Box Office Blitz Week 17

First off, today being November 1, it's the start of stupid Nano and also the start of the 2nd Annual Flash Fiction Fest.  None of my stories post until November 25, but there will be some other good flash fiction stories to occupy you for a few minutes when you should probably be working or something.  In theory you should be able to buy the whole collection, if not today then in the near future.

The Scarlet Knight, protecting my bedroom window from evildoers

In other news, the Scarlet Knight action figures are finally completed!  I've had the swords since August but was lazy in getting around to painting them.  Well the one at the far right I didn't bother to paint because it was already silver.  The gold one ideally should be yellow to match her cape and boots and stuff but I didn't have any yellow paint left so I dunked the blade into a bottle of gold paint.  Likewise I dunked the little figure's overly big sword into a bottle of silver paint, which created kind of a mess necessitating repainting parts of the red armor.

But for better or worse all three figures now have a Sword of Justice they can use to fight the villains of my superhero collection, which at this point is limited to Bane and Sinestro.  She could easily defeat Bane since the sword would cut him up like a Thanksgiving turkey, but Sinestro can fly into space and such, so she might have a tough time bringing him down.  Of the three figures I like the original yellow one the best, except I wish I hadn't cut the cape off of her, not realizing I could have just popped her head off to get to the cape.  She does have the best sword though.


Meanwhile, I'm even worse at fantasy football than I am at this game.  My team is 3-5 at the halfway point.  Last week the Grumpy Bulldogs suffered their most humiliating defeat yet.  My opponent apparently hasn't been paying attention and thus had 4 of 9 positions on bye weeks.  So I think it's going to be a cakewalk.  It was--for him!  His 5 positions trounced my 9 positions quite handily.  Even though he only had 5/9 of his lineup, the ones who played averaged a whopping 19 points while my puny lineup averaged about 9 points.  Reuben Randle of the Giants may as well have been on a bye week as he caught 0 passes for 0 yards.  How is that even possible?  Briane Pagel definitely got the better of me when I offered him Maurice Jones-Drew and Joique Bell for Atlanta running back Jacquizz Rodgers.  Jones-Drew had been sucking all year but of course that week he got 11 points and Bell got like 12 points while Rodgers got a pathetic 1.9.  Basically I am the Matt Millen of fantasy football personnel management.  I don't blame myself entirely, though.  It's the players who let me down by not playing consistently.  I mean let's face it one week even a star player like Aaron Rodgers might get 25 points and the next week he'll completely suck and net only 12; how am I supposed to know when he's going to turn it on?  Or then you get those guys like Jones-Drew who'll be practically comatose for 7 weeks and then have a monster week--of course after I cut or trade or bench them.  And you'll get a guy like Joseph Fauria on the Lions who'll get 3 TDs in one game and catch maybe 1 pass the rest of the year.  Gawd it's annoying.  A character on FXX's "The League" had a great rant about this situation in this week's episode.

By comparison Box Office Blitz is a bit easier.  I mean movies aren't usually as inconsistent as football players.  Especially now that we're getting into the second blockbuster period of the year with "Ender's Game," "Thor 2," "The Hunger Games 2," and "The Hobbit 2" plus whatever other crap is coming out around Christmas.

So when you complain how much this sucks, just remember that it could be worse.

Now then, it's time for the list of the week's offerings at my local megaplex.  (* Means it's a new release)

• Bad Grandpa
• Baggage Claim
• Captain Phillips
• Carrie
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Ender's Game*
• Escape Plan
• Free Birds*
• Gravity
• Last Vegas*
• Lee Daniels's The Butler
• Prisoners
• Runner, Runner
• Rush
• The Counselor
• The Family

I will pick:

1. Ender's Game $60M
2. Free Birds $30M
3. Gravity $18M

 And now you make your picks in the comments.  Good luck!