Had the Upstate Eight, which strangely enough has twelve teams, conference tournament seeding meeting tonight. Things went about as good as expected. The team is still very young and kinda mediocre overall. But "mediocre" is a big step up form "sucks."

Couldn't believe some of our coaches: One guy doesn't bring his kids record sheets! Another tries to get a 0-0 kid seeded because he won the freshman conference two years ago... I wanted to shoot myself in the face.

I think we have a legit shot at getting two in the finals. A third would be nice but I'm not pushing it. Honestly, there is no reason every single one of those kids can't place in the top 6 and that really the goal this year. We haven't been a good tournament team, mainly cause we don't wrestle enough "real" tournaments, in my always humble opinion. But it's time to push the kids and expect more out of them. We've turned into a pretty decent dual team, but we have a lot of guys with okay records. But all that gets thrown away in tournament time.

I keep telling the kids that I want to have a "conflict of interests" down state this year, as I produce the State Championship video for the IHSA. We'll see what happens.

COMICS

Read Superman Beyond #2. I love Grant Morrison but I gotta go back and reread it again. I was at Panera and was a bit distracted which can really effect reading his stuff.

Dark Avengers #1 was pretty cool. They could've called this book Thunderbolts without missing a beat seeing as it's pretty much a direct continuation of what Warren Ellis was doing, which makes it A-OKAY in my book. No real big surprises, but it kinda reminds me of Busiek's original concept of villains disguised as heroes. Plus, it's always good to see Norman Osborn back in action. Bendis writes him a bit more in control of himself than Ellis did, but it should be a fun title.

Green Lantern #37 Four words: Hal Jordan Red Lantern. Didn't see that coming.

Justice League. Meh. Too old school for me.

Mighty Avengers #21: I like Slott on Spider-Man. This issue was okay. I like his line-up and I'll finish this first arch up, but I may end up trade waiting in the future.

MOVIES

Waiting on Noah to finish up Grotesque's Score. I really like the most recent cut and I had a good conversation with John Wesley Shipp (the mother freaking Flash!), our lead about it. I may have actually made a movie that isn't a complete embarrassment to myself and my family!

People tell me that I'm way too hard on 7 Minutes but it was what it was, a 30k digital movie by a first time director with a cast of non-actors. Someday I may take another crack at it, but right now, I would like to move on.

There's a lot that I'd like to see before Oscar time. The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Turino all look great. I'm still pissed that I never got around to seeing The Changeling while it was in theaters. JMS is my favorite comic writer (his Spidey was new and interesting and his Thor is...wow), I really should've caught his movie.

OTHER

It's 2 am. I'm out.

Later

J.D.