About a month ago, my good friend Walt started talking up Friday Night Lights. My dad had loved the show, and I spent five years ignoring him (because basically I’ve spent my entire life ignoring him only to figure out later he was right), but I started watching, and man am I hooked.
I guess the main reason I didn’t watch it was because I watch so much football, who wants to watch a show about football? That was where I made my mistake. Football is peripheral to the show. It’s just a damned good drama about teenage angst, teenage love, growing up, parenthood and parenting, the importance of adult role models, the mistakes people make and how they impact those they love, how things change even though we don’t want them to, and so on. I went to a school that was state champs my sophomore and senior year, and runner-up my junior year, and football was king, so a lot of it resonates on a personal level.
Regardless, it’s just a really good show. Which you all probably know, because you watched it while it was on. Well, I didn’t, and let me just say it is a great show for anyone else out there who resisted the urge.
Also, too- I’d club someone with an iron pipe to hang out with Tyra.
Just Some Fuckhead
I bet you never thought you’d type that sentence.
cathyx
Tyra Banks?
cathyx
I never want to go back to those teenage years. Never.
Cain
That’s kind of why I like Teen Wolf. I know, I know weird and worse not even the target demographic. But it’s just such a fun show. Stiles kills me, he steals every scene. You can watch it on Netflix.
Anne Laurie
The Vast Recorded Legacy of the Grateful Dead
Corner Stone
They voted for marriage equality in West BY GOD Virginia??
Raven
Have you read the book? I never thought Billy Bob would make a film based on a book as strong as this real story is and turn it into a bullshit, feel good flick. The book is brutal and there is no happy ending at the state championship. I could never even think of watching the TV show after that horseshit.
TheMightyTrowel
@Cain: OH MY GOD I LOVE-HATE TEEN WOLF.
I also watch for copious Ho-yay and partial nudity.
Felonius Monk
dexwood
@cathyx:
Amen.
Raven
Sunset on the gulf
scav
@efgoldman: Alma, Tell us! All modern women are jealous!
jharp
I live about 20 miles from the site of the explosion in Indianapolis. And yes I heard it loud and clear. And my friend 10 miles further from it heard it as well.
Anyways, I heard today that the rumor going around is it was a drone gone awry. And no I’m not kidding.
I am deep in Romney country. 70% voted for him.
Good grief.
Mr Stagger Lee
I have been watching Underbelly on Netflix, an Australian crime drama, that with good music a throwback to Miami Vice. The show is kick ass.
Dee Loralei
So today, my pumpkin cheesecake in the oven, my roll dough just set to rise, my best friend calls, panic in her voice. She had shown a foreclosed home a few blocks away from me and while there she saw a black kitty run from upstairs to downstairs and into a hole in the wall in a bathroom. So she gets rid of her client, grabs some cat chow and bottled water and calls me. We go into this house, which had been on the market for at least a month and foreclosed on before that. We hear the cat crying in the wall, but she’s too frightened to come out. After a while of coaxing, witht he water and kitty chow and my voice, she comes out. I grab her and she immedicately starts purring in my arms. She’s so slight, emaciated and her bones are so tiny I can feel them all. And she’s purring away and I start balling. Which made my friend start crying too. Rush her to the vet I’ve been going to for 30+ years, they test her for HIV and Feline Leukemia, do some other blood work, her kidney and liver functions are fine. They fed her some tuna and gave her some qt fluids. And she’s now hiding under a bed downstairs. With our other cat who seemed so happy to meet her.
There was absolutely no water in the house, the water main was off and the toilets removed. The vet figures she has been living on roaches and the occassional mouse. Everyone’s amazed she went through that relatively unscathed. Though the vet said she would have died soonish.
So, it looks like I’ve been adopted. She’s small, like 4 lbs. Solid black with like 5 white hairs on her chest and 3 on her belly. Big green eyes. At the vets they put her patient name as Lucky, after I told them the story, but I’m not fond of it. (And the vet said they get lots of Lucky’s in the practice too. I was thinking something like Hosanna. But then I thought maybe Kismet or Esmerelda, but that seemed passe too. She’s been declawed and I think she’s been fixed, but the tech couldn’t see a scar and I forgot to ask the vet.He thinks she’s older than 1, but less than 4, it was just too hard to tell since she was so emaciated.
Luckily, my mother took my cheesecake out of the oven. And she punched down my roll dough and refrigerated it, so the food I was working on was saved.
And I want to thank you all for showing me the wonders of rescue. Someone suggested taking her to the Humane Society because they would have treated her for free, but I remembered all y’all saying black cats and older cats have a hard time getting forever homes. Now I just have to figure out how to pay the vet bill. I honestly ran out of the house when my friend called with only my phone, so they are just going to bill me. Unemployment sucks.
So name suggestions appreciated.
Cacti
@Raven:
The book is one of the best non-fiction stories I’ve ever read, and is still the best write up of the high school cult of the athlete.
The story of Boobie Miles, and what it’s like to be washed up after an injury at age 17, is some heart-wrenching shit.
eldorado
what Raven said. read the book.
zmullls
I know. I show about football. High School football. In a small rural Christian Texas town. Sounds like everything I don’t care about rolled into one show.
But I was hooked instantly. It’s amazing writing, especially the first season.
Be warned — the 2nd season has a lot of suckitude. The producers were obviously told to spice it up and get more exciting plots in, and the stupid gets pretty thick in S2.
What’s amazing is that when they get to S3, they all pretend S2 didn’t happen. While S2 has a lot of plot threads that seem to be pivotal or consequential to the characters, these S2 plot threads are interestingly never referred to again. And Landry’s Dad disappears.
Still worth watching. S1 is staggeringly good, and it’s impossible to top it. But there is much wonderfulness in S3 thru S5.
dedc79
Second season blows. It gets better again after that, but never quite as good as the first.
scav
@Dee Loralei: Thanksgiving shouldm provide any number of ideas, but now I’m personally amused with “Stuffing” — well, it’s a great name to yell and she needs it. The thanks giving is there as a basso continuo line.
John Cole
@Mr Stagger Lee: Underbelly is fucking genius. I watched the whole series.
John Cole
@zmullls: What happened to Lyla as super Christian? What happened with Smash’s knee? Etc.
Ted & Hellen
Connie Briton is a wonderful actress, but I never saw her in Friday Night Lights.
Fell in love with her awesomeness in last year’s first season of American Horror Story.
Which, by the way is kicking ass again this year, with an entirely new and unrelated story line. But Jessica Lange is back and that’s all that matters.
Punchy
Wasnt so right about the wood chipper, eh?
Cacti
Also too, the book is so damned interesting because everything in it really happened to real people, whose names were not changed to protect the innocent.
It doesn’t pull any punches about how, while there were a few who were actually going places in the world, for most of them, being a Permian Panther would be the high water mark of their lives, in their depressing, west Texas shithole.
TheMightyTrowel
@Dee Loralei: Why not Cheesecake since she arrived while yours was cooking? Also cats like ssssss, shhhhhh and chhhhhhh noises.
Steeplejack
@Dee Loralei:
Send an e-mail to Anne Laurie to see if we can’t arrange a Balloon Juice whip-round to help defray the costs.
And Shadow might be a good name.
Jef
Agreed about season 2, but the good news is…the show ends well.
Ted & Hellen
Just read this AP story about the alleged burial of Osama Bin Laden at sea.
No sailors were allowed to witness this most holy Islamic ceremony.
No photographs.
No recordings.
No DNA.
No nothing.
People who believe the official story of the brave and fearless raid that allegedly killed OBL are hilarious.
And scarily gullible.
I’m guessing he’d been dead for a couple of years already. Or he’s in a cushy prison somewhere. Who the hell knows?
Raincitygirl
I would be happy to contribute to a whip round.
zmullls
@John Cole. The list goes on. The adopted ex-con. The murder and the cover-up. The trip to Mexico. The hot Mexican nurse. Not to mention Tami coaching volleyball.
I was sad that the JD McCoy plot, which is introduced in S3, peters out in S4 and S5. Budget cuts forced them to concentrate on other things and that subplot never came to full fruition.
RoonieRoo
Friday Night Lights is a dead ringer from every aspect of my childhood growing up in Lubbock, Texas. I can see myself, my father, mother, sisters and friends in the characters.
currants
Yeah, no cool kids watch NEW things. We’re watching the West Wing for the first time, DVD on the laptop. Can’t ever seem to manage to watch the teevee machine, for some reason. If I could figure out how to get rid of cable (but keep internet) without it costing more, I might.
Cain
@Dee Loralei:
Wow, what a wonderful story! I love black cats.. Stupid superstitions..
Put up a paypal or something maybe some of us could chip in?
She sounds like a ‘Lucy’ to me. If you want to go Hindu ‘Annika” might be nice.
KyCole
I’m just starting American Horror Story on Netflix. Damn this show is creepy! Lucky for me these four dogs will keep me safe.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
Lyla succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh, and ends up going to Vandy.
Smash eventually gets his knee squared away and gets a full ride to Texas A&M.
Stay with it. The last season is fantastic.
newtons.third
John,
Worst day of my life: The day I realized my parents were right about most things. That day sucked.
mai naem
@Ted & Hellen: I didn’t read the story but I remember stories back then saying that his DNA was matched. I remember that specifically because I thought it was odd because I didn’t think you could get DNA results back that quick. I still think he’s dead. Pretty sure he was killed in the Abbotabad raid. There was too much other info that matched. Too many people for a conspiracy.
suzanne
@Dee Loralei: How about naming her after a tough lady you admire? Hillary comes to mind. ;)
Gin & Tonic
@Ted & Hellen: So is Obama a master Machiavellian manipulator or an incompetent bumbler? I can never keep it straight.
Ted & Hellen
@Gin & Tonic:
Well I don’t know, G&T. But since I’ve never leveled either of those charges, I have no idea why you are asking me.
Oh, to divert from the absolute absence of any evidence that OBL died in the way the government says he did, that’s why you are asking…
Ted & Hellen
@mai naem:
I don’t think it takes as many as people suppose.
But here at BJ the assumption is that there have never been any conspiracies in the history of the world, your thinking is in line with the hive mind here.
freelancer
Spoiler Alert!
Gin & Tonic
Here’s an excellent yet chilling zoomable map showing the extent of the Sandy flooding in NYC, which in many areas reached 17-18 feet. They note that in some areas of Staten Island, there are official notices on lampposts simply saying “Houses Removed.” Many homes in the most affected areas were summer bungalows 70 years ago, that over the years were winterized and added on to, and handed down from one generation to the next, but now are not only total losses, but cannot be rebuilt according to current code.
Nicole
Uck. I can’t believe you ended a lovely ode to one of the best shows of the last ten years with a reference to that abortion of a second season. Thank god for the writers’ strike bringing it to a mercifully premature end.
I know most of the girls were all about Tim Riggins, but I swooned for Matt Saracen.
PsiFighter37
Mitt’s at 47.51% of the vote. He’s pretty damn close to going below 47.5%, which means that my last outstanding 2012 prediction (that Mitt gets 47% of the vote rounded) will be true.
Just to recap what I had originally predicted:
I want some of that sweet adoration that Nate Silver has been scoring!
gf120581
Concerning the 2nd season of “FNL,” it wasn’t bad in my view, but I agree, the “Landry kills someone” subplot was WAAAAAY too over the top for the show. It was something you’d see on a Lifetime Movie of the Week or something, not on a show like this. I understand the producers did it to goose ratings and to give them a reason to draw Landry and Tyra together, but they shouldn’t have gone that route. The only thing that made it tolerable was that Jesse Pleamons and Adrianna Palecki gave it their all. (And I admit, given Landry was my favorite character on the show, I didn like seeing the nice guy geek get the hot blonde.)
But even with season 2’s missteps, it was a genuinely great show. In my view, it had the best depiction of a happy, successfull marriage that has ever been shown on TV. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton deserved every accolade they got as Eric and Tammi Taylor.
Oh yeah and one of the best series finales ever. The final montage? That is how you end a series. (Although now that there’s serious talk of another movie that continues from the TV series, maybe it’s not the end.)
Dee Loralei
@Cain: I really don’t want to do a Lucy/Lucky name. My aunt got a rescued MiniPini named Lucky and they changed her name to Lucy. I’m liking Annika. Does it mean anything? Because I liked@suzanne: idea to name her after a strong woman I admired too. Is Annika a strong woman I would admire if I knew? I was thinking about Madame De Chatelet, one of my favorite women scientists, who was also Voltaire’s lover.
rikyrah
Friday Night Lights was a terrific show
LongLost
Have been trying to convince my family for literally years to watch this show (Saracen in the shower was one of the most heart-wrenching things I’ve seen), and since the John Cole love runs deep, maybe they’ll finally take it up.
freelancer (iPhone)
@LongLost:
The way his eyes just glass up in that ep. An amazing performance.
Spankyslappybottom
I hated high school. I hate football. I hate Texas.
I loved Friday NIght Lights.
E.
I am so glad I read this thread. I quit watching after the Landry/Tyra iron pipe thing because it became so stupid and unbelievable. I’ll skip the remainder of season 2 and start up at season 3 again. I really liked the first season and was so let down when the thing went haywire in season 2.
dogwood
@gf120581:
Absolutely. I always said couples could save money on marriage counseling if they watched FNL and took their cues from Eric and Tammi Taylor.
I loved the book as well, but the tv series is something else entirely, and people are missing out if they let their fondness for the book deter them from this series. Also, too, the series is far superior to the film which was not very good. As with any series that lasts 5 years, there are some silly plot lines and missed opportunities, but the acting and filming never disappoint. The episode with Matt Saracen at the funeral home is stellar and the kid from The Wire, Michael D Jordan, is unbelievable in the last 2 seasons.
bmwash374
@John Cole: Coach helped him rehab & get a scholarship to Texas A&M.
FNL is one of the greatest tv series ever, IMHO. I watched the last ep five times. Simply brilliant!
Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!!!
NotMax
Aussie series?
Wild Boys.
One season. Find it, watch it, enjoy.
PurpleGirl
@Dee Loralei: An amazing story. Hope all goes well for you and the new kitteh. (No suggestion on a name, but I like the idea of naming her after a strong woman.)
BTW, how is your side feeling? Did the Aleve help?
karen marie
I think our Mr. Cole is feeling broody.
karen marie
@Mr Stagger Lee: Have you seen Outrageous Fortune? Australian crime dramedy series.
Hot stuff.
Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
You’d think al-Qaeda would have been all ‘nuh-uh!’ or Osama himself (as was his want, I believe) would have released a tape afterward to embarrass the United States if the man wasn’t in fact dead.
@Dee Loralei:
That’s an awesome story. I second the name ‘Cheesecake’ (or maybe ‘Pumpkin’?) and would love to see pictures of the new arrival if you get the chance.
Ezra
“Football is peripheral to the show. It’s just a damned good drama about teenage angst, teenage love, growing up, parenthood”
Oh bummer. I thought it sounded good as long as it was, like, all about football. But not if it’s going to be about boring stuff like “growing.”
Cain
@Dee Loralei:
Annika apparently is the most powerful goddess in the Hindu pantheon. It is one of many names of Durga. It means ‘face’ as well. Apparently it also is the a form of Ann or Hannah, and finally it means ‘grace’ or ‘favor’ in Swedish. So plenty of meanings to choose from.
karen marie
@scav: @Dee Loralei:
I think “Stuffing” is a great name for the cat. You could call her “Fing” for short.
seaboogie
@Dee Loralei: Pumpkin is her name, I think….
freelancer
@bmwash374:
Yet another reason why I loathe the Romney campaign. How dare you attempt to clumsily own that.
It would have been as clunky and ill-fated if Obama started ending all his stump speeches with “So say we all”, or “Shiny!”.
[THUNK]
Viva BrisVegas
@karen marie:
It’s very good, but it’s not from Oz it’s from Enzed.
Or as it’s said in the native tongue “Unzud”.
Chris
“hang out” with Tyra? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
bmwash374
@freelancer: I agree whole heartedly. Wonder if Buzz Bissinger felt like a horses ass on election night? Nothing like joining a loser, mid-game, to burnish that cred.
Btw, I’d give a left nad if PBO ended a speech with, “So let it be written, so let it be done!”
Thlayli
@Ted & Hellen:
Yes, yes, always assume the government is lying.
Whatever you say, Mulder. [eyeroll]
Schlemizel
@Ted & Hellen:
More importantly who the hell cares?
If he is in a secret prison somewhere he probably wishes he were dead. If he had died earlier then AQ is full of real geniuses who figured out a way to keep releasing tapes of him talking about recent events and now they have stopped.
Either way the idea that you will not find peace if you F with America is firmly planted. Either way AQ is currently unable to mount any really awful attacks and we have time to correct the errors that fueled the desire for revenge (not that we are taking it but it is there),
The nice thing about ted & Hellen? They are the one BJ’er that really could co fuck themselves
SiubhanDuinne
@Dee Loralei: Email me with your address and i’ll pitch in to help with the vet bill (I don’t do paypal). SiubhanDuinne(at)gmail(dot)com.
Ramalama
The good thing about coming in late to a tv show party? You get to watch the whole thing in whatever chunks you wish…no waiting for next week, and the next, and whoops there’s an award show this week so have to wait another week.
The bad thing about coming late to FNL? Balloon Juice, with its large endowment of
circus clowns, er, visitors, coulda helped create the necessary groundswell to keep the show alive – sort of like Arrested Development.And FNL has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen. Roseanne also had a killer ending (did not like much of her show when her character got rich).
Lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
Oh Jesus Christ. Kindly fuck off.
Denali
I’m so old I thought you were lonely for your lady friend, Tyra.
Lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
You’re an idiot.
healthland.time.com/2011/05/02/its-a-match-how-officials-used-dna-to-identify-bin-laden/
Lojasmo
@Dee Loralei:
Send paypal address or home address to my email. I will chip in.
I suggest the name “chip”
[email protected]
gelfling545
@Dee Loralei: Felicity might be appropriate as her life has taken a felicitous turn.
Ted & Hellen
@Thlayli:
Ummm…why would you NOT assume the U.S. government is lying, given, oh I don’t know, all of its history?
Selectively credulous much?
Ted & Hellen
@Schlemizel:
So basically you are ok with being lied to by your government, as least when your team is in possession of the White House.
Or were you OK with all the Bush/Cheney lies also?
Ted & Hellen
@Lojasmo:
hahaha…
So you have a NY Times article with lots of unsourced claims by the military and no documented evidence to back it up, and I have an AP story saying the opposite, equally unsourced.
Again, why do you CHOOSE to believe the government story, with NO evidence presented?
Given that OBL is alleged to have been the mastermind of the most horrendous domestic act of terrorism ever, does it not seem strange to you how it was handled?
Of course not, you’re ok with whatevs because your team is in the wh. Idiot.
Ted & Hellen
@Lojasmo:
oh my god.
That is such a great summation of the BJ Obama credulousness.
Carry on, comrade, nothing to see here…
Kent
Although I grew up in Oregon and Washington my wife’s career brought us to Texas where I currently teach HS science in a school not all that different from that pictured in FNL. The show is pretty dead on in capturing the life in small town Texas. I watched pretty much every episode as they came out so some of the details are a big hazy now. But the show is simply great and only tangentially about football. In fact, the best episodes are those that have the least football in them.
One minor nitpick is when the Dillon school board opened up East Dillon High in what….Season 4? and we had the whole story arc about the haves and have-nots in terms of football with poor no-resource East Dillon vs rich West Dillon with all the good equipment and facilities. That simply wouldn’t happen in Texas. Even the poor schools have top facilities. Around this part of Texas even the small poor rural schools have big stadiums with artificial turf surfaces, video scoreboards and the like. Local voters don’t always approve school construction bonds but put a football stadium remodel on the ballot and it will win 75% of the votes pretty much anywhere in Texas.
What most Texas communities in Dillon’s situation (growing student population) would actually have done is convert the 4-year HS to a 2-year senior HS and then build a mid-high for 9th and 10th grades someplace nearby. That way they would keep all the athletes at one school to keep the teams even more successful. Or, school districts that build a second high school and already have one big stadium built for the first high school have the two schools share the stadium with alternating schedules so that one school is home and the other is away each week.
What would NEVER happen in Texas is for two schools in the same district to have such disparate facilities as pictured in the show with the rich school playing in a modern stadium and the poor school playing on what looks like an abandoned middle school practice field.
Other than that, great show.
karen marie
@Viva BrisVegas: Oh! Well, there you go — learn something new every day!
If that’s an example of NZ TV, take me there!
sb
@Ted & Hellen: I read the same story you did and came away with the conclusion that he was buried at sea. Your conclusion is, he might be alive or he might be dead.
And then another post critiquing BJ Obama credulousness? Granted you were responding to an obscene dismissal but still, you don’t think he’s dead?
To each his own. Happy Thanksgiving.
Yutsano
@sb: Always remember: Special Timmeh is always the only special one to know DA TROOF!! And he just graces us with his magnificent presence so he can spread DA TROOF!! to us poor sheeple. It’s a perfect system. Just ask him!
Ted & Hellen
@sb:
I ask again: WHY do you choose to believe a story presented by any government that has absolutely no physical or documentary evidence to back it up? It’s just government officials saying blah blah blah…
Please answer.
I wonder, could it be because your team is in the WH right now?
Thanks.
Ted & Hellen
@Yutsano:
I suppose you think that schtick is clever/funny.
But really, it just confirms that you are extremely stupid.
ETA: As I’ve said multiple times and I’ll say again, and as you pretend to not understand: I most certainly do not know the truth of this matter. I do know that accepting narratives on the word of the government is the opposite of patriotism.