Best Thing I Saw This Weekend

It's going to be interesting to see how this feature plays out over time, because my weekends alternate between time with my son and time on my own -- which leads to very different sorts of activities with very different motivations. And yet, it seems like lately regardless of the things I choose to do for fun, the past couple of weekends have turned into all-out errand fests where I end up driving all over the place in search of needed stuff or services.

On the one hand, it feels good to be so productive. To take care of things for me and my son -- especially with spring little league coming up and the school year heading into crunch time. But then you get home later in the day only to feel like the whole two days off of work just raced the hell by, and you wonder if you'll ever get any time to just "bum out" like you really want to do.

Anyways, onto the best things I saw this weekend.

Winner: Peyton Manning utterly eviscerating the Jets defense.

I bet a lot of you might have thought I was gonna say the Vikings/Saints overtime thriller -- but honestly, outside of the nail-biter ending -- that game was a sloppy, tedious mess. No disrespect to New Orleans, who made the right plays when the time came -- but Minnesota literally ran all over them, out-gained them by like 200 yards, and seemed to have their coverage scheme beaten cold. But 4 boneheaded fumbles and a bunch of lame penalties later -- it was painfully clear that the Vikings didn't have a knockout punch loaded and the Saints made them pay for it at the last second -- just like they'd done to a ton of other teams this season.

The Jets on the other hand, had this happen:

Like a lot of football fans out there, I like to think that I understand the game. And maybe I do to a certain level, but nothing like what we saw happen last Sunday. After spotting the Jets 17 points, Manning literally figured out their entire defensive scheme and then proceeded to just whizz all over it. You could literally see him pointing out blitzers to his offensive line before dropping back and threading the needle to his receivers again and again. By the time they took the lead back before halftime, the game was all but over.

It's far too early to make any predictions about the Super Bowl, but despite the charmed Cinderella run the Saints seem to be on -- it's sorta hard to think with the way Minnesota marched all over the field on them that a group as focused as Indianapolis will do anything but shred them to pieces.

Runners up (in no particular order):

• The Unexpected Return of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy to Cartoon Network -- Who knows, maybe they were just trying to fill space on the weekend and got tired of playing re-runs of all those awful Scooby Doo live action movies, but whatever the case -- one of my all-time favorite animated series showed back up Saturday, including one of the best episodes they ever did -- Dracula Must Die.


• The Jaguar Motorcycle -- I've talked many times about how much I've always wanted a motorcycle, but it's always been one of those things that I've been able to talk myself out of. Whether it's the cost, the danger involved, or whatever -- it's been one of those mental tug-of-wars that has never really resolved itself to any sort of satisfactory conclusion.
  
  All that being said -- when photos of this concept bike from Massow started circulating last week, it was hard not to want to just go out and get one. This thing is gaudy ridiculous phallic hot. Seriously, how cool would it be to pull up to the club looking all Toruk Makto on this bad boy?.


• Archer -- Technically, this was the best thing I saw two weekends ago, but due to some unexpected puppy-related computer problems I was unable to post about it. If you haven't already heard, Archer is the name of a new animated series created by Adam Reed and Matt Thompson -- the guys who created Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo. It will be interesting to see how the show fares on the FX network, which usually tends to show stuff like Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, and The Shield.
  
  Regardless, the show is hysterical, not only because it's making fun of so many of the spy movie cliches that I love, but because it's got a fantastic voice cast -- including H. Jon Benjamin, who might just be the best kept secret in all of comedy right now. It also doesn't hurt that one of his co-stars is Über-crush Aisha Tyler, who I have adored for years -- and not just in the inappropriate, borderline criminal ways you're thinking (although there has certainly been a lot of that, too).
  
  Hopefully you've been keeping up with the show, but just in case you haven't here's a little sampler:

  
  By the way -- I have no idea how people put up all those fan videos you see, this thing took me forever to put together.

So all in all -- a good weekend (or two) gone by, if I do say so myself. Football, family, and good food were in high supply, especially if you're a beagle puppy that will apparently eat anything. And while these things certainly weren't the only cool things I saw over the last couple of days -- I did feel like they were cool enough to share.

So, what were some of the cooler things you saw this weekend?

[Listening to:  American Head Charge - "Loyalty" ]