National Championship Day

Word of the day : piecemeal : one piece at a time; gradually

Okay, wrong on my NFL predictions for the week.  1-for-4, I think.  All right, here are this weekend's picks:
On Saturday, New Orleans will beat S.F.  N.E. will knock out Denver. 
On Sunday, Baltimore will beat Houston.  Green Bay will dominate the G-Men. 
Tonight's National Championship: Alabama 20, LSU 17

Interesting science facts from Smithsonian.com today:

- Bigfoot did exist.  Well, sort of.  An ape as big as a polar bear did live in South Asia until 300,000 years ago.  The ape most likely walked on its fists, like modern day orangutans.  He or she weighed up to 1200 pounds (three times that of a modern gorilla) and stood more than ten feet tall.  These apes ate figgy fruits, plants, bamboo.  They lived in a forested environment.      

- Elephants in the wild don't eat peanuts; zoos don't feed them to elephants either.  The elephant's closest living relative is, believe it or not, the rock hyrax.  Yes, this thing: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/09/what-in-the-world-is-a-rock-hyrax/  Elephants avoid ants like the dickens, not because they're scared of them, per se.  But, rather, ants get inside elephants' trunks, which are full of sensitive nerve endings.  Asian and African elephants are as different from each other as elephants and wooly mammoths are.  What else?  Elephants throw sand on their backs and on their head to prevent sunburn.  Elephants can recognize themselves in mirrors, too.  Also, folks, they have a sixth toe. 

- Good stuff.  Here's an article too that you might like: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/01/why-do-humans-have-chins/

I think Larry Crowne got a bad rap.  Maybe critics expected more from a Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts pairing than a loose, low-key, shambling comedy - with its tossed-off, downsized charm - but, hey, what you get is what you got.  This is a fun movie - maybe a kid brother to NBC's Community - with Hanks earnest and intentionally damped-down, playing it straight, while Julia gets to fluster and flap; she is an excellent physical comedian.  Maybe some think there's just not much to it, but I was smiling throughout.  The supporting cast is eclectic and fun.   

The National Film Registry is a result of the National Film Preservation Act of 1988.  That year, the Library of Congress established the U.S.  National Film Preservation Board, which annually selects twenty-five films - these 25 films are known as the National Film Registry for that year - to be preserved in the Library of Congress. This is a huge honor for a film - an equivalent to a work of art being displayed at MOMA or the Louvre.  The first selections were chosen in 1989. among them were The Wizard of Oz, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo, The Grapes of Wrath, High Noon, and Gone With the Wind.  The films range from Hollywood studio films to short subjects, newsreels, non-feature length films, non-theatrically released titles, documentaries, home films, music videos.  The members of the Board, which advise the Library of Congress on what films should be chosen and preserved, include Martin Scorsese, the great cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, members of the Screen Actors Guild, NYU, the Writers Guild of America, and the National Association of Theater Owners, among others.  (A film has to be at least year ten years old to be eligible for the register)
As of the 2011 listing, there are 575 films on the total register now in the Library.  The 2011 listing included the following titles: Bambi, Forrest Gump, Norma Rae, Silence of the Lambs, and Stand and Deliver, co-starring Lou Diamond Phillips, currently misidentified by the Food Network Channel (Phillips is appearing, natch, on a celebrity cook-off challenge) as an "Academy Award nominee." Edward James Olmos was, however, nominated for his work in the film. 

Once a month, starting tomorrow, I will select ten films that I think should be preserved.  These won't necessarily be my favorite films or even what I would consider the greatest American films ever.  Rather, these 200 selections (to be revealed over 20 months) will be the films that are something more than what can be listed under any heading or label.  So I guess they're the films I'd want to show my great-great-grandkids 50-80 years from now (my theoretical grandchildren) as a way of introducing them to what entertainment and film art was from the silent era of movies to 2013.  But that's tomorrow.