* Boy, someone at ESPN really loves their ring flash, don’t they?  I’m not sure shooting interviews with the final table players with big glowing circles over their eyes is really a good look.

* I was happy that the man I was rooting for — Dennis Phillips — made it all the way to third place.  He made me nervous in the early going.  And where is Steve Danneman these days? I miss him.  He was fun.

* Man, it must suck to lose at the final table on a one-outer.  I don’t blame the guy for stumbling out of the arena after that.  Ouch.  I wonder if he’s getting the six of diamonds tattooed on him now somewhere?  (That bad beat is so memorable, I didn’t have to look up which card was the killer; I remembered that one, as I’m sure Scott Montgomery forever will.)

* Delaying the final table for four months is done for television and I don’t like it.  Part of the thing with a big tournament like this is momentum and physical stamina.  Letting people take four months off resets everything.  Letting them see the videos of the people they’re playing at the final table with is almost unfair.  Since everyone has the same “advantages,” though, I guess it’s fair.

* That four months also gave all participants the chance to line up sponsors and so, ugh, everyone looks like a friggin’ NASCAR driver at the poker table.  Those obnoxiously large and ungainly patches are ridiculous.

* Also ridiculous is the crowds.  It’s the final table of poker, NOT a gladiator combat thing.  The crowds just get more and more obnoxious. If you thought The World Poker Tour had unwieldy crowds, you haven’t seen anything. The site of 300 people in red caps and white workshirts rooting for Phillips was kinda cool, though.  I could have done without the truck horns.  Or the singing from the Danish contingent.  I’m such a purist, aren’t I?

* Lon and Norm still crack me up. I suppose I’m not a purist in that way.  I know they don’t talk about poker strategy, but they’re entertaining.

* Now who will make a joke out of “The Demon Deacons?”

* Sorry to see the head to head battle last all of five minutes.  I’m sure some of that was in the editing, but who can beat the drama of Monkeymaker/Farha?

* I don’t know that I could ever play a final table like that.  I’d likely just let myself get blinded off, waiting for a couple of other people to get greedy and lose first.  So long as you weren’t out first at the final table, you were an instant poker millionaire.

I can imagine the scenario: After folding for two hours straight, I’m in the small blind and dealt pocket aces.  Not wanting to scare anyone off, I call the big blind.  The big blind immediately folds, knowing I must have something insanely good, so why bother?

“Winning Poker” is not the title of a book I’ll be writing anytime soon.

OK, it’s not one that I’ve eaten at or ever paid attention to, but I’ve passed it many a time, and I recognized its street sign.

Last week’s focus was on “Fiesta Sunrise,” a Mexican restaurant in West Nyack, NY. That town is best known for its gigantic mall, the Palisades Center. I’m pretty sure it ranks as one of the top ten largest in the nation. It’s four stories and has everything you could ever ask for. It’s only one hotel short of being a place you could live in without ever needing to go outside. In addition to all the usual mall things — cell phone kiosks, sunglass kiosks, Croc kiosks, etc. — it has every major department and big box store you could imagine: CostCo, Best Buy, Home Depot, Target, Nordstrom, J.C. Penneys, etc. It has its own post office, a large movie theater complete with stadium seating, an IMAX theater, a bowling alley, and an ice rink.

The crazy thing is, there’s a large chunk of it unfinished upstairs, to stay within some local code. There are actually those who protest the idea of opening up any more stores in a mall that’s four stories tall and has hundreds of shops already. Yeah, that last store or three next to the restaurant row is really going to make the traffic outside unmanageable. Sheesh

But Gordon’s estimate of 25,000 cars a day passing by the restaurant are not unfounded. I imagine the number is much higher on the weekends.

The even funnier point of the mall is that it’s sinking into the ground. It’s only ten years old now, but was built on some soft land. If you park underneath the mall, you can see the effects around the columns holding everything up. But it is a worry that the mall might someday disappear into the earth.

In any case, the mall appears in the background of all the exterior shots of the episode featuring the restaurant’s sign. Specifically, it’s the Lord and Taylor wing of the mall you can see.

The restaurant’s front awning sports a “Grill 303″ sign. I imagine that was the previous restaurant that was there. The “303″ refers to the highway the restaurant is located on, Route 303.

In the closing shot of the restaurant, one of the cars parked by the front door has the News 12 logo on it. News 12 is a local news station. Conveniently enough, it’s on channel 12 on my cable provider.

For comic fans: Wizard’s offices are in Congers, NY, about ten minutes up the road from this location.

• Related: It took me a minute to remember how everyone referred to the Wii before it was “The Wii.”  Remember the outcry when Nintendo said it wouldn’t be called “Revolution?”

• Allow me to be the one millionth website this week to point out that Google now hosts LIFE’s picture archive.  You can, indeed, get lost for hours upon hours in there. Other blogs are only just starting to mine the archives for interesting material.  I think I just lost a half hour staring at World War II pics. . .

• Does it annoy you, too, when people ask you a question that they could have just Googled for first and saved us both some time? Here’s the new proper response: LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com

• What’s the dumbest idea you could think of for the web?  What’s the least useful thing ever?  How about HugeURL?

Today, 15 years later, the same is true.  Watching a network drama in widescreen format on my HDTV, I see that everything is still happening in the middle of the screen. You might not notice it right away, but once you do it’ll drive you mad. Then you’ll notice the little network bug is right in the corner of the 4:3 layout, while the image still extends out to the right.  This is also true in sporting events — all the graphics stretch completely across the screen, but the information is only in the center of the screen.  It’s even true on reality shows.  Next time Tom Bergeron is shuffling dancers off back stage on “Dancing With the Stars,” note how far to the right he is on the screen.  Those people sitting behind him off on the far left are never seen on a regular 4:3 TV set.

With digital television signals becoming the norm in a couple of months, will this madness soon end?  Will we soon see people talking on screen from the far left or right edge?  Will directors be allowed to compose their television shots in the same way they’d compose their theatrical shots?  I hope so.

• Wall-E

I’ve already reviewed it here and here.  Loved the movie.  The bonus features are strong, particularly the hour and a half PIXAR retrospective documentary.

• Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director’s Cut)
  

I’ve heard nothing but great things about this Ben Stiller movie.  Am curious to see it.

• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Er, no.  Thought I do admit that I saw the first one.

• 300 Collector’s Edition

You get the movie, a digital copy of the movie, and the original graphic novel collection.

• Monty Python’s Flying Circus Collector’s Edition: Complete Series

Only $90 or so. Not bad at all.`

This is what I realized as I as scrubbing the third toilet on Sunday morning.  Where’s the weekend fun?  Really, only on Saturday.  Growing up stinks.

Tuesday - Still three more days to go after this one. And you still have to get through this one.  Sure, you have one day behind you, but those three in front loom large. The week has barely begun.

Wednesday - You’d think that the mid-week “New Comic Book Day” would make me happy, but it’s trumped by something more worrisome: There’s no life-changing-money lottery on Wednesday. So once you know you didn’t win on Tuesday night’s drawing, you know you won’t be quitting your day job either today OR tomorrow. Wednesday is the new Monday.

Thursday - That lottery thing is still in effect. Plus, it’s now the FOURTH day in a row you’ve been stuck at work and it’s not the end of the week. You still have to get through another day after this one is done.

Friday - Many people like this day. I don’t get it; you still have to get up early and shuffle off to work. Feh. And then everyone wants to know what your plans are. None of yer bee’s wax!  You don’t give a crap what I do the other 5 nights a week.  Why do you suddenly care about my “time off”?

Saturday - OK, I like Saturdays. There’s hope for this day. Something fun might happen. Something you might want to get done may be doable. But there’s also the pressure of doing something, accomplishing something. Sometimes, after five looong days at work, you’re just not in the mood to be productive. And, dagnabit, shouldn’t you get one day of rest in a week? UGH, I think I hate Saturdays, too.

Sunday - You’d think this would be a repeat of Saturday, but it’s really not. On the best of Sundays, the fear of Monday strikes at 6:00 p.m. You still have to go to bed at a respectable hour, because tomorrow is the start of another long work week. You realize all day that you didn’t get nearly enough done over the weekend as you wanted to. There’s no lottery drawing to save you until Monday night. Sunday is a death day. It has the shine of a weekend day, but that’s a very slim coating. The truth is much more depressing - Sunday is Pre-Monday.

That’s the Seven Depressing Days of the Week. So, any big plans this weekend?

UGH

“The PIXAR Story” documentary is really nice.  It’s obviously a few years old.  Looks like it was done after “Cars” came out.  The story ends with the Disney acquisition.  It’s funny to see director Andrew Stanton looking a decade younger, without glasses, and with much shorter hair in the movie, as opposed to the “Wall-E” featurettes. It’s sad to see story man Joe Ranft talking about PIXAR, given that he died in a car accident in 2005. (Wow, three years ago already?!?) Also sad to see the last of Disney’s Nine Old Men, Frank and Ollie, being interviewed.  They’ve since departed from the mortal plane, as well.

The director of the piece has the last name of “Iwerks,” leading me to wonder if it’s any relation to animation pioneer Ub Iwerks.

Wow, animation people love videotaping themselves doing everything — Brad Bird camcorded his drive into PIXAR on his first day of work. Someone videotaped Lasseter’s reaction to the news that “Toy Story” had been greenlighted.  Thankfully, someone recorded Brid’s “Call to Arms” to the troops at the beginning of “The Incredibles.”  Heck, Lasseter was making movies of just his day-to-day job back at the Disney studios in the 1980s.

I had no idea that “Toy Story 2″ was in as much trouble as it was.  They didn’t go too deeply into detail, other than to say that John Lasseter came back from vacation, spent a weekend rescripting the whole movie, and saved it. They probably covered this on the TS2 DVD way back when, but I can’t remember everything anymore.

“A Bug’s Life” came out three years after “Toy Story.”  Can you imagine waiting three years for the next PIXAR movie today?

Also: The “Up” teaser looks interesting, but there’s not much there, besides Ed Asner’s voice and some balloons.  A full trailer is now available at the Apple Movie Trailer site. I watched it on my Apple TV tonight and it’s pretty funny.  It’s playing off that story of the woman who wouldn’t leave her house while new skyscraper-type construction happened around her.  I probably linked to it in a link dump around here somewhere. . .

This is a short screen grab of the junk on my screen when I use my Power Mac tower (dual G5s) right now.  I’m assuming it’s the fault of the graphics card going bad. Wht do you think?  Does anyone else have any ideas or suggestions?  Has anyone had a similar problem on their four year old computer before?