A Brief Break From Puppetry For An Observation

Puppet madness is slated for shooting on Thursday night, with a Friday AM premiere god and rendering times willing. In the meantime, though, I'd like to present the House Rock Built's official postgame observations from that USC-ND game from Saturday, which we all agreed after waking up drunk and chained to a fire hydrant in Kingston, Jamaica on Sunday morning to be a rather uplifting experience. The main point of scholarly analysis we'd like to put forward was from the halftime interview that Shelly Smith conducted with Brian Kelly. Now, hang with me on this one, but...

	Begin with this shot of Brian Kelly being interviewed by the lovely and talented Shelly Smith.
	Select Shelly's hair.
	Copy, paste, then Image:Rotate:Flip Layer Horizontal.
	Hang with me now...
	Use the Clone Tool to add rogue, eyeshadow, and clotted chunks of mascara.
	Adjust the height...
	...and stretch horizontally 18%.
	Flip Horizontally, then rotate upward.

The result?



Now, look, we're not saying Shelly Smith is just Brian Kelly in drag, but the resemblance is striking. The resemblance is stunning and striking. Answer me this, internets: have you ever seen the two of them together? It is my hypothesis tha- oh, wait, yes... I've definitely seen them together. Never mind. Carry on, then.

Stuffing the Passer - Card Study

The gang's hand signals were compromised, so they're switching over to calling plays with cue cards. Unfortunately, there's a steep learning curve. Thank god for the electrical college.



Look, kid, if you win the next two games you can call yourself Golda Meir for all I care.

Ten to the Sixth Power

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled muppet insanity for a quick housekeeping note. While the House generally shuns mystical numerology, gematria, and various other forms of mathematical divination, we let our guard down briefly to feel a bit of a stir in the cockles of our heart-region watching the odometer on the website roll over ten to the sixth power. Sure, 1,000,000 is a purely arbitrary number only given special meaning by humankind's base-ten counting system which was undoubtedly derived from the random evolutionary foible that led to the churning out of creatures with five digits on their two upper appendages, but we're damn proud of it nonetheless.

The House Rock Built started up a little over five years ago, in the heady and halcyon days of the Great Misguided Optimism. Not at all unlike the football program it obliquely covers, the House has gone through a series of personal re-inventions, massive adjustments in attitude and scope, and the occasional months-long period where it just gives up altogether (the football team tends to do this every November, whereas the House at least waits until the summer to throw in the towel, much to our credit). Anyway, thanks. It means a lot to be able to connect with other football fans out there, and hopefully out of a million visits, perhaps I've made one person's day slightly less miserable. I'll take those odds.

-amish

Stuffing the Passer - Rear Window

Poor Dayne Crist. After battling back from a knee injury to claim the starring role in Stuffing the Passer, another devastating setback came when he shredded his patellar tendon in the first half of last week's game. Life is an agonizing test, and this week has been yet another set of slings and arrows in the heart of Notre Dame land. But, onward and forward we must move.

The good news is that Dayne's surgery went very well, so now the long road to recovery has started. For the time being, though, he's stuck at home in his big cast with nothing to do but stare out the window with his binoculars and spy on his neighbors. Fortunatley, muppet Dayne lives in a pretty exciting neighborhood, so spying on his neighbors turned out to be more entertaining than any football game he's ever played in. Always look on the bright side of life.

Enjoy this week's flick, gang. Watch for the cliffhanger at the end. Will we get a thrilling conclusion to this story next week? Or will we just not care about continuity and just go on like nothing happened? Only one way to find out!

Put a towel on, you freak!