t really offer anything genuinely new or different, which may prove mildly underwhelming for anyone with hopes of seeing the series driven forward in any significant way. If there’s one area where Origins does improve upon City though, it’s the boss battles. They’re handled really well (always seemingly a criticism of the previous games), and each one brings a different challenge that mixes up the rhythm of the fights. I really liked Bane, Joker, Deathstroke and Copperhead. The Firefly confrontation was pretty cool too (something about him gives me serious Metal Gear Solid vibes ), I enjoyed the variety of the gadgets that the player has to use in order to take him down.

After you come into contact with the first Bane lookalike at Blackgate, it transpires that they're actually test subjects for a new venom toxin Bane is working on to counter the unwanted side effects of the old one. The original compound, which is highly addictive and apparently affects Bane's memory, is jettisoned in favour of the new and improved one. At the end, he injects himself with the new stuff, but it only serves to make him worse. He becomes more brutish and animalistic, and makes increasingly poor decisions.

Oddly enough the confrontation that gave me the most trouble is still Deathstroke.

The Bane fight was surprisingly easy once you figure out the proper tactic.

Well, the first one anyway. No idea about any future confrontations yet.

Thanks for the synopsis. Yeah, when you mentioned this story I thought it rather odd that it was about a soccer team in Kiev 1941... Now this makes more sense, hah.

As far the fate the players I don't know of this story but it would be difficult to pinpoint as millions of Ukrainians were killed. So many records were burnt and lost in the east, with individuals MIA forever. The Axis occupation forces and the German government in the Ukraine considered the indigenous to be a free labor force. So to get killed by being forcibly used as slave labor and worked to death was very common.

^

The Germans back at Dnieper, this time trying to delay their inevitable withdrawal from eastern europe after being defeated in the summer and fall. They finally lose Kiev in 1943.

Thanks Andy. I would have loved to have found out more about them, particularly Konstantin Schegotsky, one of the players, who is pretty much the main character throughout, but I guess if records are lost, they're lost.

Oh yeah, at the half way point our season is considered to already be over . We needed the last game to stay 'in it' and we lost . No problem with questions on my end as I enjoy asking them myself . For one, any thoughts on Mexico vs. New Zealand? Packing up to move is rare for the NFL. Generally such relocations are a team ceasing to be and then starting up somewhere else. When it is the case, generally lack of attendance or what is perceived as such anyway. The standard is higher for the NFL than the NBA as the worst NFL teams are in the black (due to its greater popularity here) whereas it isn't the case with the NBA. Generally attendance falters for some when a team is bad for a really long time, but some may argue that it may only hurt ticket sales due to the expense of the tickets rather than the actual fan morale. Others of course would counter that such is still enough to move on if it seems profitable. For the most part, there are many teams who have never had significant success for long that still sell out and have crazy fans. As a matter of fact, Oakland Raider fans are as passionate as any in the sport and they haven't had lasting success for decades. Overall, it seems that a new team is more likely to sprout up than one just move altogether. The most famous is the Baltimore Colts literally moving overnight in an 18 wheeler to Indianapolis to become the Indianapolis Colts. The Baltimore Ravens (the current champions) replaced them and have won 2 superbowls to their 1, but the fans will still

never forgive them for it.

 

 

The blankety-blank team.

From an outsider's perspective, it seems bizarre that a team could pack up all their pots and pans and just leave overnight. You'd have to feel like you were leaving for something better, I guess, but I'd imagine there to be few guarantees of receiving the necessary interest, investment and fan support to sustain themselves in a new city.

I wonder then, if a new team were to suddenly appear or an existing team were to relocate, how they'd actually go about deciding on a new place to call home? Is it a business decision taken by the owners of the teams, a move by the governing body, or simply a case of which city or state will take them in?

I had to leave the Mexico New Zealand game because it was out of hand, but they ended up scoring 2 more times after that .

I didn't manage to see any of the game but I did hear about the result. After a pretty dismal qualifying campaign, it sounds like Mexico have finally hit their stride. I'd imagine the tie itself is beyond repair for New Zealand, but it'll be interesting to see if a (partially) face saving scoreline is possible in the second leg. A lot will probably depend on whether or not Mexico travel well and if they have any support in Wellington.

Oddly enough the confrontation that gave me the most trouble is still Deathstroke.

The Bane fight was surprisingly easy once you figure out the proper tactic.

Well, the first one anyway. No idea about any future confrontations yet.

I think I probably died more times while getting swamped by henchmen than I did in any of the boss battles, although I’d agree that Deathstroke was the toughest of the bunch. I was quite fond of Copperhead by the time the battle with her was over, there was a particular insult she frequently used that really made me laugh.

I didn't manage to see any of the game but I did hear about the result. After a pretty dismal qualifying campaign, it sounds like Mexico have finally hit their stride. I'd imagine the tie itself is beyond repair for New Zealand, but it'll be interesting to see if a (partially) face saving scoreline is possible in the second leg. A lot will probably depend on whether or not Mexico travel well and if they have any support in Wellington.

It was dismal indeed, but about the traveling and support, I guess we'll see .

The blankety-blank team.

 From an outsider's perspective, it seems bizarre that a team could pack up all their pots and pans and just leave overnight. You'd have to feel like you were leaving for something better, I guess, but I'd imagine there to be few guarantees of receiving the necessary interest, investment and fan support to sustain themselves in a new city.

 

I wonder then, if a new team were to suddenly appear or an existing team were to relocate, how they'd actually go about deciding on a new place to call home? Is it a business decision taken by the owners of the teams, a move by the governing body, or simply a case of which city or state will take them in?

The owner is pretty much sovereign in the decision and the getting someone to take you is generally the easier part. I can't imagine that happening like that now though. Although I've heard the story so many times, its still hard to wrap my head around . Have you by any chance seen any of the 'Almost Human' show? It was hyped up for months and stars a couple of guys that I generally know as supporting cast members in movies (that could have done with or without them) but this is probably my first time seeing them star in anything. To avoid inflicting my own woes from casually seeing show spoilers in the TV forum, I'll reserve commenting further on that until I know if you've seen it or not. I didn't recognize one person from the 'Agents of SHIELD' by contrast (although there seems to be possibly someone from 'Eureka' and a Keira Knightly lookalike in there ) but same question for that one too.

Have you by any chance seen any of the 'Almost Human' show? It was hyped up for months and stars a couple of guys that I generally know as supporting cast members in movies (that could have done with or without them) but this is probably my first time seeing them star in anything. To avoid inflicting my own woes from casually seeing show spoilers in the TV forum, I'll reserve commenting further on that until I know if you've seen it or not. I didn't recognize one person from the 'Agents of SHIELD' by contrast (although there seems to be possibly someone from 'Eureka' and a Keira Knightly lookalike in there ) but same question for that one too.

To the best of my knowledge, 'Almost Human' has yet to hit the UK, but I'll be sure to give it a look if and when it does. I find JJ Abrams has a real gift for creating cool action sequences and compelling (if sometimes convoluted) plots, and the unveiling of the usual 'big conspiracy' is almost always worth sticking around for. I'm quite liking 'SHIELD' at the moment too. The world may not be in desperate need of another TV series about people who investigate things, but I enjoy the show's family friendly 'Fringe' vibe, and there are some interesting ideas that should be fun to see develop. Plus, the obvious cliches are made rather more palatable by the Marvel universe tie-in. I'm also becoming increasingly fond of Elizabeth Henstridge, the aforementioned Keira Knightley lookalike...

Hola sir how goes things on your side of the pond?

Hola sir how goes things on your side of the pond?

Can't complain sir! How about yourself?

Has there been any news on that PC release for GTA V?

^ Same ol' routine here nothing too out of the ordinary. But Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday so I'm preparing my gut, stretchy pants and antacids for the occasion Oh the feast to be had soon and I have the goal of consuming 10,000 calories that day

And no news for GTA V for PC that I know of here

Yeah, she's my second favorite character next to the hacker girl. Good summation of Abrams too as well as the 'family friendly Fringe' description. I haven't read the comics as I'm not as well-read in Marvel as I am with some others.

I tried to post that top 100, but it said I reached the limit . I did think about best intros independent of the song as well though. I think the cartoons would easily win that one. There's also a lot of shows like Spiral Zone, Extreme Dinosaurs, Iron Man and Mummies Alive that I haven't seen, but would have to be considered.
 

^ Same ol' routine here nothing too out of the ordinary. But Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday so I'm preparing my gut, stretchy pants and antacids for the occasion Oh the feast to be had soon and I have the goal of consuming 10,000 calories that day

 

And no news for GTA V for PC that I know of here

Ah yes, Thanksgiving! Hope it was a happy and fun one for you guys. I actually stumbled across this video recently, detailing what the average Brit apparently knows about it (with apologies!)...

I'd probably call its accuracy into question slightly though, since the vast majority of US sitcoms are shown here in the UK, and almost all have Thanksgiving specials. You'd have to be practically oblivious to pop culture to know so little.