It’s like old times at Newington High, where the girls basketball team is 8-0 — their best start since my freshman year in high school — after defeating perennial powerhouse New Britain 48-31 last week and thrashing Maloney 72-35 yesterday.

The triumph against New Britain was the Indians’ first win over the Hurricanes since Feb. 25, 1997, my sophomore year. And this is the first time Newington has won the first eight games of a season since 1995-96, when they started 10-0 before losing to Southington.

Junior star Kelly McVey has been leading the way, tying a career high against New Britain with 19 points and breaking it against Maloney with 20. Freshman phenom Yasmin Ithier-Vicenty has also been making waves. It looks like the Indians could be building something here that could last a few years — a real return to glory.

Newington will play Platt tomorrow, then take on top-notch conference foes Bulkeley and Bristol Eastern next week. Here’s the Indians’ schedule.

“The ridiculous BCS system… has not only made a sham of the national championship, it is also an insult to the essence of sport,” writes SI.com’s Phil Taylor. “The beauty of sports is that they come as close as possible to eliminating the subjectivity that we endure in most other areas. We might have to debate who most deserved that promotion at work or who has the better singing voice, but who won the game? That should be crystal clear, not open for discussion. But college football deprives teams of even playing the game, at least the one that would give us a clear-cut national champion. The forces that keep the sport from going to a playoff format that would allow the champ to earn its crown on the field, not in the polls or through a computer, apparently don’t understand what sport is all about. A real competitor would rather have a real answer, even if it’s no. Anything is better than maybe.”

Hear, hear.

Here’s a better and earlier (though still blurry) shot of the gorgeous sunrise over Manhattan that I saw and Moblogged from New Jersey en route to D.C. on New Year’s Eve morning:

Almost makes you want to cry “Forth Eorlingas!,” doesn’t it? :)

More pictures of my week will probably be forthcoming soon. (I intend to test out iPhoto and some other Mac applications in the process of trying to get the pics online.) But you can already see wedding photos in the post below.

Here it is: the much-anticipated “food fight photo” that took the wedding reception by storm Saturday night:

For the uninitiated, that’s Becky’s Uncle Larry, who instigated the food fight in the first place, calling a “timeout” while, at the same moment, Grandma Dot holds a piece of a bread roll and gets ready to fire. She cocked back her arm and threw it across the room a second or two later. Now that’s a road map to peace! :)

Neither Larry nor Dot knew I was taking this candid shot, and much hilarity ensued when it, and its description, started making the rounds at the reception. (Click on the photo for a larger version.) The Boecklers — Becky’s mom’s side of the family — are rather a fun-loving, free-wheeling bunch when there’s a party to be had, in case you can’t tell. :)

(By the way, Uncle Larry is Larry Caplin, a participant along with his wife Pat in last year’s Living Room Times NCAA pools. Uncle Rick, referenced below, is Rick Boeckler, defending champion of the women’s pool!)

Of course, the point of the evening was the wedding, not the food fight. Here’s a photo of the bride and groom, Elena and Nelson, saying their vows:

Here are a bunch more pictures from Saturday:

Gathering in the hotel lobby before leaving for the wedding.

Larry takes a picture of me while I (blurrily) return the favor.

The flower girls and ring bearer walk down the aisle.

The father and mother of the bride, Becky’s Uncle Rick and Aunt Evelyn, walk Elena down the aisle.

Cameras point and people stare as the walk down the aisle continues.

A look at the inside of the beautiful church where the wedding was held.

Becky’s parents heckle their nephew Alex (Elena’s younger brother, and a groomsman) as he walks into the reception room.

Becky’s mom, Uncle Rick, Aunt Pat, and Aunt Evelyn watch the newlyweds have their first dance. Also note that I really need to clean my lens!

The bride and groom kiss after she smothered him with cake.

Rick and Elena have their father-daughter dance.

The ring bearer and one of the flower girls sleep soundly as loud music blares during the reception.

Larry shows off his Homer Simpson boxer shorts in the hotel restaurant the next morning. :)

I hope y’all have been following the Mars lander story. If you haven’t, you should be. So should I, but dammit, I’ve been travelling! :) I did read about it in the paper this morning, though, and it’s very cool.

Here’s the basic homepage for the mission, with the latest images from Mars. And here’s the fancy-schmancy Flash version with all sorts of bells and whistles.

UPDATE: In other space news… goodness, gracious, great balls of fire are falling from the sky in Spain!

Say what you will about the football teams, but LSU clearly has the advantage over USC in the student-newspaper timeliness department. Though still on winter break, the LSU Reveille has posted a special online update about the Tigers’ Sugar Bowl win — which is, of course, exactly what you’d expect from any halfway-decent, marginally self-respecting student newspaper whose school’s flagship team wins a national freakin’ championship.

Stay tuned for the Daily Trojan’s up-to-the-minute reportage on Tuesday, Jan. 13.

USC officially won its first football national championship in 25 years when the Associated Press media poll selected the Trojans as the #1 team in the land, and AP bureau chief (and Steven Sample look-alike) Clay Haswell presented the team with the AP national championship trophy:

As BoiFromTroy said, referring to the BCS trophy won by LSU last night, “Who needs crystal balls?”

In other news, the always helpful Rich Tellshow has come out with entirely unofficial post-bowl BCS standings, based on the final polls and computer rankings and updated strength-of-schedule numbers. His numbers are perfectly valid, it’s just that the official powers-that-be don’t bother to do this calculation. Anyway, it’s LSU #1 with 3.84 points, USC #2 with 5.09 points, and Oklahoma a distant #3 with 8.75 points.

The only reason the Tigers beat the Trojans is because the Coaches poll was forced to pick them #1; if more coaches had voted their consciences and stuck with USC despite the contract (three did), it would have been USC #1 in the BCS with 4.09 points and LSU #2 with 4.84.

Anyway, here’s some vindication for Trojan fans: after all that LSU smack talk about the Trojans being “king of the cupcakes,” the Pac-10 came through in bowl season and USC’s strength of schedule rating is now better than LSU’s, 0.76 to 0.84!

In case you missed them, here are the final AP and Coaches polls. I’ll give the final AP top 10 below, since that’s the one poll where the pollsters actually get to, you know, vote:

1. USC (48 first-place votes)
2. LSU (17 first-place votes)
3. Oklahoma
4. Ohio State
5. Miami
6. Michigan
7. Georgia
8. Iowa
9. Washington State (yay Pac-10!)
10. Miami of Ohio (yay mid-majors!)

By the way, BoiFromTroy sent me some photos from the Rose Bowl via e-mail. Here are a couple of them:

Here it is at last… my first blog post from my new PowerBook!

I don’t really have anything to say… I’m still setting up the computer and I probably will be for some time. But I didn’t want Dane to be disappointed by further delay. :)

MAC ANNOYANCE OF THE MOMENT: Of course I love my Mac. However, inevitably there will be things about using a Mac as my primary computer that are different than what I’m used to, and will therefore initially seem annoying. I know this. Some of my old ways of doing things, I will be able to recreate in some fashion; others, I will not, and I will just have to adjust. I know this, too. Anyway, my annoyance of the moment is that using Safari, the OS X Web browser, I can’t log onto my blog using the keystroke sequence I’m used to. Normally I type my username, then my password, then hit “TAB” twice, and then hit “RETURN” on the keyboard. This is second nature to me; I do it without thinking. But it doesn’t work on Safari, which doesn’t process the on-screen buttons in the same way that Internet Explorer for Windows does, I guess. So I actually have to click the damn button, instead of doing my tab thing. D’oh.

AND ANOTHER THING: This one is actually a little more significant; I assume it must be possible to change it. In Windows, when you look at the directories and files on your hard drive (or any drive, really), the directories appear before the files in the list. In Mac, as I’m seeing it now, the directories and files are all mixed up together, no separation. So if you want to find a directory that starts with the letter “n,” you have to scroll through a whole bunch of files, not just folders, that start with a-m. Anyway… Dane (or anyone), can I change this, and how?

BACK TO ANNOYANCE #1: Arrrrrrgh!! Same problem logging onto Yahoo Mail! I’m not sure if I can put up with this, or if I’m going to end up crossing back over to the dark side and downloading Internet Explorer for the Mac… I know they aren’t producing any new versions of it anymore, but the old versions are still available, right? I know it’s sacrilege to prefer IE to Safari, but… I LIKE MY TAB KEYSTROKE HABITS DAMMIT!! :)

UPDATE: I’m adding this update using the NetNewsWire thingy that Dane suggested. Dammit, I really should be going to bed… :)

To any Boeckler relatives who are looking for a certain food-fight picture from the wedding reception: sit tight. :) Once Becky and I get back and settled in Arizona, that photo, and various other wedding pics, will be posted shortly on this site.

My new PowerBook and I are both scheduled to arrive in Mesa, AZ tomorrow.

According to FedEx online tracking, the PowerBook was picked up in Sacramento, CA last Monday, departed the City of Ahhnold on Tuesday, and arrived in Phoenix on Wednesday. I’m not sure what’s taken it so long in Phoenix; maybe Becky stopped the mail, and word got to FedEx to hold their deliveries too? Anyway, it has been scheduled all along for a Jan. 5 delivery, and that, of course, is today.

As for me, I — along with Becky and her parents — will be on America West Flight 45 from Washington Reagan to Phoenix Sky Harbor today, departing at 10:25 AM Eastern time and arriving at 1:29 PM Mountain time.

Perhaps when we arrive home in the afternoon, my new Mac will be waiting for me on the doorstep, or in one of the homeowners association’s package cubbies. We shall see.

It’s LSU 14, Oklahoma 7, at halftime of the Sugar Bowl. Watching the game, I’m truly impressed with the unimpressiveness of both of these teams. As much as these ABC corporate spokesmen, I mean announcers, are desperately trying to convince us otherwise, this isn’t a “defensive battle” — this is a comedy of errors. Neither team is playing well at all.

Where to begin? Well, let’s begin at the beginning, with the “brilliant” LSU running play to open the game. Yeah, it started well, but if that runner were any one of perhaps a half-dozen USC players, it would have been an easy touchdown. Instead, he ran out of steam around the 30 yard line, and was caught by two or three defenders. And it cost the Tigers, who never converted that play into any points because they fumbled the ball on the goal line when their QB dropped his second consecutive snap.

Early-game jitters, you might say. But it didn’t end there. Not only have there been two or three turnovers in the first half, but two or three more that were only averted by lucky penalties or bounces. Like I said, a real comedy of errors is going on out there. Ladies and gentlemen, these are not championship teams.

Jason White has been awful. Blame LSU’s defense if you want, but bottom line, big-time quarterbacks are supposed to be at their best in big games, and what we have learned from the Kansas State game and the first half of this game is that the NFL scouts are exactly right about Jason White: he is not a big-time quarterback. He’s nothing more than a decent QB on a good team who can rake up big numbers in situations where it doesn’t freakin’ matter. Put him against a top-notch defense in a pressure cooker situation, and he’s cooked.

What else? Oh yes, there was the Oklahoma defender who recovered a blocked kick and should have had an easy touchdown, but instead made a heroic dive for the three yard line, forcing his offense to take over the ball at the 3. And the offense almost couldn’t do it successfully — they needed an extra third down (thanks to a penalty) to finally, barely score the TD.

Sportsmanship and discipline have been sorely lacking as well. It’s always good to see personal fouls committed in the first quarter of a “national championship” game, as well as various other stupid penalties on both teams, suggesting the coaches really can’t control their players. And let’s not even talk about Sooner “coach” Bob Stoops blaming the referees for his team’s abysmal performance.

The most frustrating thing is that the announcers keep making excuses for both teams, out of an obvious desire to pretend — for ratings’ and corporate reputations’ sake — that this is actually a good game between good teams playing well. They’re blaming the intensity, the crowd, the off-weeks… everything they can think of except the fact that neither team is playing well.

The most honest comment of the night so far came from Lynn Swann, who responded to another announcer’s suggestion that the long layoff between games was affecting both teams’ receivers by saying, “That didn’t seem to affect USC’s receivers!” Call him biased, but Swann is exactly right. What this game is proving, above all, is that USC is the only championship caliber team in this bunch.

UPDATE: For the record, I think LSU will probably win. They’re clearly playing better… but, to borrow an anology, that’s like being the tallest player in a bunch of midgets. It won’t be an impressive win unless both teams really improve their play. And with OU taking a sack on the first play of the second half just now, and giving up an interception for the touchdown on the second play to make it 21-7, that doesn’t look likely.

LSU may win the “national championship” tonight, but they wouldn’t stand a chance against USC. If the Trojans played against a team as awful as Oklahoma is playing tonight, they’d be winning at least 35-7 by now.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The announcers keep telling us Oklahoma is struggling because of LSU’s vaunted defense and Nick Saban’s brilliant strategy. Hmm… that’s exactly what everybody said about Kansas State and its coach on Dec. 6. Is it possible Oklahoma is just overrated? Is it possible they played one really good game against Texas and otherwise beat a bunch of cupcake teams (including both participants in the Silicon Valley Bowl, UCLA and Fresno State)?

LSU is playing better now. A Tigers-Trojans game would really be a matchup worth seeing. Too bad LSU is being forced to take out the trash in the “championship” game and we’ll never know who is the real champ.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Oklahoma has cut it to 21-14, and is driving toward the end zone with 3:07 left, trying to tying it. First and 10 from the 13.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: Extremely poor quarterbacking by Jason White, and a dropped pass by a receiver on fourth down, cost the Sooners a chance to tie it. Good defense by LSU, too, but Oklahoma had eight shots at the end zone and couldn’t do it — that’s not the way a champion plays, I don’t care what defense you’re up against.

On the other hand, it looked to me like Oklahoma just got robbed of a fumble recovery that could have given them excellent field position. But the Sooners are still going to get the ball back.

FINAL UPDATE: Well, I think the excitement and majesty of that “championship game” is summarized well by the fact that it ended on a punt bouncing out of bounds. Not a very good, well-played game, nor even an especially exciting game… just a game that had some excitement at the end.

LSU’s defense is pretty good. But their offense is nowhere near the level of USC’s, and I highly doubt the Tiger defense could contain the Trojan offense well enough to win the game. No defense that allowed such a poor-playing Sooner offense to score 14 points could possibly hold the Trojans, on an average day, to under 28. No way. It might be a good game, but the Trojans would be the victors, and it might even be a walk.

It’s really too bad USC can’t play LSU next weekend to prove me right or wrong. But they aren’t going to, and just because I have an opinion about the hypothetical outcome if they did, that doesn’t take away from the legitimacy of the Tigers’ title. Congratulations to LSU on winning half the national championship.

Although audioposting, alas, did not occur, BrendanLoy.com did have three frequent visitors and commenters at the Rose Bowl: Chris, Adrienne, and Andrew. Chris, on his blog, says it was “AWESOME.” Adrienne, on her new blog, says it was “f*cking awesome.” Andrew doesn’t have an active blog, but I think we already have a statistically valid sample allowing us to conclude that the Rose Bowl was, in fact, awesome. :)

Meanwhile, thanks to my dad for this update on how the poll voters are leaning — early returns, if you will. USC won the tiny town of Dixville Notch, so the Trojans are in the driver’s seat… no, no, but seriously, it seems the Trojans’ AP lead is already insurmountable, and there’s at least one rebel coach who has declared his intention to vote for USC if Oklahoma wins tomorrow!

#1 UConn plays #4 Duke (this is women’s basketball… it can be confusing, with two #1 UConn basketball teams) today at the Hartford Civic Center. The Huskies will be looking to break the NCAA record for consecutive home wins.

UConn currently has won 69 straight, tying the old Tennessee streak that the Huskies themselves ended in 1996. A win tonight would give this UConn an unequaled 70 in a row. UConn last lost at home on Feb. 2, 2000, to… you guessed it, Tennessee.

In other Connecticut news, my dad is providing updates on the fate of Connecticut’s corrupt soon-to-be-ex-Governor John Rowland, just as I asked him to, yet I have been lackadasical in not linking to them. So here goes: post #1, #2, #3, #4. Check ‘em out. And Impeach Rowland!

I’ve been remiss, I suppose, in not posting anything about the British Airways London to Washington, D.C. flights that have been in the news recently… especially considering that, like, I’m here, in D.C.

We first heard about this on the local news New Year’s Eve, when the plane was being held on the runway and passengers were being checked and questioned. (There’s a hell of a way to start the new year — waiting at customs to be cleared by the Department of Homeland Security.) Then it turned out they had cancelled the next day’s flight, and the following day’s as well. But now it seems today’s flight has been given the all clear.

According to the Command Post (which is a great source for breaking news of this sort), there may have been a plot to blow up the plane in the skies over D.C.… or possibly to crash it into the Capitol building… or both (on different days)??? Ah, the fog of war.

Meanwhile, the Command Post is also reporting on a report about a reported plot (am I implying that this is rather second-hand and iffy-sounding? yes) to nuke New York on… February 2. (How’s that for specificity?) “Grain of Salt Alert,” indeed.

Jay Leno’s Tonight Show just aired a hilarious segment in which the Michigan and USC football teams squared off in a talent competition (singing, dancing, etc.). Alas, the Wolverines won, 4-2 — and there was no disputing the refereeing in this case. They won fair and square.

At least USC’s Schwarzenegger impressionist defeated Michigan’s Schwarzenegger impressionist head-to-head. But the highlight for me was the Michigan player singing the intro from The Lion King’s “Circle of Life,” which was, once upon a time, a middle-school solo for me. :)