Goodbye, Paul Newman.

My favorite memory (as, I'm sure, for many others) is Cool Hand Luke, from which I posted the "failure to communicate" clip above.

Cubs find two ways to be Met killers.

Monday and Wednesday it was by winning. Tonight it was by losing.

9/27 update: But the Mets are proving harder to kill than Rasputin. Now, if only the Cubs can switch out of Mets killer mode (so far, so good, but this may change).

9/27 second update: Phillies clinch the division title, but the Cubs come through against the Brew-ha-has, putting the Mets into a tie for the wild card.

Beavers contain Trojans; pundits proved wrong again.

Once again, the pundits have to eat crow for declaring Southern Cal a presumptive national champ early in the season. Last year it was the Stanford Cardinal who pulled off the big upset. This time it was Oregon State, by a score of 27-21. There's cacophony in Corvallis tonight.

Update: My Sitemeter tells me that someone in Seattle hit on this post by doing a Google search for "Beavers contain Trojans". By coincidence, one of my favorite perhaps unintentionally raunchy headlines came from the Seattle area. This was told to me at the bar of the Lion's Head by a friend who had worked as a journalist in Seattle before moving to New York. It concerned the outcome of a congressional race between incumbent Democrat Norm Dicks and a Republican named Beaver in a mostly suburban district south of the city. The morning after the election, the paper proclaimed: "Dicks Drills Beaver in Bedroom Community Race."

And, while we're on that subject, Mike McLaughlin of The Brooklyn Paper recently came up with this. Considering his present state of mind, I don't think it was unintentional.

Some hopeful news from a "red" state.

Yes, it's Bill's and Hill's old stomping grounds, but Arkansas is generally reckoned safe for the Republicans in this election, as it was in the last two. However, Archaeopteryx offers anecdotal, but bracing, evidence of substantial support for Obama there, among white as well as black folks.

The Descendents: "Kids on Coffee"

If this doesn't jump start your week, you're close to asystolic. .

College football: Bulls escape knife, Pirates walk plank, Commodores cruise.

Last Monday I predicted that my South Florida Bulls would beat Florida International, but that it would be closer than expected. Indeed. If I'd had the courage to put my money where my keyboard was and bet FIU as four touchdown underdogs, I could have done nicely. Then, again, I might have blown it betting Tennessee to cover the spread against Florida.

East Carolina's glory run was ended by in-state rivals N.C. State, in a thriller that went to OT. The Pirates have impressed the pundits enough, however, to stay in the top 25 in the latest AP poll. Newbies to the poll elite are the Vanderbilt Commodores, on the strength of victories over Miami of Ohio, South Carolina, Rice, and Ole Miss. There's a red sky at morning, though, with Auburn, smarting from a close loss to LSU, as their next opponent.