Fresh Meat: ReadApplePie.com has been completely revamped in the style of ReadBusinessAsUsual.com, including a free preview of the first four chapters. If you haven’t read Apple Pie, you should of course, but you can get a feel for it at the site, and although it is not technically available yet, you can pre-order it at Amazon. Hopefully it has found a permanent home with the new publisher.

Yet another terrific week for my football picks, but more on that in a couple of days. Speaking of football, here's a couple of good articles: This one from Football Outsiders is a recounting of a road trip to Ann Arbor for last week's Iowa/Michigan game; it contains the perfect characterization of Wolverine fans: "...there's one thing that we Michigan fans do better than anyone: show up." And over at ESPN Page 2 we have this story of the pitiful optimism of Lions fans. I maintain Lions fans have deeper and more foolish faith than those of any other sports franchise. Not only is their no hope of a championship, there is very rarely hope of a winning season, there are even more rarely any big stars or charismatic players to root for, and worst of all there is no romance to their losing, they just lose in complete anonymity.

And while we are on the topic of sports, it looks like Washington DC is finally getting a baseball team back. This will be their third chance (third strike?) and all it's going to cost them is a $400 million publicly financed stadium. I don’t know where they are going to get the money, but I understand Marion Barry has been brought in as a financial consultant. Although the vast majority of fans are out in Northern Virginia, I'm sure they will be happy to ride the Metro in from Loudon County. In preparation for the expected throngs of fans riding in and the potential for them flaunting the rules, the DC legislature has approved the death penalty for anyone who talks or eats.

I'm still working on my write up of my Coastal Empire trip; hopefully this weekend. I may provide a few pics ahead of time. For now, I can't stop laughing at the story of Edward Furlong (the brat Ahnold has to save in T2) getting arrested while freeing live lobsters from their tank at Meijer's:

…the actor and his buddies began yanking live lobsters out of the store's display tank for reasons that were not made clear…The officers ordered Furlong to turn around so they could frisk him, but the…star began twirling around in circles instead.

I would pay real, folding money for the video from the Meijer's security camera.