46 thoughts on “December 18, 2015: The WGOM Awakens”

  3. Will my team get to defend its four straight national titles? We'll find out tonight. Win or lose: what a ride.

    1. With Younger Daughter attending St. Thomas, I have a rooting interest in the Stagg Bowl tonight. The undefeated Tommies are underdogs to perennial contender and also undefeated Mount Union.

      1. Ah, Mount Union in the Stagg Bowl. Naturally.

        2003 was a very good year.

        I can begrudgingly root for St. Thomas this year, rivalry and all. After all, sometimes those lesser schools deserve nice things too.

      2. One of my brothers graduated from St. Thomas. His twin spent his freshman year in Collegeville.

        I'll be pulling for a Tommies upset.

      3. Mount Union has 11 titles since 1993. That's a ton. Greatest non-scholarship football program ever.

        My club is going for their 13th since 1965, which is also a lot, but it spans 51 years and three separate dynasties, in three different environments. In the sixties, they won three mythical titles (i.e. poll titles). In the eighties (when yours truly was enrolled), they won 5 in eight years in a playoff format at the division II level. Now, they are gunning for 5 straight in FCS. They have won it (the FCS title) more years than they haven't since they became eligible for the playoffs.

  4. Off to see The Force Awakens shortly. We picked up tix over a month ago; suite seats, so reserved seating (no lines!) and an order of toasted raviolis in my future. Best part is all three of us are going, so this will be a nice family event.

    1. Seeing it tonight with the three oldest. General Admission, so getting there early. Playing Love Letter while we're waiting.

    3. I'm really excited to take my son to see it on Sunday. Having reserved seats makes the whole process so much easier, no need to get there hours in advance to make sure we get decent seats together.

    4. I'm taking most of next week off, so I'll probably go Tuesday or Wednesday during a cheaper showing. I'll probably have to go by myself, though 🙁

    5. Might be Christmas Day for me. Just too busy until then. Not super excited to go see it, but so far it's received a much warmer reception than the prequels, so I'm cautiously optimistic, especially with Lawrence Kasdan involved. And, I know I'll get chills from the title screen.

    6. My wife, who works for a locally based retail giant with major merchandising tie-ins with SW: The Force Awakens, is seeing it today with her team.

      I, on the other hand, likely won't be seeing it until later with a buddy (who runs a restaurant situated in Rosedale ... so who knows when he'll be free to squeeze it in).

    7. I'm going to wait until after Christmas when I've got the whole week off and we can take Younger Daughter with us. The last couple of years we've gone to the movies on Christmas day, but Mrs. Twayn gets to pick that one.

    8. We've watched 4,5,6, and most of 1 with our older boy now, so we might wait until we finish up to go see it. We are currently up in the mountains skiing, so won't likely have a chance to go see it until next week. I'm a big Star Wars fan, and super excited to see it, which also means I'm very nervous about finding out anything about it before then.

      1. Dido on the last sentence and semi-dido on the first. I'm working my way through the IV, V & VI (theatrical release versions) and was going to buy II & III (maybe I). The box set (BluRay & DVD) of I-III are on sale at Tgt for $40 right now ... so we'll see. Kernel (4) is probably too small for them yet, but soon!

        1. Our oldest that we are watching them with is 4, and hasn't really had a problem with any of it. We are probably more lenient than most in what we let him watch, though, so take that for what it's worth.

          1. I watched 4-6 with a four and two year old around and neither had any problems, even during the rancor scene. My son was absolutely riveted by the space battle in Jedi.

            I'm debating if I ever even want to let them know about episode 1-3. I really have no desire to watch 1 or 2 again and I've never even seen 3 because 2 was such a train wreck. Seems almost better to just leave Vader's origin story to the imagination.

            1. A New Hope is rated G ... I could not believe that. We watched the first 25 minutes of it with her tonight... only part a bit cringe-worthy was the burning corpse/skeleton of undefined aunt/uncle.

        2. We just finished up episode 1, and are watching 2 right now, so we may get to 7 early next week after all.

          And in case anyone forgot, episodes 1 and 2 are....

          'Spoiler' SelectShow

  5. I took my little brother and sister to see the original Star Wars one night when the family was camping in Brainerd. A big storm that spawned a couple of tornadoes blew through the area while we were in the theater. We had no idea until we were driving back to the campground and saw downed trees and limbs everywhere. The parents rode the storm out in our little Coleman tent camper. They grew up in the Depression and World War II and never scared easy.

    1. Reminds me of the summer before I married EAR. I had spent June-July in Idaho and the first weekend back in MN, we went camping at Frontenac S.P. Maybe the first time we went camping together: just a little tent, my parents' Escort Wagon.
      On driving through Redwing, I noticed that a movie I'd heard good things about while in ID was playing and that if the threatened rain came, we should go see it.
      That movie: The Blair Witch Project. EAP didn't settle down until we were back in the city. I don't think we camped again until 2014.

      (I didn't have a TV in Idaho, though I watched an episode of Kilborn's Late Late Show with some friends, and rented a few movies to watch with them.)

    1. He looks pretty good for a 720 year-old man (I figure one Keith Richards year is like ten human years).

    1. My common response to similar polls SelectShow
      More points SelectShow
      Fine-al Point SelectShow
      1. Interesting Details SelectShow
        1. Yea, not so much SelectShow
          1. Spoilsport SelectShow
        1. 'Spoiler' SelectShow

    4. You can pretty much do that sort of thing all day long on both sides. There are polls that show people want to ban water. There was a story recently that showed Yale students signing a petition to repeal the First Amendment. It's pretty much meaningless.

      1. a case in point from a new Fox News poll:

        holy crap SelectShow

        the cumulative results of these polls are, IMO, not exactly "meaningless." Individual results may reflect "signalling" or non-interested respondents' lack of commitment to getting an answer "right," but cumulatively, they seem to be telling us that something is going on in the general public. Something I find disturbing and sad.

        1. What I suspect it tells us is that a significant number of people don't think much about this stuff, and so when asked tend to just react rather than thinking the question through. Most of us have probably done that at times, and it's not really a new phenomenon.

          1. there's certainly a lot of that in any polling circumstance, which helps explain odd results about shares of the population that "believe" patently untrue things or who answer questions about fictional stuff as though the stuff lived in the real world.

            answering opinion questions that address controversial topics is a bit of a different kettle of fish, however. some of the responses can be attributed to "signalling" about tribal/group affiliation, of course. countervailing that are social taboos against saying things or agreeing with things that we know would violate widely held social norms (e.g., overt expressions of racism or sexism). when we see changes in population proportions willing to violate those social taboos, we should sit up and take notice and try to understand what is going on.

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