While the 11-10 finish is noteworthy, the score was very nearly 17-10 or 18-10.  On the last play of the game, Troy Polamalu appeared to score a touchdown after blocking a lateral pass, recovering the ball, and reaching the end zone with it.  However, upon review, the referees ruled that one of the series of lateral passes preceding the touchdown was, in fact, an illegal forward pass.  This meant that the ball was dead and the play was over before the touchdown was scored.  According to this article, however, after the game, the referees changed their minds and decided that the touchdown should have counted after all, but it was too late to change the score.

While it would have been nice to see the Steelers win by more than a 1-point margin, the fact that the game ended in a heretofore unrecorded score makes it much more interesting.  I wonder what other mathematically possible, relatively low score combinations haven’t been recorded.  Actually, I’d be interested in seeing a histogram representing the frequency with which all mathematically possible scores are recorded.  It seems like this type of data should be available on the internet, but in about 1 minute of googling, I didn’t find it.  Let this stand as a challenge to those of you who consider yourselves internet search experts.  Leave any interesting results in the comments.

1. The Pirates won again tonight (2nd in a row) after losing 6 straight, including being swept again by the Cubs. Matt Morris and Adam LaRoche are officially terrible. Nate McLouth, Xavier Nady, and Ryan Doumit are awesome.
2. I had thought about starting a new segment on my blog where I post a line from a song to see if people can figure out what song it’s from. Then, I realized that, in the age of the internet, that task is trivially easy. I had planned on using the line “Who put the shield around the ‘k’?”, from “K for Karnival” by Nothing Painted Blue but just typing the line into Google gives you the answer. Curse you, internet.
3. I also thought about introducing a repeating segment in which I would post a picture as a RAW file and have people submit their take on it. I may still do this if people are interested.
4. On Patriot’s Day our family had an outing to see the Boston Marathon. On our way home, I saw this:

    

   

   That’s right, a “Wii Sports” jacket. Now, I like my Wii as much as the next guy, but I’m not about to wear something like this.  That said, the “Wii Sports” jacket is a step above the bowling pin costume I saw the same day:

   

   Alright.  I think that’s enough for now.  I’ll post more when the mood strikes.

I’m glad I did: it was hilarious.  The basic synopsis is this: in 2002 two American guys find out about the World Air Guitar Championships held in Finland so they go – not as competitors – only observers.  They are struck by the fact that there are no Americans in the competition, so they resolve to organize championship events in the US in order to send a US champion to the world championship the following year.  I don’t want to give much more than that away because the story is really good.  Anyway, if you’ve ever pretended to perform a guitar solo in your bedroom, this documentary is for you.

The documentary is out on DVD, so you can get it on Netflix or something.  Or, if you want to watch it for free, it’ll be on VH1 at 1PM tomorrow (Feb. 13th), so set up your Tivo.  The trailer (which I think doesn’t really do it justice) is here.

Anyway, if you have a hairy back and want free laser hair removal, send in your picture!

If you want to peruse all the entries, look here. If you want to see the contest home page, check here. Some of the stuff is really good, but don’t be surprised if you find something that is both embarrassing and painful to watch. You’ve been warned.

The best part of this picture, in my opinion, is the expression on the gorilla’s face:

Anyway, if you find yourself in Omaha between April 5th and April 15th, head over to the zoo and check out the picture, which will be on display in the Scott Aquarium. The winners are determined by the votes of zoo visitors, so remember to vote (for my picture) early and often.

With mine complete, we moved on to Heather’s.  This proved to be much more difficult.  In fact, we have gone through probably 4 iterations and we’re still not all that happy with the result.  So, since we are having little success ourselves, we thought it would be a good idea to have the first subject in the Mii contest be Heather, whose chose her name on the Wii to mimic the name she uses when she posts comments on my blog, namely “Your Wife.”

I had mentioned before that there is a flash interface online for making Miis.  However, once I started using the editor on the Wii, I discovered that the flash interface provides much more customizability than the editor on the Wii.  So, in order to ensure that the Mii contest produces winners that can actually be used on the Wii, I will restrict entries to the contest to those created using the actual Mii editor on the Wii.  Perhaps this will provide impetus for those of you who want a Wii but haven’t yet purchased one to get out there and buy one.  Incidentally, this site reports that Best Buy will have a ton (eg. ~150 each) of Wiis on January 15th.  So, if you’re still having a hard time finding one, this may be your chance.

For those of you interested in participating in the contest, pictures of my wife can be found below.