Menace II Hoboken

Early Sunday morning (i.e. after midnight Saturday), a fight broke out on the main boulevard in Hoboken, Washington Street. This was more than your typical meat-head street fight designed to impress a local silicone Sally with beer muscles (or clever choreography). 2 men were stabbed during this skirmish. According to the police, this 20-man brawl predominantly featured the Hoboken-based chapter of the bloods gang. Are you kidding me? The Bloods? In Hoboken? Now we'll never get Snoop to play the Whiskey Bar (he's a Crip).

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Golden Nugget for 11/9/2006

Did you know there’s a town in Brazil called Varginha? Apparently some alien crashed there or something. (Here's a link, if you're into conspiracy theories and such). I can’t get over the name – and it’s in BRAZIL of all places.

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Book Report

I just finished reading "Spin," a novel by Robert Charles Wilson. I give the book 3 stars out of 5. "Spin" is what some call "hard science fiction". Hard science fiction provokes and encourages the reader to reflect upon the human condition rather than merely using technological gimmicks to titillate. "Spin" follows the lives of 3 life-long friends as they cope with the fallout after the stars vanish from the night sky (it's obviously more complicated than that but I don't want to give anything away). The premise was intriguing and the main protaganist was well-developed and relatable. Personally, I thought the pacing of the book was a little inconsistent at times and I plodded through some sections. All in all I enjoyed the book and I'm recommending it to the many thousands of visitors to this blog.

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Scarlet Fever

The undefeated Scarlet Knights of Rutgers (#15) are playing one of the biggest football games in school history tonight against Loo-i-ville (#3). Since Rutgers bested Princeton in the first-ever intercollegiate football game (1869), I don't think it's fair to say this is THE BIGGEST GAME in the school's history. Also, in hyping this game, I've heard plenty of pundits refer to Rutgers as "little" - Rutgers is the state university of New Jersey. It has an enrollment of over 60,000. Maybe Rutgers doesn't have the football tradition of a Michigan, Penn State or Ohio State but, 60,000 is hardly little.

Here are a few famous Rutgers alumni to help you up onto the bandwagon tonight:

Bill Bellamy (out-of-work actor)
Calista Flockhart (peaked in 1998)
Kristin Davis (the "cute one" from Sex and the City - arbitrarily rated an 80 by AskMen.Com)
James Gandolfini (played a thug in the movie "True Romance")
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (her sorority pledge name was "Master" - all credit to BT)
Joyce Kilmer (treehugging liberal who wrote a poem)
Scott Paterson (has a minor role on the CW hit Gilmore Girls - not to be confused with the homicidal angler Scott Peterson)
Roy Scheider (his extensive body of work includes Jaws, 2010 and the watershed movie Blue Thunder)
Aaron Stanford (Pyro in X-Men movies)
David J. Stern (Absolute Master and Ruler of the NBA)
Philip Roth (although his degree is from Bucknell, he did attend Rutgers. This information is courtesy of a random internet page which I deemed reliable based on its impressively professional looking color scheme.)

As you can see the list of dignitaries, statesmen and celebrities who matriculated at (is this the right preposition?) Rutgers is lengthy indeed. Notably, many of the "actors" on the list have more than one entry on their IMDB page. So, tonight while you're enjoying the battle of unbeatens on ESPNHD, take comfort in the knowledge that the likes of Bill Bellamy, Calista Flockhart and Aaron Stanford probably have nothing better to do than watch the same game (that is unless the phone finally rings).