THE COLLINS CHRONICLES e-NEWSLETTER
VOL. 1 / ISSUE 13
AUGUST 2, 2009
"Everything is included in your ticket...all the food and drinks you want..." - BDC's waitress at the Cincinnati Reds Diamond Club
BDC just had one of the best weeks ever, and I do not even need the folks at VH1 to confirm it for me. I am literally terrified for a new week to start, because so many things went my way last week that I am sad to see the week come to an end. Outside of a great week of vacation or spending the first week at home with a new child, I have never had a week that quite compared to last week. I hope to at least share a portion of my enthusiasm from this past week with each of you in this edition of the newsletter by hitting on a couple of its highest points. Sit back and enjoy a few minutes of living vicariously through my tales, and I hope you will each drop me a line and let me know the next time you have one of the best weeks ever!
GREAT GAME
I can not watch Major League Baseball on television. I find it boring. There is always something better to watch than a baseball game, in my opinion. In other words, I am not a huge baseball fan. There is a big difference, though, when it comes to attending a professional baseball game in person. Spend some time sitting in a comfortable stadium, enjoying some delicious concessions, and watching the in-game entertainment on the screens and on the field, and the game itself begins to become a welcome distraction from the "event" of attending the game.
For those reasons, I try to make it out to see a professional baseball game any time I am in a big league town with the time to spare. I have enjoyed games in Baltimore, Cleveland, and Atlanta, just to name a handful of my stops. I have sat in some great seats in the outfield, down both baselines, and in the upper decks of several major league stadiums. In all those years, though, I never ever, ever had a game experience that compared to my trip to see the Cincinnati Reds play the San Diego Padres this week.
On Thursday of this week, Special K and I were invited by one of our vendors at work to come to Cincinnati and take in a ball game. We assumed based on the invitation that these were going to be some good seats, but nothing prepared us for the reception we got at the ballpark. As we circled the stadium looking for our assigned parking lot, one of Cincinnati's finest spotted our parking tag and stopped traffic in all directions to wave us into the bowels of the stadium. We pulled into the underground lot and found ourselves parking in the same area as the Reds players themselves!
After getting parked, we walked across the garage to a large red awning designating the entrance to the Diamond Club. When we walked through the doors, we were suddenly transported from a parking garage into a bustling five-star restaurant. The walls were covered in Reds memorabilia and flat-panels televising the pre-game festivities from the field above us. The smell of gourmet food bombarded your senses and there was no other reaction than to stare in amazement at the spread of food before us. Our waitress let us know that all of the food and drinks for the day were included in our ticket price. After that the day gets a little hazy for me, because I think I blacked out for a second.
I hesitate to try and recap the buffet experience because I can never do it justice. I have not been on a cruise or to a Vegas buffet, but I can't imagine either being much better than this spread. Beginning at the front of the line, there were dozens of varieties of breads as well as a selection of soups and salads. Those that know me best would assume that I skipped this portion of the buffet, but in this case I am glad that I did not. The Diamond Club was serving up a chicken salad variation that was loaded with bacon, tomatoes, onions, and ranch dressing. This was a simple dish that will live on in my dreams for the rest of my life. The entree section of the buffet line featured a cheese pasta dish full of shaved sirloin pieces, a Mexican chicken dish served over seasoned rice, a roasted pork loin, and finally a station where fresh walleye was cut to order, breaded in cornmeal and sauteed in butter before being dropped onto your waiting plate. There was a full spread of desserts that included a station where gourmet funnel cakes were made to order and topped with an assortment of fruit sauces and icing.
All of this delicious food was tucked away in the Diamond Club located underground right behind home plate. Once we were sufficiently stuffed, we decided to waddle up and find our seats. When we found them, we were blown away. Now would be a good time to open the picture attached to this week's newsletter. Special K and I found ourselves sitting in the front row directly behind home plate! We were so close that we could make small talk with the Reds in the on-deck circle. We were so close that we could hear the chit-chat between the catcher and the umpire. We were so close that we could actually not get any closer without being professional baseball players!
As choice as these seats were, they get even better when you realize that they included a private server who came every inning to refill your drinks and see if you needed any food. There was a menu in the seat that detailed a list as long as your arm of more ball park fare that you could dine on...assuming you had any room left after the buffet before the game. All in all, nine innings of baseball have never passed so fast in history. They made us leave our dream seats when the game was over for some reason. The Padres beat the Reds 7-4. The Reds lost twice on the day, though, because I ate enough chicken salad and walleye to break their team budget for the season. I have to say a big thanks to the President of the Ohio chapter of the BDC fan club for hooking us up with these seats. It was one of the best Thursdays I can ever remember having, and I would love to do it again sometime...if anyone out there has a similar hookup that they want to share with me?
GREAT RADIO
In lieu of this week's top ten list, I have a fun link for each of you to spend ten minutes of time listening to. BDC made another appearance on Lexington talk radio this past week to promote my pro wrestling retirement match that is coming up in October. The exclusive announcement that we made for our readers here last week was announced live on the radio on Friday, and BDC was on the air to talk some smack and formally accept the date of the match. To listen to it for yourself, click on the link below and then select the Friday 5pm hour of the Leland Conway show.
BDC on Lexington radio
If the link above has you fired up and you want to purchase the new BDC shirt, be sure to email me this week. We got over a dozen requests last week alone, and I will be having another printing run done in the next week or so.
GREAT MOVIE
We close this week's newsletter with an update on the next installment of The Collins Chronicles reader-voted tournament. Our mailbag this week was full of votes as to what the topic of our next tournament should be and the result was nearly unanimous. We will be voting very soon on the greatest comedy movie. This is going to be a very daunting process, and we will likely need to narrow the time-frame of the movies to make the process a little easier.
In the meantime, I need to create a new distribution list of people interested in voting in the greatest comedy movie tournament. Please email me if you are interested in being a voter. If you have any suggestions as to how we should narrow the field of all-time comedy movies, please include that in your email as well. My first thought is to make the tournament field any comedy released between 1980 and 2000. If you have a passionate opinion that the greatest comedy movie of all-time does not fall into that time-frame, please express that in your email as well.
I look forward to this being our biggest pool of voters in the history of The Collins Chronicles tournaments. If you have never participated before, all that is required of you is a few minutes of your time once per week to cast some votes via email. Help us try and figure out which of the all-time great comedies is worthy of earning the title of The Collins Chronicles Greatest Comedy Movie! Email right now, and join our illustrious voting panel!
Hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Email BDC@CollinsChronicles.com any time you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for The Collins Chronicles. Talk to you next week!
As always, visit us online at www.collinschronicles.com/
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES e-NEWSLETTER
VOL. 1 / ISSUE 14
AUGUST 10, 2009
"I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep..." - Robert Frost
This week our newsletter is going to be a little bit different. It has been three months now since we made the decision to convert our means of communication to a weekly newsletter format. I honestly would have never imagined some of the interesting developments that we have already been able to share in just three short months. From chicken biscuits to geriatric flirtation, this summer has brought some of the most unexpected experiences of my life. With that in mind, we are going to take a week of newsletter space here and provide a state of the union address for The Collins Chronicles. We have a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, and it will be very convenient to get everyone caught up on things in one email. There are a couple of really, really big potential deals on the horizon that will change the look and feel of our little newsletter in a major way, but I am not at liberty just yet to release those juicy details, but stay tuned. For all of the news that I can confirm and print, keep on reading...
BDC'S WRESTLING RETIREMENT MATCH
The official retirement match for my professional wrestling career is set. On Friday night, October 2, 2009, the MWA will be promoting a wrestling card in Winchester, Kentucky to benefit "Operation Homefront." BDC will be wrestling in the main event against The A-Train, a local talk radio producer with whom I have had a long-running feud since moving to Lexington. I have already heard from dozens of you that are making plans to be in attendance for this evening of entertainment. You have no idea how much I appreciate the show of support, and your ticket price will be going to a very worthy cause. If anyone needs any help in making arrangements to visit the Bluegrass State for that evening, just let me know, and I will be happy to assist you.
In conjunction with my last wrestling match, we have had some limited edition BDC shirts made up for anyone that is interested. We have already pre-sold about 25 shirts, but would be more than happy to order another run of them from the printer if there are others out there that are interested. Just send me an email, and I will make sure you get one. The cost is $13, and the shirts are color-coordinated with my wrestling attire, so there will be no doubt who your favorite wrestler in the world is when you wear your shirt proudly!
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES LEAGUE
For the first time in our history, this fall The Collins Chronicles will be sponsoring a ten-team fantasy football league. Nine readers have joined myself in what promises to be a fierce competition with some meager cash prizes and massive bragging rights on the line. The Collins Chronicles League will be conducting our fifteen-round player draft beginning on Monday, August 17th. We will provide some occasional updates on the standings and happenings of the CCL in the newsletter for those who want to follow our friendly competition from afar. For those of you that are participating in the league, good luck getting your draft boards together this week, and we will kick things off bright and early Monday morning!
OUR NEXT READER-VOTED TOURNAMENT
I have thrown out some ideas about our next reader-voted pop culture tournament over the last couple of weeks, and the feedback and opinions have literally poured in. With your help, we have a topic and some time restrictions to help us narrow the field.
Beginning next week in the newsletter, we are going to set out to determine The Collins Chronicles Greatest Comedy Movie from 1970-1999.
Rather than try to manage a separate distribution list of voters, we are going to make the tournament the bottom segment of each week's newsletter. This way, anyone who receives the newsletter has the option to vote as they have the time and interest. If you know of other folks who have a strong interest or opinion on movies, let us know, and we will add them to the newsletter and they can just scroll to the bottom each week and bypass all the wondrous works of BDC in the sections above.
We have also set the 1970 to 1999 range for a couple of reasons. For one, no one could suggest a movie from before 1970 that they truly believed was the greatest comedy. Also, by stopping the range at 1999, we are making sure that the winning comedy has stood the test of time for at least a decade. I know some of you would immediately predict one of the Will Ferrell movies to win if we allowed recent movies to be chosen. I like those movies a lot myself, too, but will they still be funny a decade from now? I seem to remember the whole world going ga-ga for Jim Carrey in "The Mask," but I would rather juggle knives than be forced to sit and watch that movie these days.
Starting next week, we will begin to build our bracket of 64 comedies that will compete for the title. Up first will be the comedies of the 1970's. If you want to get a head-start on your brainstorming, go ahead and make a list of the top comedies from that decade that you think deserve to be in the field.
A BIG THANKS
I want to close this week's newsletter by taking the time to thank all of you out there reading. In three months' time, we have actually tripled the number of subscribers from the initial list that we had when we launched the newsletter. The only way that happened was by many of you taking the time to forward the newsletter on to your other friends and family members. Hopefully, the new movie tournament will provide us another chance to continue to grow our little tribe. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to read and interact with us each week. I hope at some point in the last three months that you have been amused, educated, entertained, and inspired. If not, keep on reading, and I will do my best to check off those boxes for you as soon as possible!
Hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Email BDC@CollinsChronicles.com any time you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for The Collins Chronicles. Talk to you next week!
As always, visit us online at www.collinschronicles.com/
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES e-NEWSLETTER
VOL. 1 / ISSUE 15
AUGUST 16, 2009
"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them." - Pauline Kael
Greetings and salutations, readers! I am so very super excited to get this week's newsletter into everyone's inbox as fast possible. Why I am so excited, you ask? Shame on you for not guessing, I exclaim!
This week we will begin our new Collins Chronicles reader-voted pop culture tournament! Our quest over the next few months will be to crown the greatest comedy movie of the period from 1970 to 1999. I hope everyone takes the time to send in your opinions once you have read down to the instructions for this week's voting below. It is going to be a great tournament and a fun distraction for all of us.
I will keep the newsletter a little on the brief side this week, so that you can spend a few extra minutes working on your votes, but we have a few other things to discuss, so follow me...
ONE FOR THE MOVIE, TWO FOR THE ROCK SHOW...
This past Friday, one of those rare opportunities presented themselves for BDC and Wife to have a full afternoon of entertainment to ourselves while WDC was at his grandparent's house. Let it never be said that we do not know how to take advantage of a golden opportunity. We managed to find time to see the movie "The Goods" at the movie theater, have dinner with WDC's Godparents, and catch David Cook in concert. Not too shabby for an old married couple, if I do say so myself.
Let me start with "The Goods." I am sure most of you have seen the previews for this movie about car salesmen on TV a lot lately. We decided what better way was there to get ready for the new Collins Chronicles tournament then to go and see a good comedy movie in the theater? I was a little apprehensive that this movie might be one of those that is guilty of putting all of the funny parts in the trailer, but those concerns were quickly alleviated. This movie has laugh out loud funny moments throughout. I can't say all that much about the movie without giving some of the fun away, but I will say that Will Ferrell has a cameo in this movie that steals the show. Nearly his entire role in the movie is a single death scene, and off the top off my head, it is the funniest death scene that I have ever watched. Let me know what you think, if you see the movie. I give it two thumbs way up, but only for adults. This movie is definitely not appropriate for anyone under 18.
After the movie, we headed into downtown Knoxville where we crossed paths with one of the Chronicles most-tenured readers, Seymour, and dropped off his new BDC shirt. Wear it with pride, buddy! After that, the Wife killed some time and some cash in the Mast General Store before we met up with the Clotheslines to hang out for the remainder of the evening. For those that are always interested, supper for me was the Downtown Grill & Brewery Cheesesteak Pizza, which I rate as one of the most delicious pizzas in Knoxville, but I must warn you that if you eat a whole one yourself in one sitting, there will be consequences. This is not a meal for lightweights or beginners. Start with the half-portion and work your way up to the full magnificence if you can.
After a great meal with friends (in one of the loudest restaurants I have ever patronized), we headed a few blocks down the road to the beautiful Tennessee Theater to see former American Idol winner David Cook perform in front of a sold-out crowd. Seeing as how I have literally watched every episode of American Idol EVER, I decided I should support one of my favorite winners and buy their concert tickets. Don't get me wrong, I have bought a Kelly Clarkson or Chris Daughtry CD here and there, but this was my first time seeing an American Idol alum live.
The concert was great, but even if it had sucked, I was definitely going to leave happy because they gave everyone a FREE tee shirt as we came in! This show was David Cook's 100th show since winning American Idol, and we all got a free commemorative shirt for coming out. If you know much about BDC at all, you know I am a sucker for cheap tees, and they don't come any cheaper than free, baby! That was just icing on the cake, though, because David Cook and his band put on one heckuva rock show, friends. Their live show has a much harder edge to it than their CD, and that is not meant to take anything away from the CD, because I like it a whole lot. Say what you want about American Idol, but that show generally turns out one or two legitimate stars every season, and not necessarily just the winners.
David Cook was not the only performer we saw that night that had Fox to thank for much of their success. The opening act for the evening was a band called Green River Ordinance, and I had never heard of them before this show. As it turned out, I was very familiar with one of their songs, though. If you watched "So You Think You Can Dance?" on Fox this season, it was a Green River Ordinance song that was used every week on the results show to accompany the video montage of highlights for the dancer being voted off that night. We came out of this concert so impressed with this band that we stopped and bought their CD on our way out of the theater and between the Wife and I, we have worn it out all weekend since. If you are looking for a new group to check out, and like modern rock, be sure to give Green River Ordinance a chance. BDC is their newest fan, for sure.
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES WEEKLY TOP TEN
In honor of my fun outing to a concert this weekend and in preparation for another big concert in my near future, I am going to rank my top ten personal best concert experiences. These are not necessarily my top ten favorite performers or albums or anything, but simply a list of the best concert experiences that I have had. That experience may have been impacted by the seats I had, the companions I went with, or the tales that came out of the trip. Here are my top ten with some brief notes...
10 - New Kids on the Block - Knoxville, TN - I was 10 years old and NKOTB was the biggest thing going. Hanging tough!
9 - Lynyrd Skynyrd - Knoxville, TN - Sure it was the second rate, post-plane crash version, but they still sounded good from my seat.
8 - Styx & Survivor - Knoxville, TN - The lead singer must have won a bet that he could do a concert without saying the words "eye of the tiger."
7 - Limp Bizkit Knoxville, TN - I managed to catch them around minute eleven of their fifteen minutes of fame.
6 - 3 Doors Down - Knoxville, TN - A really fun night seeing a big name band in their prime playing a smaller venue.
5 - REO Speedwagon - Multiple venues - I have seen them several times, and the lead singer has yet to correctly yell the name of the city we were in.
4 - Steven Curtis Chapman & Michael W. Smith - Merrillville, IN - Two absolute legends of their industry sharing the stage was an awesome sight.
3 - Bon Jovi - Charlotte, NC - Sure they were a few past their prime by the time I saw them, but they still delivered an awesome live show.
2 - Michael W. Smith & Third Day - Multiple venues - Without a doubt, the greatest nights of praise music that I have ever experienced.
1 - Creed - Multiple venues - I have seen Creed several times and they never disappointed. Will be seeing them again in Cincinnati on August 28th!
LET THE VOTING BEGIN!
After much deliberation and consultation with my panel of advisers, we have developed the best strategy to attack our quest to find the best comedy movie of the last thirty years of the twentieth century. We will begin by setting the field by decade, and we will start with the1970's.
Your assignment for this week is to email me a list of your nominations for the best comedy movie of the 1970's. You may nominate up to TEN movies for this week. Your nominations must be received by MIDNIGHT on Saturday, August 22.
There are some great comedies to choose from in the 70's, and a few which will be serious contenders to win the whole tournament. Best of luck to everyone is voting your favorite into the field!
Hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Email BDC@CollinsChronicles.com any time you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for The Collins Chronicles. Talk to you next week!
As always, visit us online at www.collinschronicles.com/
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES e-NEWSLETTER
VOL. 1 / ISSUE 16
AUGUST 23, 2009
"Whether the NFL wants to admit it...fantasy football...is also a part of why people watch football." - Chris Myers
This month across America, fantasy football leagues are forming by the hundreds of thousands and that means millions of Americans are studying stats, rosters, and schedules to prepare for fantasy player drafts. This year, we have formed the Collins Chonicles League (CCL) and we began our first draft on Monday of this week. We will have a recap of the first round of that draft a little later on in this newsletter, as well as some occasional updates on the standings as the season progresses.
Before we plow on into this week's newsletter, I want to pause and send my condolences out to one of the original readers of The Collins Chronicles. Seymour's sister passed away a few nights ago at a tragically young age. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends during this very trying time of grieving. Please join me in keeping Seymour and his family in your thoughts this coming week. No family ever wants to have to experience these times of loss, but knowing you have the support and prayers of your friends can make a lot of difference. Please know that you have ours this week, Seymour.
This week's newsletter is going to be a mixed bag of sorts. I had to invest a lot of time in the CCL draft and the opening of the reader-voted movie tournament, so I did not have as much time for my usual adventures during this past week. I will provide some updates of both the draft and the voting below, but first I am bringing back an old favorite BDC story that will be new to many of you. The following story was one of the first ones that we ever published on the Collins Chronicles website. It has gotten hundreds of hits since that time. I am choosing to bring it back now for two reasons. First, this story recounts an experience that I had in one of my first ventures into a pro wrestling ring. Since, we are just six weeks away from my retirement match, I thought it would be a fun time to recount it. Second, as I said this story became a legend on our website, and I have just updated the site with copies of our older newsletters, so if you like this story and want to read more like it, you can find all our archives over at www.CollinsChronicles.com.
I hope you enjoy this cautionary tale. PLEASE do not forget to scroll down to the bottom of the newletter and cast your votes for the greatest comedy movie before you delete this email! We will only find the right movie to be our winner with everyone's input! Now, without further ado...a story that brought me great pain and many others great entertainment...
MY POOR NOSE
The following is a recap of my introduction to professional wrestling as best I can remember it. As you will soon read, some of the details are a bit fuzzy, but I am fairly certain this is almost exactly how it went down...
I showed up with a friend of mine at an old abandoned tire warehouse in east Knoxville. Immediately, all the survival instincts that my parents had raised me to listen to screamed for me to go back home. This was the kind of neighborhood that you only went to in broad daylight and even then you hoped against hope your car made it in and out with no incidents. But I had come here at the invitation of a local wrestling promoter after he had viewed the highlight reel of our latest season of backyard wrestling. This was my chance to make the big time, and I was standing my ground.
We got out of my car and I was leaning against the door with my arms folded trying to look as muscular and intense as possible when I heard a car pull up behind me. My friend, who was standing across from me and looking over my shoulder was suddenly very wide-eyed and nervous. My blood pressure went up, but I did not follow the impulse to look over my shoulder. I calmly asked my buddy what he was seeing. His answer was quite and grim. "Umm...only the biggest and meanest looking black dude that I have ever seen...protect me, BDC." I hoped he was joking, but before I could respond we were joined by a 6'4" black fella who was tipping the scales somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds who had long beaded braids flowing from his chin and introduced himself as "Rush the Ruler." Had I thought we could scramble into my car and out of the parking lot without losing control of our bodily functions, I am fairly certain we would have run at this point.
The final inclination that if we had any sense, we would leave immediately came with the triumphant arrival of the wrestling promoter. If your idea of triumphant is being dropped off by your girlfriend of the week in an old beat-up Chevy Lumina, this was your day. After some brief and awkward introductions, we were ushered inside the warehouse, where I assumed our chances were 50/50 of seeing a couple wrestling rings or the saws and bodybags they would use to dismember and carry us out.
Luckily, there were two fairly nice wrestling rings inside. Today's session was to be just me and Rush (who allegedly had about six months of training under his belt) in a tryout of sorts for me. The friend who had accompanied was actually just interested in being a referee and not an in-ring performer, so the stage was mine. Having seen my backyard exploits (many of which are now legend in one east Tennessee county) on tape beforehand, the promoter knew I could take a decent bump already, so we got down to business. "Taking a bump" essentially means falling flat on cue with as much reality as possible without actually killing yourself. I had learned this technique by ACTUALLY killing myself from time to time in the yard and learning what did NOT work.
We began with just some simple falls and running drills and such, but the fun was coming up quickly. I was asked to lay down flat on my back to allow Rush to practice his legdrops on me. Sounded harmless enough, huh? Legdrops are just the careful dropping of a bended leg across the upper chest and neck area of a downed opponent to appear to decapitate them, but in reality the leg barely lands and everyone is happy. Simple enough in theory, and Rush had been training for six months, so I stretched out and prepared to act devastated when he landed. As things worked out, I did not have to act at all.
As I understand it now (having talked to an assortment of sane people since), most normal human beings do not just lay down and allow 375 pound men to attempt delicate landings near their head. This is where you and I differ, dear reader. Looking back, I can distinctly remember the moment I knew the legdrop had gone terribly wrong, and I get a little adrenaline surge just typing about it to this day. Again, the saner members of the human race would have used this instant to roll quickly out of the ring to safety, but I knew I was being graded essentially, and there was no way I was going to blink at this crucial moment.
Let me give you as vivid detail of the incident as I can remember. Rush turned and ran away from me toward the ropes, bounced off, and came trotting back. I thought to myself as he approached that he should have jumped by now, but this was my first day in an ACTUAL wrestling ring, so what did I know? Rush kept coming and finally left the ground right as he took a last step near my head. At this point, I saw the precious scenes of my life flash before my eyes and shuddered at the shame my family would go through trying to explain my dead body with a flat head being found in an abandoned tire warehouse. I watched without blinking or breathing as all 375 pounds of Rush prepared above me for a crash landing on me. As I could clearly see now, Rush had jumped far too late, and I watched helplessly as the harmless bent portion of his leg meant to land on my chest drifted on by. Instead, milliseconds later, one sizable cheek of Rush's buttocks landed flush on my nose and all of his weight landed with devastating force on my face.
The next couple of seconds are a little fuzzy, but I remember rolling out of the ring and falling to the concrete floor. I remember Rush offering a half-hearted apology, and I remember thinking those cartoons I watched as a kid were right, as I was clearly seeing little birds flying around my head. The next thing that happened is something that I remember distinctly. It was one of those defining moments in life when you finally come to your senses and realize who you really are as a man. It came when the wrestling promoter walked over and looked down as I used the ring to pull myself back up to my feet and told me, "get back in there and let Rush try it again." Clearly the man was insane. It was time to leave while I still had my motor skills and some amount of brain cells to make it through life on. I rubbed my nose, decided it was miraculously not flat on my face, and told him what I thought. I looked him dead in the eye and said..."okay."
Yes, I rolled back in there that day and let Rush continue to work on his legdrops. For the record, his second attempt had the same exact result as his first, and as I rolled out of the ring, I am fairly certain there was brain fluid leaking out of my nose. Call me crazy, if you want. My wife does on a near daily basis.
THE COLLINS CHRONICLES WEEKLY TOP TEN
This past week, our first attempt at running an NFL fantasy football competition (that we are calling the CCL - Collins Chronicles League) held its inaugural player draft. For those of you that may have a draft of your own coming up or just wanted to follow along with the CCL happenings, here is a recap of how the top ten picks of our draft played out along with some brief commentary from BDC...
10 - Drew Brees - Coming off a great season last year with the Saints, Brees is a good bet to be at the top of the league in passing yardage again this year.
9 - Steven Jackson - If the Rams entire offense can stay healthy for a season, Jackson should regain his position as a premier fantasy running back.
8 - Peyton Manning - The consistent fantasy scoring machine will have to learn to live with a new coach and without Marvin Harrison this season.
7 - LaDainian Tomlinson - LT dropped a little lower than I expected in our draft, but there are concerns around his durability based on his age and past injuries.
6 - Brian Westbrook - One of the best dual threats when it comes to rushing and receiving yardage in all of fantasy football for the past several seasons.
5 - DeAngelo Williams - The main man in the Carolina Panther backfield racked up yards and TDs last season and jumped into the top five of the CCL draft.
4 - Matt Forte - Forte demonstrated steady growth throughout his rookie season and is now primed to be the feature back in a run-heavy Bears offense.
3 - Maurice Jones-Drew - This was BDC's pick, and I am expecting MJD to one of the highest scoring backs in the leagues piling up yards and touchdowns.
2 - Michael Turner - Turner had a breakout year with the Falcons last season, and he hopes to add to it as the young Falcons offense matures another year.
1 - Adrian Peterson - The clear and undisputed number one pick on everyone's radar who electrified the NFL last year with one highlight after another.
LET THE VOTING BEGIN!
After much deliberation and consultation with my panel of advisers, we developed the best strategy to attack our quest to find the best comedy movie of the last thirty years of the twentieth century. We began by setting the field by decade, and we started with the 1970's. Here are the ten movies that have advanced to the field of 64 to represent the comedies made between 1970 and 1979:
Animal House
The Bad News Bears
Blazing Saddles
Every Which Way But Loose
The Jerk
Meatballs
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Slap Shot
Smokey and the Bandit
Young Frankenstein
Keep in mind these are just the ten movies that are guaranteed a spot in the field based on your votes. Don't lose heart if you favorite is not on this list, as there will be several wild card selections from each decade that will still make the final field of 64 movies.
Your assignment for this week is to email me a list of your nominations for the best comedy movie of the 1980's. This is an INCREDIBLY tough task, I know, so you may nominate up to 25 movies for this week. Your nominations must be received by MIDNIGHTon Saturday, August 29th.
The 1980's were the birthplace of some of the most memorable and enduring comedy movies of all time, so be sure to take a long hard look at your top 25 before sending them along to me. We don't want to miss any serious title contenders. Best of luck to everyone in voting your favorite into the field!
Hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Email BDC@CollinsChronicles.com any time you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for The Collins Chronicles. Talk to you next week!
As always, visit us online at http://www.collinschronicles.com/
