Frederick

I think Jamie, ever mindful of her fans, wouldn't want me to stop the Bruno talk before mentioning his hilarious cameo in Ocean's Twelve. Now Brucey's done a lot of cameos as himself over the years, some great (The Player), others remarkably awful (What Just Happened) but in Stevie Soderbergh's stylish caper sequel he truly excels into cameo majesty. Speaking of remarkably awful, I don't recall Jamie being in Chuck & Larry. I assume she was in one of those disparaging, fairly racist scenes where Adam Sandler runs around with a bunch of cloyingly obeying Asian women. All in the name of comedy of course. I trust The Hangover 2 will use her much more wisely. <_<

Aside from dear Jamie, who I'll return to shortly, my favourite performance in the motion picture was that of Rumer Willis, who's portrayal of the "dorky gal" was both charmingly winning and deeply moving! Its that same winning combination that makes her father one of civilisation's greatest entertainers. Proof... But back to Jamie. Yes, Jamie. Oh Jamie

Despite being very much the cinematic scholar you all know and love, I must confess to having actually paid to see Sorority Row. You know, "multiplex style". Honestly, a sight for sore eyes OR WHAT? Anyway, Jamie's sweet.

Edit: I deleted these from ImageShack. Whoops.

A day of idiocy, basically.

Old Trafford in midweek, though. Would rather not.

Hell yes.

Clue II: Island of Enthusiasm

Finally Keys and Gray, two oiky, self-satisfied toads who've spouted inane bollocks for nigh on twenty years, are gone. I don't know what I'll miss more, the pedantic non-stories whistled up for "The Last Word" or the elaborate sex toy style levers Gray relentlessly messed around with on Monday Night Football. I maintain my position that broadcasters should put Tom & Jerry cartoons on instead of a pre-match show or any half-time analysis. Trust me, it would drastically reduce alcoholism, divorce and teen pregnancy levels across the country.

Dats a shower, brah.

The pace at which the whole thing happened was indeed bizarre, I came home on Monday evening to a flood of (well, five) e-mails all about us possibly being in for Bent, and then less than 24 hours later I again came home only to find the whole deal complete. Growing up I was more used to watching us mess up signing Juninho, or having to hold a pound sign in protest over Doug's refusal to cough enough money to buy Juan Pablo Angel. Oh Randy, so brash, so fearless! When Houllier came in I did have a teeny, tiny concern that Owen might surface here, though in reality I'm not sure if even Sven's Leicester would touch 'em. Oh who am I kidding, of course they would.

Fargo?

You're a class act, Michael and I certainly would never want to come across as smug, nor condescending about your club. Hell, an awful lot of what you just said mirrors my own views about Villa. That being said, I think it would take a lot for me to feel blind sided about any transfer at this point, possibly because every time we sell a player it takes bloody ages, but also because there don't seem to be any players in the Premiership that you can clutch on to as noble exceptions. Its not that the 'olden days' weren't dictated by money as well, its just that the broo ha ha around individual players was much less intense then, whereas now we're fed the same rhetoric from an analogue age at a time when we know much, much better. I still get surprised by certain managerial sackings, though. Which is silly. P.S: 10,000 posts in this thread. As Ric Ocasek once said, let the good times roll!

Thank you very much, Berno!

I have to say some of the coverage of the Bent transfer has been quite amusing to me, you'd have thought we'd just bought a tin of rice pudding for 89 trillion the way folks are harping on. Of course Sunderland supporters are completely entitled to say whatever they want, but the media's snooty contempt for us continues to hover like a bad fart post-Martin O'Neill. Now Martin was mostly great for us and make no mistake, was a big ol' media darling, but come on now, we're not a gang of rats that betrayed our beloved pied piper, he left us, we didn't sack him. I still think Randy should have dealt with the situation a lot better, but still, there it is; a fiasco that became an embarrassment that lead to an avalanche of terror and woe that lasted for...well, its arguably still going on (on the pitch, at least). I'm rambling. Anyway, I like Randy even if his Terrence Malick approach to publicity occasionally works against us, I thank Martin for his four years at the club, and hope Bent does well and that we can keep all of our best players. But as trite as it sounds, we are bigger than any given individual and always have been. Say we're unfashionable, say we're crap to watch but the name over the counter is still worth something (80k a week if reports are to be believed). Villa supporters may come off as whiny, bitter faced drones seething in their own sense of entitlement and...well, okay, its completely true, but don't mock us for suddenly being a bit excited. This is all directed at Pat Murphy, Oliver Holt, Jim White of Sky Sports News, etc, etc.

Lovely though it is, its time to retire my current signature. Would anyone mind whipping something up for me using the following pictures? And as per usual, if you could insert 'Frederick' somewhere on the banner. Thanks very much.

One signing was never going to solve our many, many problems but given how toothless we are up front having Bent certainly can't hurt. In fact all he has to do is complete one successful forward pass and he'll have surpassed Stephen Ireland.

Presumably meaning Young will soon be off.