Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
This gas thing is starting to freak me out a little bit. Its not that I really mind all that much paying 4.30 for gas but its the way that it has been presented us. It feels like only one in a combination of shades that have been systematically lifted off of the way we had been living for several years. Yes there was a war in Iraq but it never effected us adversely, unless you had a loved one over there, but for the most of us it never came that close to effecting us on any kind of personal level. But then the housing crisis came and the economy slowed down, and the government sent us $600 for free in the hopes that we wouldnt freak out when the gas prices hit 4 bucks and a lot of this was due to the amount of money that we have been ceaselessly pumping into the war. It seems like one thing after another after another is starting to go wrong or not wrong precisely but backwards. It isnt the end of the world but I am starting to see that at some point there will be one. Global warming and record amounts of tropical storms, hurricanes and floods. and on top of that we have to live with David Cook as our American Idol!!! Its all just starting to get to me i guess.-> The new Spiritualized album is pretty good, its a grower. The new Weezer album is very bad.-> I liked Indiana Jones 4 but Shia Lebouf was sort of a mistake and the scene where he swings on vines with a bunch of monkeys is perhaps the worst scene in the history of cinema.->Celtics in 6-> Im writing this on a Mac and for whatever reason it doesnt register when i make a new paragraph.-> I havent read a good book in a while any suggestions?-> and finally good work to the Democrats for finally getting their act together and picking a candidate however in my current state of mind I dont have very high hopes for November. I think America likes crazy people and John McCain might be the craziest. Imagine if he makes Mitt Romney his running mate? they would spend all of their time smiling insanely at each other reminiscing about what it was like when they both believed totally different things than they do now and comparing the taste of the Republican teet!
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Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
My thoughts are all over the place today…
The new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record came out today. Its called Dig Lazarus Dig!!! Its not a concept record but several of the songs revolve around the premise of God raising Lazarus from the grave against his will, only to find himself a homeless junky tooling around the streets of New York City. It is amazing in every way.
There Will be Blood came out today on DVD. I find it highly amusing that this movie and the Nick Cave record came out on the same day. they are both superior works of art that try their hardest to be unlovable and difficult but are ultimately better for it. The whole point of the ending to There Will be Blood is that Daniel is finally satisfied and it is so perfect that it comes at the expense of leaving critics and the audience unsatisfied. Personally, I cannot wait to see it again.
Everyone called out today except for me and two other people and it feels like the end of the world. The phone will not stop ringing and nobody wants anything that i can actually give them. they all want some kind of magical special treatment that they dont deserve and are not entitled to and it is my great privilege to give them this news. I have been screamed at today, swore at, called useless and i might be mistaken but i pretty sure i was challenged to a fight. I would love to fight that guy today, its just too bad he is in another state. if he happens to read this i will be taking my break around 3, im in Connecticut, if you have the ability to get here by 3 i am going to rip your head off.
Mike and the mad Dog yesterday were debating whether or not Dick Vitale deserved to be in the Basketball Hall of Fame. They were both leaning towards answering the question No, but neither of them seemed willing to come out and say it. I will say that they are wrong. he totally deserves to be in the hall of fame soley because no one, NO ONE, loves basketball more than Dickie V and for that reason alone he should be in the hall of fame. He has been on Mike and Mike (the ESPN morning guys) every morning since Friday and he has ended every conversation in tears thanking everyone under the sun for giving him the opportunity to do what he does and for putting him in the hall of fame. Its all about the love of the game.
I think one thing the war has done for us is re-written the definition of the word ’success.’ before the word success meant ” the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.” our new definition probably reads something like this, “The semi-favorable but ultimately the same persistence down an inevitable road to failure.” I think its clear that our government has no real interest in stopping this war, pulling our troops out , or even acknowledging that the only way their surge can be deemed a success is that it put more of our soldiers in a position to die. So according to the new definition the surge/ war in iraq is a success. Hopefully, George, John, and their minions of death wont re-write the definition of victory to mean “The death toll in Iraq has reached 140,00 today.”
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Monday, April 7th, 2008
Saturday was a good day.
I got up early like i always do. I got dressed, put on some jeans and a tshirt and scooped up our laundry to bring it down to the basement where our ‘laundry facilities’ are located. I wasnt expecting it to be so perfectly nice out, if i didnt say it out loud as i sometimes do when im alone, i definitely said to myself in my head, “Holy smokes, it is a nice day out today.” Not only was it nice, it was much too nice to be wearing jeans, so for the first time this year i put on some shorts, dug my trusty pair of sandals out of the wasteland that is the back seat of my car, im not sure why they were there, and went about my saturday morning ritual of cleaning my house.
I dont go crazy when i clean, i have a cat so vacuuming is very important. Along with that i like to clean out the sink, run the dishwasher, wipe down the counter tops, this makes me feel like a i work in a diner which is nice. I sometimes clean the toilet because even if you cant see it, the toilet is a dirty place. We rarely clean the shower, i think this might be a character flaw or a genetic defect. It just never occurs to me that this is something that really needs to be done although i can see everyday that it does. If this makes me a bad person then so be it. I aint cleanin’ no shower.
It was so nice on Saturday I opened a bunch of windows and let fresh air and street noise circulate through the apartment. My cat, Buddy, the ultimate cat, descended from a long line of jungle kings, enjoyed a few hours pining for the freedom of the outdoors laying in the open window sill.
Now, i finish vacuuming, so its time to get to work on putting the kitchen back together and for something like this, you have got to have some music but, what music to play, whats the perfect record to relax and enlighten and to heighten the experience of scraping old lasagna from a Pyrex pan and scrubbing questionable stains and materials off my kitchen counter? Some people think the key to good weekend light manual labor background music is to find something nice and light, something you dont have to pay attention to too much. It literally sits in the background so at some point while youre doing whatever it is youre doing you will forget that the music is on. It will become part of the background noise and will take its place with the sound of the water running, the traffic outside and, if you live in an apartment, the sounds of your neighbors letting their red headed 6 year old systematically destroy their house one mysterious “just fell of the bunk beds” THUD at a time. I am of a different school of thought when choosing tunes for this very tricky time of the day. I prefer something really weird, something that i wouldnt normally listen to if i had to pay full attention to it. My normal selection for a nice day house cleaning session would be from my pals The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. they are by far my favorite psychedelic, new age, ambient island lounge folk band and their first three records are very charming indeed. However on this particular Saturday i was in the mood for something a little different so i sifted through my vinyl collection and finally decided on David Byrne’s ‘The Knee Plays.’ This fit the bill perfectly. Its weird, the whole record is full of marches comprised of synth horns and there’s is no singing just David Byrne spoken word. Awesome. It was laid back and just the perfect piece of music to keep me interested even when i was realy paying attention and it never once configured it’s sounds to the general cacophony of life.
Then…band practice. Oh glorious band practice. Our practice space is in West Haven. It is located inconveniently in the back of a warehouse in a cinder block room we rent from a guy that rents it from someone else. it was so nice out we propped the door open, had a few beers, and played music for 4 hours. Thats what i call relaxing friends.
Later that night Nicolette and I watched Frasier for a while, ate some food, flipped back and forth between baseball games and the Final Four. After, she studied and i continued reading The Iceman Cometh. I went to bed around 11 i think, early maybe but sometimes friends, its just time to go to bed.
Posted in Sports, music, whatever | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 4th, 2008
For those of you who will be watching the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four this coming weekend, as I will be, allow me to help enhance your viewing enjoyment - everytime Seth Davis is about to offer some inane comment (which is virtually all of the time), mute your TV and offer the following as discussion topics for those watching the games with you:Personally, the only team I can’t see winning the whole thing is Kansas. I can make a case for the other three teams, but the Jayhawks do absolutely nothing for me.
Are you surprised that, given all of his years in the NBA, Dell Curry has yet to introduce his talented son to a weight room?
Am I courting disaster to suggest that Tyler Hansbrough is the 2008 equivalent of Christian Laettner? He might be a great college player, but I don’t see him as a standout pro.
I don’t think any underclassman should declare for the NBA draft unless his team has at least reached the Final Four, and preferably only when his team has won the national championship. Basketball is still a team game, and, unless you have achieved a certain level of success with that team, you shouldn’t be going anywhere.
I know we have our own target here in Connecticut with Hasheem Thabeet, but is there a softer big man in the country than Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert? I can’t believe he was a second-team All-American.
When you get a chance, google Brad Listorti and see where he ranks on a couple of different NFL draft sites. OK, I know Brad didn’t play basketball at Rutgers or UMass, but I knew him when he played youth basketball with my son Eric, and I am rooting for him to get drafted. He participated at the Matt Ryan workout a couple of weeks back, and teams are showing interest in him as a tight end and as an H-back.
You’ve got to love (no pun intended) how Kevin Love plays. I don’t even mind when Seth Davis says he is always in the right place, making the right play at the right time. Love had me as soon as I saw him throw his first outlet pass. Why can’t we get all of these young players to be so fundamentally sound?
Who do you dislike more calling college basketball games - Gus Johnson or Brent Musberger? Me? I can do without both of them.
Does the fact that all four number one seeds reached the Final Four really mean anything? Each of the teams had a scare or two along the way, so this particular result was in doubt a couple of times. I think we should accept it as the coincidence it was, and, if anyone on the selection committee suggests otherwise, slap them!
OK you can unmute Seth now - may the teams you have in your bracket win, and may you spend your winnings wisely … supporting our troubled economy, of course!
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Thursday, March 20th, 2008
Well its that time of year again. Im at the point now and i dont think that Im alone, where i dont really care about the games or who wins and loses. the only winning and losing I care about is whether or not I win or lose a bracket pool im in with about thirty friends of mine. I decided to do two brackets this year which means im out 20 bones instead of just 10.
In my first bracket, which Im calling my ‘Heart’ bracket, my Final Four is Louisville, Wisconsin, Memphis, and Xavier with Louisville beating Memphis to win the National Championship. Every year i pick Louisville, Wisconsin and Xavier to do well and they never do. My problem is that they are all relatively good every year and enter the tourny with pretty respectable seedings. I dont think im really going out on a limb with any of these picks but every-time Louisville and Wisconsin go out in the second round I am forced to acknowledge that my heart doesnt know s#!t about basketball.
In my second bracket, my ‘Head’ bracket, my Final Four is more in line with the predictions of the analysts and Sports Center thugs: North Carolina, Georgetown, Texas and UCLA, with North Carolina beating UCLA in the finals. I have no feelings for any of these teams or these picks but i think that if i have chance to win this pool its going to be through this bracket.
Whatever, as long as i gets me the money.
Viva La Basketball!
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Saturday, March 8th, 2008
For anyone who doesnt know, I am a Mets fan. This is the one sport i dont waver on in any way. In basketball I am a born Celtics fan, became a Bulls fan for a while but have since become a Celtics fan again. In football while i am a New York Football Giants fan i do like watching at least a dozen different teams every Sunday and if im engaged in a heated fantasy football battle and the Cowboys are playing the Giants and Terrell Owens catches an Eighty yard touchdown well then i just might jump out my chair a scream for joy while simultaneously acknowledging that my Giants are getting the pants beaten off of them. But when it comes to baseball there is only one team i root for and even care about and those are the New York Mets.
I am a slightly above average sports fan. Im not a crazy but i am also not one of those guys that everyone has running around their office trying to strike up conversations about what they think to be the major sports story of the day without having any real grasp about how the game is played or know anything about the past the present or the future of the team they claim to be such a huge fan of. I know my stuff, i root hard for my teams, when they fail it hurts me some, when they succeed i feel that i was integral to their success and when it comes to steroids in sports i will be the first one to call someone a cheater or a liar, ill be the first one to irrationally advocate that they go to jail and ill be the first one to say an asterisk isnt enough next to their name in Cooperstown. I say lets break out the fat sharpies, cross out the whole name and pretend they never existed.
However, and believe me it kills me to say this, as a Mets fan and a baseball fan, Omar, why havent you signed Barry Bonds yet?
I dont know how closely anyone has been following spring training but the good old Mets being just that, Good and Old, have already been wrecked by injuries and we havent even played a full week of games yet. Our outfield is falling apart, as Im typing this im sure Calros Beltran has pulled some kind of muscle in his back or groin, Endy Chavez was probably in a car accident and it wouldnt shock me to find out that Ryan Church is thinking about retiring or some such nonsense. We have no first baseman, we have a terrible bullpen, we have an unproven end of the rotation and to top it all of our starting out field is falling apart faster than (please insert remark about a failed presidential campaign of your choosing)! So what the hell are we going to do about it?
The answer came to me while i was driving to band practice today listening to the FAN (WFAN). I dont remember who the host was and they made the statement in such a matter of fact way at first i wasnt sure if i had heard them correctly and when they failed to continue the discussion i was sure i had misremembered but after thinking about it a little while longer, in the liquor store buying a case of New Castle, and in Daddy’s buying strings, the thought just would not leave my mind. “That is just too perfect,” I said to myself. “He can still hit and hes a free agent, we can platoon him in left and because it doesnt seem like anybody else wants him we can give him 8-10 million dollars for the one year and if it doesnt work it doesnt work, if it does well then World Series rings for everybody!” But then i caught myself. Hes a steroid user, a cheater and a liar, i dont want this kind of fellow on my beloved New York Mets. But i did and i do and i must. We need Barry Bonds. He is the absolute perfect player to solve the Mets outfield problem. he may not make the problem go away but he makes a large problem smaller and thats really all you’re ever looking for when your team has been plagued by injury.
How though do I justify his steroid laden past with my desire for the Mets to win a World Series? I have been thinking about this all day friends and i dont have an answer. I think the Mets should sign Barry Bonds but i also think they shouldnt. You cant justify behavior like Bonds’ by, when your need is great enough, ignoring the fact that he, along with Roger Clemens, is helping to ruin the game you, me and many other people hold so near and dear. thats what being a fan is. you want your team to win at any cost even if that means employing a liar and a cheat but shouldnt you also want your team to act ethically and morally and in the best interests of the sport?
These are all good questions and i wish i had the answers to them because it would make rooting for the Mets this year a lot less difficult. I think, if they do sign him, I’ll be just as unhappy as i would be if the dont sign him.
Such is the life of a Mets fan. You can never win.
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Friday, March 7th, 2008
I didnt hate Brett Favre. I do now. Why? Because ESPN insists on convincing me he is the greatest human ever on the face of the planet. I dont think he is. How do you like that ESPN? Let me tell you that ESPN doesnt like that at all. So here’s a poll idiot masses. A certain majority of the population feels hes the greatest quarterback ever in the NFL and if hes the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL and the NFL is the best thing that has ever been invented since the person who invented the person who invented the NFL then Brett Favre must be the human to end all humans.
And now he’s retiring. What the hell are we all going to do with ourselves. We have three options. 1) We can all move to Green Bay and start a cult in honor of Brett Favre. we will all cultivate a permanent partial beard on our faces and speak in southern accents. we will run around all day throwing touchdowns and picking each other up in fireman carries and then we will be interviewed by ESPN where we will say, “Maybe Ill retire Maybe I wont” a month later we will retire but retire for us means drinking Kool Aid laced-with rat poison, essentially doing for real what ESPN wants us to feel like is happening because Brett Favre is retiring. 2) We can pull up our boot straps and move on with our lives trying to carry on as best as we can all the while knowing there is a little hole in our souls where Brett Favre’s crusty old face used to be. 3) Who really cares about Brett Favre retiring!!!!! he plays football, he doesnt do anything of any real importance but we are treating him like America was being attacked by Nazis and he vanquished them personally and alone. Captain America wanted to help out but Brett Favre brushed him off and said, “No thanks Cap. Me and my buddy Donald Driver an take it from here.” But he didnt. he didnt do anything. He played alot of football for 17 years and then he stopped. why do i need to watch hours of programming devoted to this. i just want some scores, i want a few highlights, i want Barry melrose breaking down hockey everyday instead of every six weeks. I want steven A smith screaming about Shaq and Lebron and KG until his head explodes and I want my football exclusively from Tom Jackson and John Clayton. If Outside the Lines and the Sports reporters are all about Brett Favre this week i am going to start pitching car parts off of an over pass until an ESPN news crew comes to cover the story.
This leads me to a greater question which is: what is ESPN’s problem. Why cant they just relax? they are aware that they arent a real news program right? They do know that there are more important things going on in the world than the NFL Draft and Brett Favre retiring and Cleveland Cavaliers games right? I mean they have to, dont they?
The answer to this question is they have no idea, and now apparently neither do you. and the only reason they treat sports this way is because you want them to. I dont know how it used to be, im only 25 years old, i grew up with ESPN so i have never known what its like to really look forward to a sporting event because its always been right in my face regardless of whether i wanted it there or not. I have always at all times been conscious of the fact that sports is a business and is a business above everything else that might be great about it. I love sports, i grew up loving sports and i hope my kids love sports but you have to have perspective about sports and ESPN doesnt have that and because ESPN doesnt have that we dont have it either. ESPN is a business, i get it, They want to make money, and they make money by having as many people ingest their product as possible. But does ESPN need a Disney weekend? Does it need a cell phone? Does it need to make crappy dramatic television series? the answer to all of these questions is no. Who wouldnt be sooooooo much happier if all ESPN was was ESPN news, Just scores, just highlights, some analysis but nothing you an really object to. No Mel Kiper. Ever. no Jay Bilas. NO NO NO!!!! Chris Bermann. Oh please god no more Chris Bermann, i just cannot take Chris Bermann anymore.
I think this is an easy request ESPN. Just relax. take it easy, have some perspective. I love sports but frankly i also love reading, watching movies and hanging out at my house doing nothing. I understand you want to make money but its obnoxious and not becoming of a tv channel at all. Let me be clear though, ESPN is 100x better than the YES network, but then again ESPN doesnt subject me to Michael Kaye.
Dont get me started on Michael Kaye.
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