Grey Ghost

Training Video

2011-06-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

I had occasion this week to endure a requisite training video. I don't want to reveal what I do, but I'm not sure it matters. I think a lot of people in regulated industries or large corporations are forced to endure this crap. At the end of this I always think of the same question. Who is this training for? Morons?

If the training videos are any indication, the necessity of producing and showing training videos could be eliminated by simply not hiring morons. Also, if any morons are currently employed they would need to be fired immediately. The training in training videos is useless to me. There is nothing instructive in watching a moron strap on snowshoes and dance through a minefield.

You know who needs training videos? Human resources, because apparently morons have infiltrated the hiring process and the rest of us have to be warned not to drunk drive a steamroller through a playground. Human resources should have two sets of training videos. First, they should get a training video on how to identify morons in the hiring process. Second, H.R. should have to sit through the training videos I just watched to reinforce the corporate consequences if they fail at screening morons.

I'm tired too of the Training Video Players acting troupe. I'm starting to recognize them and the roles they've played. There are three basic roles to play in these productions. There is moron, victim of moron, and supervisor of moron who is frequently also a moron. I'm not sure where moron and victim of moron is in the acting hierarchy, but I've got to think it's below Oscar winner.

Finally, the technology has advanced to the point there is now interactive features with the training videos. We know now the answer to the question, is there anything technology can't improve? Yes, training videos. Do they really need to ask,
"What should the moron have done?"
A) Not wear a meat suit into the lion cage
B) Not bath in a tub of gasoline near the fireplace
or
C) Not imbed himself in an industry that mandates I sit through this

Quick Hits

2011-06-20T12:10:00.005-04:00

The Killing

I want however many weeks I put into watching this back. Read the preseason hype, stayed with it when it started to drrrraaaagggg midseason (midseason joke - "The Killing is killing me"), only to get ticked off at that ending. I called Richmond as the killer very early, so you could argue that I'm just mad they hit a hail mary on me in the last five minutes.

Whatever. I'm not watching a minute of season two AMC. If they wanted to do a second season, you know what they needed? Another killing! No more plot holes or implausible police work for me.

One thing I did learn, according to The Killing people in Seattle spend an inordinate amount of their time standing around in drenching rain. The steadiest work in this production had to be either the production assistant assigned to holding a hose over the actors or the costume designer in charge of wet hoodies.

Game of Thrones

Just the opposite of The Killing. Something compelling happened every week, and their last five minutes? More nudity and three baby dragons. That's how you wrap things up.

Workaholics

Funniest new show since It's Always Sunny. It's already done so maybe they rerun it in the summer.

Armadillo Hole

2010-10-30T11:43:00.010-04:00

Four years ago I posted about a hole in my yard that I assumed was made by an armadillo. Why is that significant today? It's not, except to me. That one post back in July 2007 is the single biggest driver of traffic to this blog. Apparently there is a hole in the internet encyclopedia/universe of knowledge and it has to do with getting rid of armadillos. If you search for "Armadillo eradification", you're coming here. I'm on page 1 of that search. Go figure. There's a couple of ironies in that.

One is, as I've bitched about countless times, if you type the actual address of the blog, including my password, into a search engine, if the blog comes up at all it's on about page 70 of the search results. It's very gratifying. If I had known how this was going to play out, I would have called it "armadilloeradification.blogger.com" to begin with.

Two is I never actually drove the armadillo away, or I don't know that I did. One day, like most of my pets when I was a kid, it just never came back. About a week after it left, I did notice a dead armadillo on a street 2 blocks away. I suppose it could have been my armadillo and I could have been the cause. My arma-nemesis-dillo may have been disoriented from all the dog poop and moth balls I marinated it with and staggered blindly into traffic. That did lead to 2 months straight of me suggesting that any problem could be solved by, "taking it 2 blocks over and running over it with a car". The wife put that line in her ever growing catalogue of things I say that she does not find wildly hilarious.

Finally, I don't even know if an armadillo was making the hole. My hole could have been the suburban crop sign of unexplained phenomena. All I know is, I had a hole. I put dog poop down it. I covered it up. The hole didn't come back. That also led to the problem solving wise crack, "Put dog poop down it. Cover it up." Another un-hilarious vote from the wife.

None of that matters. What does matter is soon Google will be forced to send me a check for all the traffic I've gotten from people who mistakenly think I can help them with their armadillo. Beyond that we are considering two different revenue drivers from this. One is to develop and market the Grey Ghost Aramadillo Eradication kit. Basically, it's a bag of dog poop and moth balls. It's not going over well in test markets. More promising is the plan to flood the world with armadillos. See, the answer sometimes in business isn't to solve the problem. The answer is to create more problems.
There are worse ideas.

Quick Hits

2010-10-21T15:03:00.003-04:00

Brett Favre
I love when he comments that he is "singularly focused" or that the allegations against him are "not a distraction". Bullshit.
Number one, his wife his killing him...daily. I see today that she is quoted saying, "faith will see her through this". That is wife code for "Every time he walks in the room I smack him in the head with a bible".
Number two, when somebody asks you, as an adult, if this is a text photo of your penis, you are distracted. That's a question a 9th grader might get asked. I'm sorry Brett, but in the arena of public opinion you're guilty. You don't ignore an allegation like that if it's not true. You don't ignore it if it is true. Ask Bill Clinton. If you walk around and pretend that you can't talk about it that is tacit admission that, "Yep, that's my penis".

Side Note - Everyone is assuming that he's killed his endorsement deals, in particular Wrangler jeans. I don't know about that. He might sell more Wrangler jeans. I'm sorry Wrangler jean wearers. I've got you pegged as a demographic that has the penis text photo as a significant part of the pick up arsenal. When a man's out of ideas on how to approach a woman, Wrangler.

Maria Sharapova
Sasha Vujacic is Lyle Lovett to Sharapova's Julia Roberts. I'm sorry that's an insult to Lyle Lovett. I never wanted to hard foul Lyle Lovett into the third row.

Amazing Blogger Upgrades

2010-09-16T14:29:00.004-04:00

On a day when I've done all the work I can or am willing to do, on a day when for lack of anything better to do my gaze drifts towards this blog, on a day when I plan to post another set of pithy observations because that's what I do here, Blogger changes everything.

Admittedly, I don't get on here enough. This upgrade could have been here for months, even years. I had not seen it till today. Blogger now gives you stats on where your traffic is coming from. I guess it's not so amazing from a technological standpoint. It's amazing to me because I have it and it was free. Thank you Blogger.

More amazing is the primary driver of traffic for this sorry little blog. I've bitched before that it is nearly impossible to find this blog by just entering it's title into search. If I come up at all, it's about a hundred pages into the search. (I've only done the hundred page search once by the way. I do, in fact, have a life.) Not for one topic, though. For one topic I'm page one in search. Ok, maybe not page one, but not page one hundred either. Look up "Armadillo Eradification" and there I am. On the basis of one post, made 3 years ago, I get most of my hits or so says Google.

I should qualify this right now that I am no authority on armadillos. I am no authority either on the things I plan to right about next. Search engines apparently cannot distinguish between authority and pithy observations. That's not my problem. I just want the traffic. If people who search for answers are directed to this blog, who is hurt by that? I hope the answer to that isn't me. We' ll find out.

Monetize

2010-06-28T13:13:00.004-04:00

Got to give to Blogger. That new button gets right to the point. And if it's not new, it's new to me because I just noticed it. You can say you have a blog because you love to share cute pictures of cats, cupcake recipes or horrifying pictures of cats baked into cupcakes, but you're really here for one thing. Money.

Take me for example. I don't have a cat, and I've never made a cupcake. I do however have this crappy blog, so there's hope. I started it because over the years enough people have said to me, "You should write a book" or "You should do a movie" or "Thank you for the obscene homemade birthday card. It was really funny, but please don't send them to the house anymore because sometimes the kids open the mail." So I, like Blogger, thought that there's a market for just about anything and decided to "monetize".

Actually, the decision to "monetize" didn't come till well after the blog had started. The blog was merely intended to be a writing exercise prior to publishing the book or selling the screenplay. Google Blogger took the initiative on monetization. By initiative, I mean Google created a system so easy to integrate that a cupcake baked cat could do it. It was the business proposal equivalent of saying, "Just click the 'yes' button three times and maybe we'll both get lucky, fool". Four years later the scoreboard reads 1,600 hits and a whopping $2.73 earned. I did the math. It's about 1.1 hits a day. I don't feel lucky.

Not any more though. I'm now spectacularly motivated to monetize the crap out of this thing. In the days ahead I'll outline the changes in store for the Grey Ghost blog. (Note first official tease of new and improved blog product)

So count your cats, cause I'm coming.

Tiger

2010-04-13T17:50:00.006-04:00

I really don't care. I think it's his business to deal with and his wife's business to figuratively and literally cut his balls off. I don't care. But...neighbor's daughter? What does he have left on the taboo list? He's hit everything. I'm limiting everything to legal human females, but he's just about hit it all. He's got porn stars, cocktail waitresses, cougars, a girl that lives in a trailer...what am I leaving out? The only thing left that would be a shocker would be sister-in-law. Another golfer's wife I would just shrug, but sister-in-law would complete the list.

His marriage has to be over. If he comes back from that it's way bigger than anything he's done in his sport. He couldn't live in the marriage after all that. Everytime he leaves the house he's gonna get, "...and whatever you do don't accidentally fall on top of any porn stars, cocktail waitresses, cougars, girls who live in trailers, neighbors' daughters, or my sister." Everytime. Forever.

I might slightly care about one thing. It appears he's trying to inch his way back into the public eye and thus to a point where he can endorse again by not really addressing anything directly. I'm sure he's being advised by people much smarter at public relations than I am. I'd just like to see him come clean. Maybe he's able to repair his image to a certain point. I don't know. I think he's done as a "good example". I'd be more interested in his impact as a "horrible warning". I'd like to see him run through the hard dollar cost of all this. I wish somebody would ask, "When you divide the porn stars by the endorsement dollars lost and then add the waitresses, hostesses, and trailer parks by what you're going to have to fork out to the wife, add it all together, how much per bang was it Tiger?" I think he's got the most reckless johnson in history. Talk about your 19 Majors. He should get a green condom for it. If someone has done worse, I'd like to know.

Thank You

2010-02-11T14:52:00.004-05:00

Again I note, this blog sees its most traffic and is most profitable when I do absolutely nothing with it. That is not to suggest that it has any remarkable traffic or is profitable at all. It is only to recognize that by its own low standards of below mediocrity the blog's last few months have been remarkable. Specifically, somebody commented, somebody appeared to have read the whole blog one day, and somebody clicked through three ads increasing the blogs revenues by 60%. That's practically "cue the parade" time for a crappy blog.

The comment thing...maybe I'm getting fooled on. I've been fooled before with stuff like this. I used to get emails that read, "You're blog is interesting. Come read mine.". At first I thought they were legit. Then I realized they were spam. You only have to get fooled on spam once and you end up not so critical of your grandma when she gives a bank CD to a Nigerian prince.

The big traffic day...I could be getting fooled on too. That one actually makes me kind of paranoid. At first I thought, "Hey! Check out all the page views! Somebody actually read this thing!" Then I asked, "Why?" When you're used to 2 or 3 page views a day at best, a 30 page view days gets you thinking. I'm thinking a lawyer. I've probably said something stupid that will generate either a "cease and desist" letter or a "to late, you're already screwed" letter.

The ad clicks...well it's not so remarkable when it takes you from a $1.50 to $2.40 on just 3 clicks. You can probably explain it away with somebody just fell asleep on their keyboard.

It would be remiss of me, though, not to acknowledge and thank anyone who may have actually commented, read the blog, or clicked on any of the ads. And if you are a Nigerian lawyer prince who fell asleep on your keyboard? Well, thank you too.

5 Months Gone. Time to Post!

2009-04-17T14:20:00.010-04:00

Nothing motivates me to post more than somebody blindly landing on this blog. In honor of the faithful reader who not only stopped by, but also clicked on one of the ads for a product that's unavailable any where else but this blog, I will now spew the most topical observations I can recall from the last 5 months. O.K., I can only coherently remember the last 5 days.
And thank you again reader for pushing the blog decisively beyond the $1 dollar ad sales threshold. As soon as I'm done posting I'm doing a word count cost analysis to determine just how futile I am.
Here goes...

Somali Pirates

I got to thinking, who could the pirates nab that we would not be interested in rescuing? Ship captains skippering humanitarian aid for famine relief get a battleship, two destroyers, and a team of Navy SEAL snipers to secure their rescue. Who would merit a big old yawn of indifference if they were grabbed by the pirates?

I have an idea. What about anybody from "The Real Housewives of Who Gives a Damn"? I certainly don't watch this religiously, but I have seen enough to identify some prime pirate fodder. Let me apologize in advance if there is a Real Housewife on this show who isn't vapid, pretentious, obnoxious or some combination of those three. If there is a Housewife unlike that, I apologize. I just have not seen her.

The Housewives fall into that genre I like to call, "Why the Muslims Hate Us". There's a whole network's worth of programming just like this we could consolidate into one channel, pipe into El-Jazeer, and work the Muslims into a bigger frenzy about America than they already are.
I'd like to be on the line when the pirates call in the ransom demand, "Not only are we not paying the ransom, we are sending you a coupon good for 2 more Housewives. You don't really know what you have there do you now?"

Message to America: If a reality tv producer approaches you about filming your life, and you do not have 9 sets of triplets or you do not build motorcycles out of discarded coffee tables in your garage, the producer does not find you compelling. The producer is there to mock you. Of course, if you are vapid, pretentious or obnoxious you are unlikely to realize this. Unfortunately, a Somali pirate is unlikely to realize this either.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/small-cars-rate-poorly-in-new-crash-tests/?ref=automobiles

I suppose the IIHS has a job to do. It seems like a pretty easy job this week. In case you missed it the news is those minuscule tuna cans on wheels fare poorly in crash tests with normal cars. Really? I had no idea you were at risk from other vehicles while hurtling down the road at 40 mph in a dry cleaning bag.

I find humor in that the study only involved regular cars smashing into the matchbox cars, and they skipped over crashing them into suv's. I guess those results would be to obvious. The average Hummer driver is unaware they've hit anything until they stop at a car wash.

Vitamins

2008-11-18T14:24:00.008-05:00

I've finally been dragged into vitamin taking, all because of a buy one get one promotion. The wife didn't want to fully commit to the "get one" side with her vitamins so she "got one" for me. I'm so pleased.
These aren't just any vitamins. It isn't the simple little tablet sitting on the napkin next to your orange juice. No. These are seven huge horse tranquilizers that would be formidable as suppositories. Laid end to end they resemble some of my fingers. Basically, I am required to swallow both pinkies and half of my ring finger daily. It takes concentration, effort, and half a gallon of apple juice to do this.
At this point I cannot discern between the effect of taking the vitamins and drinking half a gallon of apple juice daily. I suspect I would feel similar if I simply drank from the garden hose for ten minutes. I'm sure I wouldn't urinate less.
The vitamins do have the universal vitamin effect of turning your pee a different color. This is the vitamin manufacturer's way of reinforcing that something profound is occuring deep inside of you. I'm ok with this, but would request that I be able to choose the color. I would choose a dark blue.
The vitamins did give a choice of what deficiency in your life you'd like to enhance. They don't portray it in those terms, but let's be honest. That is certainly what they are trying to suggest. My choices were "Sport", "Vitality & Performance", and "Memory Boost". After reading the fine print regarding what "Vitality & Performance" was intended to address, the wife eliminated "V & P" as an option. Make your jokes here, but if the wife is trying to suppress my "vitality" do I really have a "performance" issue? "Memory Boost" was an option because I could not remember how I'd allowed myself to be dragged into the store in the first place. I suggested I'd be in the market for "Memory Erase". The wife knew where I was going with that one. Nothing tells you your marriage is in a good place like being hit in the head with a box of vitamins in the vitamin store.
We settled on the all encompassing "Sport". They call it "Sport" because they can't fit "For the Guy whose unit still works, He remembers how to use it, So let's just call him Sport" on the box.
I'll let you know how it goes. For now I have to go. I think you know where.

Blogs I've Noted

2008-11-14T14:42:00.008-05:00

I've been guilty in the past of mining Blogger's "Blogs of Note" for material. Let's just say I havn't been charitable in my observations. Not any more. From now on a kinder gentler Gray Ghost intends to applaud those Blogs of Note for what they truly are...better than mine. Here's two I saw today

If It's Hip, It's Here

http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/

Number one, love the name. It's clever and it implies authority right out the gate. Two, the site has got to be a swag gold mine, especially after Blogger's little boost. I think that's genius. Getting paid in swag is still getting paid.

The stuff on the site is interesting. Liked the furniture. Really liked the new age freestanding fireplace. Not in the menorah market but if I need one I know where to go. The fashion design out of paper was very impressive. Not sure it's not just art instead of fashion. High fashion can fool someone like me very easily in a "You're kidding, right?" kinda way. The dresses were striking, but you might also find them on If It's Flammable and Impractical It's Here. Best keep the paper dress models away from the menorahs and fireplaces.

I wonder if they can trademark the whole "If It's ____ It's ______" phrasing. They seem vulnerable to infringement like Toys 'R Us was from all the 'R us copy cats. Here, I'll do one..."If It's About Colon Cleansing and Penis Enlargement, It Must Be My Spam Folder". That could get ugly in a hurry.

One Minute Writer

http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

The premise is to take the site's daily prompt and just jot something down in the hope that you become a better writer through the daily exercise... at least I think that's the angle. It makes me feel good to know there are hopelessly enthusiastic people in the world like the girl who runs this blog. It counteracts my relentless cynicism.

Her "comments" guidelines lead me to believe it's probably best if I not post there. Whenever anything is described as "family friendly", my question is...Who's family? Let's face it, what is PG-13 for one family might be PG-17 or PG-8 for someone else. In my case, Parental Guidance means instructing an infant how to operate the remote. Out of respect for the young lady, I'll play along over here.

Thursday's prompt was "What modern technology would you have trouble living without?"

Toilet paper. Is toilet paper a technology? I'll say toilet paper. By modern, do we mean after the dark ages up to satellite radio? I'll still say toilet paper. I've lived out of a car once so I've lived without everything else. I can't recall that I've lived without toilet paper. I can think of no alternative for it. Just your hand is disgusting. Any time your forced by surroundings to use some substitute from nature your hand usely ends up involved anyway and as previously suggested...that's digusting. The only other option would be to live a life half amphibian and the water is far to cold in the winter for that to be feasible. So...toilet paper.

There's my minute. I hope that's what they're looking for.

Okay, I'm Back

2008-11-14T13:07:00.009-05:00

If you hang around the internet long enough, people will mistake you for something else. The Grey Ghost blog is dormant proof of that.

One is, AdSense has got me schlepping weimarner dog wash for a year straight now. Part of that's my fault. If you don't post, AdSense has little else to go on but guessing at a hidden meaning for your blog name. Fortunately, for me and for AdSense, this is not CrotchRot.blogspot.com. To my knowledge neither AdSense or myself has moved any dog wash whatsoever. Just as we previously didn't sell any hammocks or any of the other crap that AdSense's logarithims mistakenly latched on to. I suppose that's not all AdSense's fault. A blog about nothing in particular is pretty far from target marketing. My problem is AdSense refuses to recognize any high end or big ticket items that I gratuitosly mention. I should be able to opt for some sort of Cadillac package of AdWords so if I get a hit it's at $5 a pop. Right now I think there's a pizza coupon at the bottom of the page. The world has enough pizza coupons. C'mon AdSense...Mercedes, Coach, Godiva, Dammit!!

Second, and I don't know if this is coming off the blog or a bad email address, but all of a sudden I'm getting inquiries for auto parts. Today a guy was looking for a transmission for a '98 Geo Metro. You know times are tough when people are repairing cars with parts that probably exceed the value of the car itself. I'm probably getting mail intended for Gray with an "a" Ghost, or the Gay Ghost, or Gary the Ghost at gmail.com. The polite thing to do would be to give them the "wrong address" reply. Not me. I'm going to run over to the blog and make fun of somebody's Geo Metro. Plus I get the added bonus of a week's worth of Geo Metro repair part ads splashed all over the blog. We know that in the world of Geo Metro owners there is one guy interested in repairing his '98 as opposed to the rest of the Geo Metro universe who would appropiately euthanize there vehicle at the first sign of major repair. We know this because the guy emailed me today. So now me and AdSense are going to try and contact him. Gotta like those odds.

Inertia pays...poorly

2008-09-17T14:54:00.009-04:00

In contemplating how to get that first post in after an 11 month hiatus, I've been reading some of my old posts. I came across an interesting fact. In a post from 2007, I made light of the fact that my Google Ad Sense account had a whopping balance of 17 cents. That's right, $.17. Yes, the decimal is in the right place. (I've just noticed that the cents icon of yesteryear has not made to the modern day keyboard. You never really miss the cents icon until all you have is cents.) Today, however, that same account has grown to a whopping 35 cents.

In most businesses a 100% year over year gain is cause for celebration. Not here. Especially when answering the question, "To what do you attribute the dramatic gain?" Answer- "I shut it down." So the most productive time from a fiscal standpoint is when the blog is least productive from a material standpoint. That's encouraging. I suppose the lesson is people like to come over and kick something dead, even if the dead thing is a blog.

Longest Hiatus...Ever

2008-04-19T09:29:00.001-04:00

It's official. I haven't posted anything for 6 months. I'm very proud. The truth is at around 4 months the inertia magnet got switched on pulling me all the way out here to April (...and this quality post).
I'm not sure how much longer Google's willing to carry me.

Stream of Blogishness

2007-10-16T10:01:00.000-04:00

Contemplated changing the blog's name. Don't know what good that would do but the anonymity is getting ridiculous. Got thinking about it as I perused this month's edition of "Blogs of Note" (of which I am not currently, or for that matter, ever).

Checking out [redacted] http://redactedblog.blogspot.com/ , got me thinking that at this point there's no downside to scrapping Grey Ghost and going with something completely different as I have exactly zero readers to consider anyway. [redacted]'s beef was that Brian de Palma is apparently making a movie of the same name and has supplanted [redacted] in all the search engines. By the way, that story is 3 posts down as of this morning, after the post about being scared by a cockroach while pooping and the post about being out drank by his girlfriend's girlfriends. While witty and clever, [redact] doesn't appear to be, at least after 3 posts in, the toughest guy around. Maybe that's why Brian muscled in on his internet turf.

In any case I can relate to the slight of being snubbed by a search engine. The post led me to my insert recurring unit of time here search for the Grey Ghost on the internet. At this point, I should probably explain what led to the name, Grey Ghost, but I won't. Revealing what led to the name, could lead to revealing my identity. Yes, it's true. I'm complaining about my anonymity while continuing to protect it. I believe the appropriate trite phrase is, "You can't have your cake, and eat it too", which always struck me as redundant. If I have the cake, what's to stop me from eating it? Do you mean "have" in the biblical sense? Shouldn't the phrase then be"You can't screw your cake, and then eat it because that would be disgusting"? Sometimes it's better to live with the redundancy.

I digress. Search for Grey Ghost on the internet and you'll find a plethora of disassociated web sites. The only things that are somewhat recurring under Grey Ghost are Wiemaraner breeders and Schwinn bicycle auction sites. The one thing you won't find is this blog. I suppose it's my own fault. I have little understanding of search engines' functionality. I understand this, if I type in the actual address for the blog, http://greyghost.blogspot.com/ , I should come right to this blog. That doesn't always happen. Depending on how you search, I'm anywhere from 10 to 50 pages out on search responses, if I'm in there at all. Jesus!!!

So that got me to thinking I needed to scrap the blog, and come up with a new unique name, and maybe just scrap this whole scatter-shot concept and only write about one recurrent theme. So I went back to "Blogs of Note" and came across a one note blog, Bonobo Handshake, http://bonobohandshake.blogspot.com/ . And, again, 3 posts down is where you hit it. Go ahead, go check it out, I'll wait. You back? You see it? Monkeys biting each others testicles!! I can't compete with that. Nobody can.

In fact the monkeys biting each others testicles only served to strengthen my resolve. I'm not moving. I'm not changing. If the only people who come by are people accidentally looking for dog breeders, bike sellers, and now testicle biting monkeys, and they don't want to stay. Screw 'em and their cake. I will continue to cybersquat right down here at http://greyghost.blogspot.com/, cockroaches be damned.

Although...testiclebitingmonkeys could be a pretty sweet name. Be right back...
It's available!!

The Week in Bad P.R.

2007-10-03T08:48:00.000-04:00

Isiah Thomas

What's left undone for Isiah at this point? Kill somebody?

What a spectacularly bad run of business acumen out of Zeke. I suppose if there weren't lives involved we could put him in charge of Iraq under the "It would be hard to make this situation worse" theory of management. Wait, using that theory the Knicks are probably the best place for him.
Does the monetary judgement apply to the luxury tax cap or is it just on Isiah's tab?
I liked his statement after the verdict also. I don't know if you were listening Isiah, but ,technically, O.J. was more innocent than you were.

Devil Rays Pitching Coach

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/02/Rays/_I_made_a_horrible_mi.shtml

On the surface it's just your garden variety person in the public eye gets popped for a DUI. Dig a little deeper though. This DUI involved a hit run between the pitching coach, and, ...wait for it...the bat boy's car.
Outstanding!!!

Anytime a news item about your franchise includes any of these terms, "odd sequence of events" or "after hours strip club" or "sexual harassment", it's a bad p.r.day.

What a Gal !!!

2007-09-27T12:48:00.000-04:00

Had to link & comment to this You Tube gem.

If you can be strangely attracted to a girl who's just hurled, this is the girl. Noting that I've been gone from the dating scene for an eon and a day, I'm going to guess that this rule still applies...
What happens when your date goes and hurls like that? Answer: For all practical purposes the date is over. Oh, it might be several hours before your date stabilizes enough to allow her to enter your vehicle. If your lucky she has a friend there to hold her hair, absolving you of any first aid responsibilities. But the night is over. You f'ed up. She drank to much.

Not a problem though with Swedish television girl. Not only does she pop right back, she has a hardy "Woo-Hoo" to go with it. What a trooper!! I also enjoyed the dynamic of the guy caller waiting politely for her to return. I'm guessing it's probably the best looking girl he's ever talked to, so there's no downside for him to wait a couple more..."Hey! She's Back!"

I'm predicting great things for her beyond You Tube.

Messin with AdSense

2007-09-26T13:58:00.001-04:00

Because I'm constantly embarassed by the crap I'm pimping for AdSense, I thought I'd itemize a few of the luxury items that are an essential part of my life.

Beer - I can't drink domestics anymore. I don't know when or where I became a snob like that. Mostly I get Becks or Heineken. They seem to alternate the grocer's special like Coke and Pepsi. I also will buy more beer before I'm out, and I'll buy a different brand than I have currently. Eventually, I build up a little smorgsbard of imports in the back of the fridge. Right now, I've got a couple Foster's, some Presidente, a Tecate, and some Molsons. I delude myself that I'm some kind of epicure and that this is my little wine collection. Then an afternoon of games I want to watch comes on or I'll cook on the grill for a couple of hours, and I destroy my collection. It's a decidely non-epicurean exercise.
Wait, is beer a luxury item? It must be because the wife is always trying to get me to give it up.

Wine - I don't drink wine. It makes me fall asleep. I used to drink some wine on the days I needed wine for a marinade. Then I would drink a Concho Y Toro merlot. I don't know who introduced me to it but I liked it. Then I realized I didn't need a $10 bottle of wine to marinate a piece of meat. Now I just get generic off the shelf Red Cooking Wine for marinades. The family hasn't noticed a change, and to my knowledge neither has the meat. In defense of the good people at Concho, I took a swig one day of the RCW and the Concho is much better.

Hold it...middle age intrudes.......this will have to do for now

Because Somebody Cares

2007-09-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

I don't hit this thing regularly. There's no recurrent theme to anything I do put up here. I can't find my own blog using any of the standard search portals. I don't get "tags". I know little HTML. I don't get Digg'ed or Technorati'ed or any other blog-o-metric'ed.
Oh, and AdSense has me pimping the most eclectic bunch of crap. I don't think I'm technically allowed to specifically mock any product in my banner ads. Let's just say if I where a free standing retail unit, I probably couldn't rent a stall in the scuzziest flea market. Neiman Marcus this ain't. Whoops, there I go again. "Scuzzy flea market", coming to a banner ad 4 inches north of here soon.
However, right as rain...wait...right as rain in the desert, Somebody stops by here. And every once in a while that Somebody clicks on one of the ads. Maybe it's just a little Google gremlin that comes around, runs through the blog, clicks on an ad, does a search, then splits. Gets my hopes up. Gets me to post a little more. What's it to Google? If it takes off, Google's got another revenue stream. If it doesn't, they weren't going to pay me anyway.
Maybe Somebody is just somebody who wandered in here by mistake. They saw the ad and clicked on it out of morbid curiosity, in a "I can't believe anyone would try to online retail that" kinda way.
Or maybe, given what I think of my product line, my Somebody is a weirdo. Maybe AdSense is a stronger product than I thought. They've got my blog pegged, and they know to target market to the weirdo likely to stop by. I don't care. It may be a weirdo, but it's my weirdo and I'm pitching to him, her, or it.
On to the drivel...

The Emmys
Turned it on and off a couple times, then mostly off. I'm not sure if I should feel good about myself or feel old because every time I watched it was award presenters I'd never heard of giving awards to shows I'd never seen. Then I remembered why I was indifferent this year. The best show on tv last year, hands down, was The Wire. It might be the best show on tv, ever. Didn't get a nomination.

Just Tell Me You Love Me
Listen, just tell me when the nudity is on. Let me summarize a couple of the story arcs.
First is the married couple who hasn't had sex in a year. It's not her. She's going to the therapist, and complaining. The husband is Jonesie from "Carnivale". The problem could be Jonesie's johnson is shot from all the carnies he was banging on his last show. Let me play therapist for a second, "Have you tried acting like a slut? No? Try that, then we Viagra him, and if none of that works we ask him if there's been any changes to the constitution if you hear what I'm saying." How is this drama? It's a guy's johnson. It's not complicated. Am I right ladies? You tug on it...O.K., I'll stop.
Second, is the couple who can't conceive. It's also not her. She's been to the fertility clinic. (Can they make it any clearer who this show is geared to? It's currently Men-2 Women-0 on the Dysfunction Scoreboard) Again, there's little drama to the resolution. First, you go get Mr. BlankShooter a big boy hair cut. Did you ever consider the guy might not be capable because he looks like he's 12? Then you drag him to the fertility clinic. If it's him, you cut bait and work the waiver wire for his replacement. I ask you, what would happen in the wild if he was say an infertile lion with a hopelessly messy mane? That's right. He'd be a lonely lion.
All I'm saying is, this isn't helping. Look, if you want to make a long drawn out treatise on men & women & couples & relationships & sex, I'm fine. Just make it interesting. Whatever happened to "Sex and the City"? Bouncy, frothy, fun, and sexy. You know it what it was out here? A little middle age marital aphrodisiac. What am I going to do, pour wine down the wife on a Sunday night? I count on HBO to help out a little. Boring doesn't help.

All right, gotta go. Had a few more topics, but middle age beckons with the responsibilities. That sounds bad, but at least my johnson works.
Wait, who am I talking to? It is probably just the Google Gremlin stopping in.

Vick

2007-08-28T08:04:00.000-04:00

This is getting to be a witch hunt.

I'm not excusing what he did. I'm not excusing how he conducted himself when it first came to light. I'm certainly not excusing his judgement in being involved in something like this in the first place. He was monumentally stupid, and it's going to cost him. Big time.

I wonder what the gang tackling would look like if this had happened thirty years ago pre-ESPN. First time offenders in dogfighting typically walk with no jail time.

Michael Vick's going to jail. He's possibly getting suspended from the NFL beyond his prison sentence. Arthur Blank's sending the message he's never coming back to the Falcons.

People are piling on. It's too much.

2 Posts in June, 1 in July, & Now This

2007-08-24T12:30:00.000-04:00

O.K. So I've been busy. In an effort to remain anonymous to my audience of none on the internet I won't go in to what I've been up to, so there goes that wealth of material. Suffice it to say I did my part to keep the price of oil over $70 a barrel and may I never see another continental breakfast.

But the Blog must roll on, so here is this month's content. Like a lot of people, in the summer I'll expand the range of crap I'll watch for more than two minutes. What follows is my one minute synopsis of that crap.

John from Cincinnati - HBO will always get me for at least a few weeks of whatever they trot out after The Sopranos or The Wire. Liked Deadwood. Watched all of but ended up ambivalent over Carnivale. Never got into Rome.
Just watched most of this season. What's most implausible about this show is not the levitation or any other mystical power crap that gets prescribed to some of the characters. What's most implausible is that it's a show about a bunch of uptight surfers. Do you know any surfers? They're not uptight. In fact, they're the least uptight people on the planet.
That and the fact that Rebecca DeMornay is a terrible actor. That's what bugs me about this. Next season when they're doling out mystical powers, muting Rebecca should be item one.

Entourage - Like the show for these specific characters, Drama, the agent, & the agent's assistant. Everybody else is a piece of wood, and a future Pet Star celebrity judge with Rebecca DeMornay. There, I said it.

Flight of the Conchords - It's been completely hit or miss. One week is laugh out loud funny. The next week bombs. I don't see how you can last with that kind of consistency.

Survivorman - Should be called "What I Won't Do Instead of Dying". Me? I won't drink my own piss like this guy did in the Kalahari. I'll just die instead. Implausible part for me is the guy's encyclopedic knowledge of what's edible or inedible. I'd screw that part up. I'd probably be 15 minutes from rescue when I started gnawing on something poisonous.
My version of the show would be shorter too. It would have handy tips like, "Get a table near the bar so if the barmaid splits you can get up & get a drink yourself" and "The deliveryman is not likely to find your house before the pizza congeals. Go get it yourself". Manly stuff like that.

Meerkat Manor - First, I thought "Hey, look at them. They're cute." Then I thought, "This whole voice over narration is just a b.s. personification plot device layed over meerkat footage." Then I thought, "You could basically think up any kind of plot to lay over the meerkats. Say like, NOTIFY GOOGLE OF ANY INAPPROPIATE CONTENT." Then I thought, "A meerkat is basically a dirtier ferret, and ferrets stink." Then I changed it.

Rescue Me - Tried to like this. Tried to watch it for parts of two seasons. Thought I liked Dennis Leary's edgy brand of humour. Eventually got tired of it and him. Leary's nothing more than Richard Lewis with more self assurance. Eventually the one note schticks wear thin.

That thing with Glenn Close they run after Rescue Me - I don't even know the name of it, and I don't want to know. Let me see, Glen Close has been a psychopathic one night stand, Cruella DeVille, and now, if I'm watching the trailer right, a megabitch attorney. If when I see your face on the screen I instinctively cover my genitals, I'm not likely to be entertained by anything your in.

Armadillo Disinvite

2007-07-20T09:20:00.001-04:00

I have an armadillo, or rather, he has me. He has my attention. I'm not sure I have his. I'm assuming I'm dealing with an armadillo. I don't have a smoking armadillo gun. All I have is a couple holes in the yard and the assessment of the guy at Home Depot who stands in the moth ball section. His assessment, "Yep, that's an armadillo." Who am I to question that? Answer = No one.

Frankly, I'm happy to be dealing with an essentially passive creature noted for its unusual appearance and defense mechanism rather than something that could, in fact, kill you. I had have to be pretty unlucky and manage this pretty badly for the armadillo to kill me. The wife, of course, is disappointed that death (mine, not the armadillo) is an unlikely outcome. Her initial plan called for me to stick my whole head or failing that, my whole arm into the hole to determine what made the hole, and potentially what was in it. Basically, I would be the only participant in the wife designed party game, "Bobbing for Wild Critters". I have enough good sense not stick my face in uncharted holes or do anything the wife suggests that involves peril. I, however, do not have enough good sense to leave a woman who is continually trying to kill me.

Plan A in the armadillo eradication plan was to simply refill the holes he dug. "Hey, hey armadillo. Let's have none of that. I'll correct your transgression this one time as a gesture of my neighborliness. But no more." That was my classic personification misjudgement of the animal. If someone covers my hole repeatedly, I'm going to stop digging. Animals, though, are too resilient in the face of adversity. I hate that about them.

At this point it became time to contemplate the framework of Plan B. The obvious choice here was eviction. The armadillo had the advantage here in that it has the perfect characteristic to thwart its removal. The armadillo is nocturnal. In 2007, I am not. Even when I was nocturnal I don't think I had enough discipline to catch an armadillo. As an armadillo has little romantic possibilities, it's hard to imagine that I would have dedicated much noc of my turnal to catching him.

No, Plan B would involve deterrent.
Wife, "Where are you going?"
Me, "To Home Depot to pick up moth balls the universal deterrent."
Wife's witty retort, "A moth didn't make those holes."
B actually became a multi part project. Step 1 was tossing all the backyard dog turds down the hole mostly because it was a good oppurtunity to multi-task. I need to de-turd-mine the back yard, and I need something smelly for the armadillo. Voila. Step 2 was jamming a hose and gallons of water down the armadillo hole. The goal here was twofold. One was to get the armadillo out of the hole. If he had come out, there was no concrete plan to deal with him other than a shovel and my own resolve to persuade him to go.
My neighbor (potentially), "The neighbor just herded an angry wet armadillo into our yard."
My response, "So?".
My solution to neighborhood problems is to make them "not currently my problem". What can I say I'm American. Goal 2 of step 2, turn basement of armadillo hole into a dog poop stew, was just another personification on my part. Me? I would be fairly annoyed by wet dog crap covered sleeping quarters. So far B is working, but that doesn't mean that I'm not working on C.

Plan C begins with the question, Why does an armadillo find my yard attractive? My point is if he wants to live here, a hole in the yard is not enough. Let's bring him in the house, and really make him live the life. My life. We'll begin with, Take an Armadillo to Work Day.
An associate, "You're armadillo stinks of dog poop and moth balls."
Me, "Whose doesn't?"
Then we'll take him back to the house. We'll let him deal with some real issues, not the kind you can dust with moth balls and hope they go away.

I think he stays gone this time. I think he senses my resolve.

The Sopranos

2007-06-11T09:18:00.000-04:00

Like everybody else I said, "That's it?" . No wait. First I said, "No bleeping way the cable went out right then!" . Then I said, "That's it?" and then I said, "That's got to be the worst ending of a series ever". We say that because the expectation was so high, and in no small part because that's what HBO pumped you to believe.
Today? It's not my show or your show. It's David Chase's show. I think he's acknowledged that he always knew how the show would end. If that's the ending, he's the artist and that's the ending.
Look Godfather III sucked. But Michael Corleone & Tom Hagen are alive, so if Francis Ford Coppolla wants to make Godfather IV ? Guess what? I'm in.
Same thing here. You've got Tony, Paulie Walnuts, and Little Stevie Van Zandt still kicking. That ain't half bad.
Finally, what if Chase never has another hit show? What if he finds himself years from today with nothing but a string of whiffs from this point? My point is, if you had a golden goose, would you kill it?

Because It's Been a While

2007-06-07T13:24:00.000-04:00

This Week's Sign of the Middle Age Apocalypse

Marcia Brady is on VH1's Celebrity Fit Club. I had no idea. I don't really watch that CarWreck Sunday Night lineup on VH1. It's the television equivalent of the magazine you read in the bathroom. A quick snippet, then you're out of there.
I was doing just that with one of the show's reruns last week, and there was Marcia Brady. If you were born somewhere in the late 50's early 60's and you were heterosexual, there's a good chance Marcia Brady was that first sexual icon. Unless, of course, it was Jan Brady or Ginger or Mary Ann. If it was Cindy Brady, you're sick & I want you out of my blog. I digress.
Worst of all, Marcia was on Celebrity Fit Club to lose thirty pounds. Well Marcia, we've all let it slide a little bit. I'm sure you're still a go for all of us, before or after. It's Marcia Brady, who would pass on that?
Still, nothing says we're all getting older like Marcia Brady thirty pounds overweight.

Magic Tricked

Orlando Magic - "Almost Coach & Actual Coach, could each of you list your most recent professional experiences and describe your public image?"

Almost Coach - "I won back to back national championships, and I'm squeaky clean."

Actual Coach - "My employer threw me under a bus, and I resemble a porn star."

Orlando Magic - "Super, now let's go sell some season tickets!!"

Considering the Last 2 Posts

Isn't there some VH1 sitcom potential featuring Stan Van Gundy, Ron Jeremy, & Jeff Van Gundy? There's the built in recurring, "He's not my brother. That's his brother. I'm the one with a horse c--k." joke. And then there's the, "The one who's hung like a canary is the ankle grabber." That's half the pilot right there. Plus there's, what, half a million double entendres to use for the title. You could call the show something different every week, and people would still know what you were talking about. How long till both Van Gundy's & Jeremy are out of work and available? Answer - In about sixty NBA games.
VH1 has got to be about out of D-List celebrities. I know they are because I don't recognize half the people on with Marcia. They need to sprinkle in more jock types to keep that car wreck premise fresh, and broaden their demographic more to say people like me.

28 Million Reasons to Hate the Yankees

2007-05-07T13:52:00.000-04:00

Assuming I'm looking at this year's payroll numbers, the Clemens deal exceeds 2 clubs total payrolls, is greater than 50% of the payroll for 12 other teams, and probably exceeds the GNP of a couple third world countries.

That seems fair.

It's good work if you can find it. I suppose the situation is unique in that there are not any other Hall of Fame pitchers sitting around waiting to get picked up for their summer jobs.

The Red Sox and Yankees would get killed by their fans if they didn't spend. Still, when their fiscal policy looks like PacMan Jones in a strip club, it's hard not to root against them.

I say it again...no wonder the Muslims hate us.

Dirkie Dumps Dallas

2007-05-04T12:30:00.000-04:00

Has anyone made the , "Now Dirk Nowitzki gets to carry around Peyton Manning's monkey", joke yet? No?
Then dibs.

People will rip Dallas today because that's what we do, rip people, but they caught the perfect storm in first round match-ups. They hadn't beat Golden State in the regular season, so it's no great revelation that the Warriors gave them trouble. Golden State wins the first game, negates home court advantage, and now Cinderella's got a head of steam. Yeah, a 1 shouldn't lose to a 8, but some times in sports a team perceived to be weaker just gives a team perceived to be stronger fits. Happens.

Dirk gets the, "he's not Larry-Magic-MJ", talk, but who is? Sports is littered with outstanding player/never one the big one. OK, he went 2 of 13. If he went 10 of 13 and lost, media would bait him into throwing a teammate under the bus a la Manning and, "we had protection issues all day." Point is, if you didn't win there's no winning.

Cuban, I think, might be the Mavs jinx. I don't mind Cuban...until the ball tips. There's always a controversial owner, a Charlie Finley, a Steinbrenner, a Daniel Snyder, who is a flash point for their team. Off the court, I see him as nothing more than a strong advocate for his team, and the league as a whole. On the court, he reminds me of an overzealous parent who does his kid more harm than good. I don't think the Mavericks team is aware of him, or affected by any of his histrionics. I just think he's a karma killer with all his demonstrative uber-nerdiness, and the basketball god smites his team for it. Mark, get in the owner's box and chill.

One last note from this series...at the gym Wednesday caught the talking head/roundtable segment of "Rome is Burning" on ESPN. One of the heads was one of the idiot twin hosts of ESPN's "Cheap Seats". He said, and I paraphrase here, "The Mavericks are too soft because they won too many games this year. They needed to lose more to toughen up."
Maybe the stupidest comment in the history of talking heads. Thank you, though. It just reinforces for me why "Cheap Seats" is tied with bowling reruns for dead last on things I'll watch on ESPN.

Good luck with the monkey Dirk.
Love,
Peyton

Today in Idiot Idiosyncracies

2007-05-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

First, a classic that we all deal with if not daily at least weekly. It's the deep thinker you are forced to nudge because they are unaware that the traffic light as changed. Not the one who slinks off in shame because you have publicly chided them in front of all the other drivers. The one who acts perturbed that you have impatiently shooed them along. One question that arises, What would be an acceptable amount of time for the rest of us to wait for you to remove your head from your butt? Because that's really unknowable. Is it 2 turns of the light? 3? If I honk after 3 turns of the light, could we expect that your mood might shift from annoyed to sheepish? Frankly, I'm unwilling to find out. I can see in in your car. Your fascinated with something in your console, or your fixated on something outside your car to the point that your oblivious to the fact that you are in a car.
Look, I'm sure you're embarassed. No one likes being told what to do. But I've mastered the light & polite wake 'em up beep. It's not like I've snuck into your house, and blown an air horn in your ear while your sleeping. Move along, and live your life so the rest of us can get on with ours.

The second is one I didn't know existed until I had occasion to frequent the inside of a post office. This is the person who inexplicably stands frozen in front of the mail slots. The Green Light Sitter is a creature of their own inattention. The genesis of the Mail Slot Statue is unknown. What is known is they'll get right up to the slot and stop functioning. Why?
Are they confused by the terms of the slot? Stamped or Metered? Do you really need help with that?
Pick Up Times? If you're calculating the likely arrival date, shouldn't you just overnight it?
Perhaps they're contemplating if there's an efficient method for collecting the mail on the other side of the slot? Fair enough. We can't see back there. Nobody wants their mail to fall behind somebody's desk.
Maybe they read "Where The Wild Things Are" too many times to their kid, and now they're afraid the slot is actually the mouth of a big hairy monster. Now we're getting warm.
I'm going with, they freeze because they're afraid that there is nothing at all behind the slot. A black hole, a big gaping void in the universe that takes your letters and never delivers them. It's a little peek into the psyche of irrational fears right there in front of the mail slots.
Me? I step around them. I don't have a horn to blow inside the post office, and it helps them to see others use the slots fearlessly without hesitation. You can't stop time, and you can't stand in front of the mail slots all day. We send our kids off to college, and we send our mail to be ,well, mailed.

Now, please, get out of my way. I have a life to lead.

Google Loaded For Google Bear

2007-05-02T13:17:00.000-04:00

What better way to enhance the revenue stream than by inserting all things Google into the template? AdSense has been open for one year, and I've pulled down a whopping 17 cents which Google still refuses to pay me. I'm not forgetting Google. It's certainly not the sporadic posting or the substandard content that's limited the success of the site. It's the fact that the site doesn't have 3 more points of purchase.
With that in mind, I've upgraded the site to include Google Search, Google Referrals, and Google Something Else for your purchasing pleasure. Including the 17 cents already earned, I should expect to exceed the clever name of a popular rapper some 6 months from now. Not his earnings, just his nickname. Wait, why even bring him into this? Never mess with a guy who's been shot and lived.
What chance does anytone have of seeing any of this, let alone using any of the Google crap? I couldn't hardly fit it where I wanted it in the template. I'm like a rookie salesman loaded up with brochures, a sample case, and zero chance of moving a dime of product.
I also took this opportunity to review the Google prohibited practices. Oops. I think I've already violated seven of them. However, like little old ladies and the IRS, Google's not really looking for the ten clicks a month sites.
Seriously though Google, when can I expect the 17 cents? I've had my eye on 3 pieces of gum for 2 months now.

Tis the Season

2007-03-14T12:54:00.000-04:00

With the return of the college basketball tournament it's also time for the return of the idiot masquerading as a casual fan. The idiot manifests himself in two distinguishable forms. They are:

1) The "Are You Ready" Guy

As in, "Are you ready for the March Madness?". He immediately identifies himself as a dork by referring to the tournament as "March Madness". It doesn't much matter because you probably already knew he was a dork to begin with. They need to retire "March Madness" like they need to retire the cheesy "One Shining Moment" song, if for no other reason than to save the dorks from themselves .

Really, the "Are You Ready" guy is prevalent year around near any major event. For instance, are you ready for Christmas, to get married , for the rapture? It's nothing more than a rhetorical dork conversation starter.
Don't play. I will usually return the dork rhetorical question with a blank stare. Uncomfortable self reflection is good for dorks. If the dork, however, as wandered into the red zone of my intolerance, I will respond with, "Are you ready for me to punch you?"

Public service announcement for dorks: The correct topical question is "Have you done your bracket?"

2) The Guy Who's Watched Too Many Highlights And Wanders On To A Court

I still play a little. I shouldn't play. I'm a shadow of my shadow's shadow, but I still play. One of the reasons I still play is I enjoy the culture of the regular game.
When someone new comes to the game, one of two things happen. The language of the game is universal, and if a guy can play he is immediately integrated into the group.
If he can't play...well...he can't play or he won't want to for long. This is the time of year you can spot them getting out of their car. There's any number of ways to spot them. Here were two that came to my game this week
Wearing a Watch- Come on, if you need to keep track of time you don't need to be here. Not to mention it's like playing with a pair of brass knuckles on. It's a head wound waiting to happen.
Get off the court.
Suspect Garb- Not always a dead giveway as some people are quirky and ringers are known to come in disguise. You have to let them make a couple of trips up and down the court, and then you know. This week our suspect had on some fruity/wacky coconuts beach bar tank top and a pair of cross trainer/aerobics shoes that looked like something my wife would wear. He came with watch guy, but , again, you never know. Maybe he's the one that can play. 3rd trip down he took a shot that looked like a pose in an S&M catalog, and threw it over the backboard. Then he dribbled it off his cute little Reeboks. Then when he attacked him like sharks every time he touched the ball. Then he left and took Watch Guy with him.

Such is the Madness of March.

NCAA Tournament Time

2007-03-12T14:37:00.000-04:00

About a week ago I noticed the cover page on Microsoft Office online featured templates for the NCAA tournament. You know it's big when the industry leader in productivity software addresses what is essentially an unproductive act for the workplace. Microsoft and your employer are pretty much acknowledging, "Hey, we know you're going to do it, so here's the brackets so you don't kill more time doing it. Now hurry up and do it and get back to work."
Here's the link if you need brackets http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT011865541033.aspx

If you're not aware, the NCAA purchased the the NIT tournament in 2005. Kudos to the NCAA for returning that tournament to the bracket format. It's not going to supplant the big tournament, but it should regain some of its popularity due to that move. Why? Because it's the perfect gambling side car. $20 for the NCAA, $10 for the NIT. Start it in your office today.
Again, here's your brackets http://www.cstv.com/auto_pdf/p_hotos/s_chools/nit/sports/m-nit/auto_pdf/2007-Bracket

2007-03-05T11:50:00.000-05:00

Page 2 Pushing Match
An interesting little debate about media characterizations of the NBA All Star weekend in Vegas between ESPN sports columnists

Bill Simmons http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons

&

Scoop Jackson http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/070228

At the risk of getting skewered by offering any kind of opinion about anything regarding race, this whole thing mirrors the acknowledged ground rules about the N-word. Black people can use it, white people can't.

Forbes Ranks Sports GM's
Just go look at the list...http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/03/02/sports-greatest-gms-biz-cz_jg_0302gms.html

Kevin McHale & Billy King of the 76ers are 1 and 3. Hey Forbes, if that's your outcome, you're going to need new methodology. On a positive note the Forbes GM list could give the Madden curse a run for the money

Championship Week & 'Teen Seeds
The NCAA, the media, and whoever else has done a great job in hyping the national championship tournament. When an event brings in non-fans in droves, you know you're doing a job.
I would argue that this week is almost as good. The beauty of this week is in the parity and the stakes. Yes, every year a 12 seed beats a 4 seed, but despite, what, maybe 2 scares a 16 never beats a 1. However, there is still great drama played in the battle for the teen seeds.
Tonight Niagra plays Sienna for the Metro Atlantic Championship. One will get the NCAA bid. They'll both fight to the death for that right. The best sports can offer is when the fight takes place on the edge of a cliff.
Here it is.

Back From the Dead

2007-02-25T15:23:00.000-05:00

Well, not really dead. Just distracted.
I was shooting to stay gone a good 6 months straight. That would put me on target for a mid-April return, but a funny thing happened. ...I started getting hits. How, I'll never know, but I got more hits in the past month than I did when I was throwing crap up here twice weekly. And in the upset of the century, somebody clicked on one of the ads. Amazing. The blog's been open three sporadic years, and I've earned exactly 17 cents which Google refuses to pay me.
With results like that it would be unfair to you my public to stay gone the whole 6 months. So without sorting through everything on the shelf that was...hey look, in drafts something from December..
O.K. I'm back. How about something topical? That's right an Oscar preview. There's probably about as many blogs as there are Oscar previews thus I get one too. I'll only do Best Picture because I'm too lazy.

The Departed
Didn't see it. But you know what? If I come across Goodfellas or Casino, I'm tuning in. Same for Taxi Driver depending on where I catch it, and what I've got to do. So Scorcese's got two and a half movies in my heavy replay rotation. That counts for something. Definitely a contender.

Little Miss Sunshine
Didn't see it. I like movies about dysfunctional families. Dysfunctional families are like car wrecks. Glad you're not in it, can't help but look. I tried to go witness protection to get away from my dysfunctional family. So you know, you can't buy your way into witness protection. They reserve it for state's witnesses. ...So there's hope

Letters from Iwo Jima
Didn't see it. You know what else is big on the replays with me? War movies. Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, Stalag 17, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and about 10 others I can't think of right now are all big productivity suckers if I find them on. My only hesitation would be , geez Clint could the boxing movie be more depressing?

Babel
Didn't see it. A connect the dots starting with something that happens in the Middle East, right? Didn't this movie come out last year when it was called Syriana ? Speaking of Syriana, I just saw it on HBO. What was the big deal? Why did Clooney get an Oscar for it? It sucked, and he was boring. The guy's amusing when he's acting cool and cracking wise, see Ocean's Whatever. Why'd the Academy go screw things up by sucking up to him, and giving him an Oscar?

The Queen
Didn't see it. How did this movie get made, and who did they think was going to see it? A movie about one of the most boring public figures of the last 100 years? If you cut it down to 15 minutes, and stuck it on the History Channel I'm still not tuning in. You know where there's a movie? A movie about the guy who sold this movie to the people who paid for it to be made. Here's some possible titles for that movie, He Was Full of Crap or I Can't Believe We Bought That or Now We're Broke.

And the Oscar goes to ...The Departed
because I'll probably watch it about 50 times when it comes to the movie channels.
Little Miss Sunshine ? maybe 4 or 5 times on replay, maybe. Truth is on the dysfunctional families, you watch it too much, you start to see your own dysfunction, then it's time to turn away. You're not there for self-help.
Letters, could be. Just not the sure fire replay lock of the Scorcese flick.
Babel, might fall asleep by the end like I did with Syriana.
The Queen, depending on where they place it on the dial, will race by it to get to SportsCenter or Cinemax's NightCap.

So there you go. I'm back.
Now click on my ads.

Saw This Sitting in Drafts So Hey Let's Post It

2006-12-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

Hey look it's my blog! Right were I left it. Anybody miss me? Waiting...

Two months is a long time to "hiat", but hey, I've been busy!!! Besides, no real problem in interrupting the steady stream of Adsense dollars. That's my point there is no stream. No, no, my prostate's fine. My blog sucks.

What have I been up to? I wish I knew. All I know is I'm older.

Here's my mini-update of the last two months:

Media

Heroes - Liked it, like a lot of people. Mondays are bad for me though. Probably haven't seen it since the fourth episode. Somebody tell me, the blonde, have they revealed that she's not actually a super hero? I've had girlfriends like that. Homicidal split personalities aren't special. They're common, especially in ex-girlfriends.

Thursday Night - Thank you NBC and CBS for pitting 3 good shows against each other. And in typical me fashion, I'm watching parts of all of them, enjoying none of them. Once again, I think it's part of a plot to make me by a Tivo. I don't want Tivo. I don't want to watch that much tv. I guess if I felt like I needed Tivo, I'd also feel like I needed 50 cats to keep me company. I bet Tivo won't use that in an ad campaign, "Tivo-Cleaner Than Cats".
Oh, and if I have a hidden immunity idol, I'm not telling anyone I have it. Apparently, having an immuntiy idol is like having a large johnson, it's impossible not to share.

SNL Shows & SNL - Studio 60: What a pretentious piece of crap that turned out to be. Did anyone bother to ask Sorkin, "Wait, you mean it's not funny?". Granted, I never watched West Wing because I thought it was a pretentious piece of crap. I can't believe NBC let's one of it's franchises get sullied like that. Three shows in turned it off mid-episode. It's that bad.
30 Rock: Probably seen 3 1/2 shows. I don't see quite the parallel to SNL. It's SNL cast, with a SNL host, but every thing is more character driven, if that makes sense. In any case, at least it's funny. Tina Fey's a clever writer, but a weak actress. Alec Baldwin carries more weight here than the "Before" Kristie Alley. If the show lost him, it would be dead in a week.

Miami-FIU

2006-10-20T14:19:00.000-04:00

I guess the funniest part of the the University of Miami/FIU melee has been Lamar Thomas' contrition. If you missed that part, Lamar apoligizied for, ahem, forgoing journalistic neutrality in his role as color announcer for that game. I haven't heard a tape of the broadcast. I've only seen the text of Lamar's comments. My question is, did the play-by-pay guy try to stop Lamar or did he stand there playing Mike Myers to Lamar's Kanye West? Lamar's mea culpa included the news that Lamar was hurt to learn that his friend and fellow 'Cane Michael Irvin had thrown him under the bus on ESPN by calling for Lamar's firing. Lamar felt this was unkind in light of the support Lamar had expressed for Irvin last year when somebody left their crackpipe in Michael's car. Gee Lamar, Michael has a job at ESPN. You're a sub-contractor on a FOX regional broadcast. Where do you think he's going to land on this? In addition to being a poor judge of sportmanship, Lamar is also confused as to who his friends are.
Enjoy this clip from Lamar's college career http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SkoT0T4vWk
We can only hope Lamar's back in another couple of years with something dubious for us all to enjoy.

Not a Blog of Note

2006-10-18T14:53:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not a blog of note. I feel it's important to make that distinction. In fact as I push toward 2 millionth place on Technorati, I've also noted that Technorati no longer updates my pings.
Ping You, Technorati.
That's o.k.. I'm comfortable here tied in 2 millionth place with all the other Mr. Irrelevants. Fact is I'll never be a blog of a note. Blogs of note have themes. I don't have a theme. I have cynicism. There's nothing notable about cynicism.

Here's my brief cynical take on some of the current blogs of note:

http://davidmetz.net/blog goes by "Philosophical Musings" . Sigh. You lost me at philosophical. I had a minor in Philosophy in college. You might remember philosophy by another word, boring. Honestly, if you can't make a buck with it, or use it to pick up girls, what good is philosophy?
Among other things "Musings" muses on alternative fuels, veganism, and his cat. Me? I got to split. I've got to load my cat hating dog into my Hummer take him out for some 1/4 pounders. Probably won't be stopping back by.

http://threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com Kind of got a Folger's commercial feel to it. If you haven't figured it out, posts consist of listing 3 happy little ordinary things from everyday life. Lady who writes it seems nice enough. I almost feel bad mocking it.
Tell you what though, let me pitch in with 3 beautiful things from my day.
1) I hope the coffee tickles my colon enough so that I'm out the gate most mornings having taken a colossal cathartic dump.
2) Who cares.
3) Hope the family steers clear of me when I get home until I've pounded at least one martini.
Just beautiful.

http://freeitunessongs.blogspot.com Free because they suck.

http://nurse-ratcheds.blogspot.com Nice themed site by a nurse mostly for a nurse. Again, seems like a nice lady, but Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Could you pick someone or something less sinister or ominous? How about http://flyingmonkey.blogspot.com
The guy's not using it.

Note that.

This Week in Spam

2006-10-09T12:32:00.000-04:00

Here's a new feature where I respond to some of the more notable spam messages I've received lately.

Enjoy act while others wait! - I don't think I'm going to enjoy the act if I know others are waiting for me to finish. What "others"? The others from Lost? And where are they waiting? In the next room or behind a velvet rope right next me? I don't think this spam was for me at all. I think it was for the waiting others. It should have read, "Form a line behind the rope, he'll be done in a minute, then it's our turn."

Enjoy ssex with her! - Yeah, I'd be stuttering too with all those other people in my bedroom.

She wants a better sex? Make a miracles in bed! - Apparently the pizza guy is now addressing sexual dysfunction. Not that I'm in the market, and I resent the implication, but if I was buying, I think I'd only be interested in the one miracle. No sense spoiling her.

Even if you have no erection problems, soft Cialis can... - Wait, I'm not having a problem and I'm still supposed to take it? That's still an erection problem. It's just a different kind of erection problem. So I'd walk around like a human sun dial, but I couldn't go near schools and playgrounds.

Want to increase your volume by 500%? - No. I mean honestly, if I don't want a 24 hour flagpole, would I want to have a little Vesuvius in my pants?

Erections are still possible Lamar - No, I'm not Lamar, but I half to admit I felt pretty sorry for Lamar after this. Not possible, ever? That's a pretty tough ice breaker for Lamar to have to throw out there on dates. It's right up there with "I live with my mom". Good luck buddy.

Dorothy has a secret from your Vegas vacation - Then Dorothy needs to shut up! Did Dorothy not see the ads? What goes in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless that fusspot Dorothy sees you. Then you can expect an extortion attempt when you get home.

This is the one from Celeste, piano the non-chalantly lodge a bear...- This one made perfect sense to me, so I bought it.

Blogging

2006-10-04T14:45:00.000-04:00

Welcome to "I Got Nothing Done Today Wednesday".

Missing several components necessary to complete today's to do list, including the all important initiative, I turn instead to the utterly unproductive, namely the blog. I've said it before, Blogger- More Unproductive than Microsoft Solitaire. Mine is an easily excused and barely noticed absence from the workforce. Fact is everything's finished tomorrow. But does that little speed bump create a ripple somewhere in the economy? Can the Federal Reserve measure the impact of blogs on the economy's productivity? What's the stat? There's a new blog created every insert accurate time ratio here. Probably something along the lines of a sucker born every minute. Who's counting and how much does the counting guy's job suck?

These days I find myself attributing any little service disruption to a blog.
The garbage men are late today. They must have stopped to write in their blogs.
The drive thru line is slow. The teenagers stopped cooking fries to write in their blogs.
Grandpa died. The guy giving him cpr left to write in his blog.

Fact is, the people cranking out a new blog a minute? No one asked them to do it. And if no one asked them to do it, you've got real good odds they're burning up useful time on them, like I am now. Ask yourself, where are the garbagemen?

The Contender Wrap

2006-09-27T15:11:00.000-04:00

I hope for Sugar Ray's sake that that snooze of a final didn't kill the franchise. Sugar got a little heavy on the hype during the intro by comparing it to the Super Bowl. I like it Ray, but that's a little strong. Had some solid fights this year, though I think last year's show was better on the human drama scale. Can I say it? I miss Sly. Last year Ray & Sly sit together ringside, this year it's Ray & last year's winner Sergio Mora. Big drop off.

Whatever happened to:

The Challenges - You lose to much high comedy potential doing away with them. This year the first half hour of the show dragged to the extent that by the second half of the season, I was tuning in for the fights only. That's bad Ray. I thought you'd want to know. Why not product place the crap out of them? If these guys are truly hungry, and it seems that a lot of them are, you can have some seriously competitive challenges if you dangle the right carrot.

The Crazy Family Member - Maybe I missed somebody tuning in for the fight only, but from what I saw nobody, and I mean nobody, approached Manfredo's dad on the crazy scale. I know they have to focus on casting the boxers. If it comes down to a tiebreaker on anybody, please, please go with the guy who's related to somebody insane. I hardly even saw any spouses going to the corner giving useless obvious advice. "Honey, you've got to get going!!" Thanks sweetheart, loads of help. I think that humanizes the boxers more than anything. Hey, he's got a bitchey wife. I can relate. Imagine if your own wife could come down to the office and give you encouragement. "Honey, you've got to get going on those TPR reports!!" Wait, don't imagine that's a bad imagine.

Celebrity Cameos - All I remember this year was Burt Reynolds who looked like he's practically dead. I don't think Burt can move his head from side to side anymore. It makes it hard to talk to Ray when you move about as lifelike as Abe Lincoln at the hall of presidents. Outside of that who'd we get? Last year's guys, couple of other boxers, and, oh yeah, Willie McGinest. Let's cheese this up a little. Empty the D list on this thing. It's just like the product placement, you know they're dying to get on. Theme it. One week empty the Love Boat, next it's the A-Team. Are any of them working? We can spend the commercials playing, "Hey wasn't that...". If they can find 10 fat has beens for Celebrity Fit Club, they can find 3 for Ray. Make it a circus. That way if the fight's a snoozer, you can fill the time with cut shots. What major fight doesn't have celebrities ring side?

Sly - O.K., I already said it, but it bears repeating. He was missed badly. His pseudo-seriousness was just off the charts hilarious. We missed his catch phrase, "Toe da line." We missed him sitting with Ray during fights punctuating every big blow with his Balboa-istic exclamations. And we missed the closing shot cast meeting with Boss Sly sitting behind the desk on 2 phone books. The boxers love him like I imagine hockey players love Paul Newman. The difference is Paul Newman played Reggie Dunlop. Sly is Rocky Balboa. And Sergio Mora, the seat replacement? Stop acting like your Ray's equal in boxing. Once I'd like to see Mora talk, Ray rolls his eyes, and Ray slaps him. Once.

The Promoter - Remember her from the first season? I do. She had that mature sexpot thing going. She also had virtually zero lines so she was pretty easy to move off in season 2. Have her in there teasing the boxers, maybe incorporate her into one of the challenges. Ramp up the moral conflict. Oh wait, that's right. Boxers never get in trouble with women, and TV never uses sex to sell. It will never work.

Heavyweights - I asked for them in last year's wrap review. It's an obvious choice. The challenges alone would be worth it. You could sprinkle in fraternity pranks with the challenges. Race 'em in Speedos through the city square. Cut the fights down to 3 rounds and show us the whole fight, or at least more of it. Please, the big fellas are where the show needs to go from here.

Finally, as a public service, I give you:

Drinking Game for the Finale Repeats - And you know they'll repeat it, just like they pound poker programming. Every time Teddy Atlas says, "bigger, stronger man", hit it. You'll be lit in no time.

Good luck Ray. Bring it back.

Slow Death

2006-09-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

Been taking the blog down from posting near daily, to 2 a week, to 2 a month, and soon we'll be back at "oft hiating'. "Oft Hiating" you'll recall was the characterization of this blog by its only known visitor, the blogger @ strangeblueghost. blogspot.com. Wait, who am I talking to?

In any case, I'm sure mine is the typical arc of a blog. Inactivity, flurry of activity, inactivity. You can stick a bell curve on just about anything. It's not a lack of initiative or material that's kept me away. Rather, it's that old pesky middle age proclivity to correctly categorize something that pays nothing. Should anyone happen to purchase a hammock, a bean bag, or any of the other ridiculous crap that Adsense throws out there, I might be inclined to hit this more often. Absent that, the blog will remain what it is, evidence of mild schizophrenia.

I'm certainly not intending to pack it in yet, but if this is it, please enjoy the death spiral.

Long Weekend

2006-09-06T16:11:00.000-04:00

Wait, It's over? Then I'm officially unproductive.

Flipping through sports this weekend, I was able to confirm that Tennis remains in the "Never Watch" column. I'm always mad when CBS shows the U.S. Open final instead of a 4 o'clock NFL game. Can we get the U.S. Open to a network that doesn't carry football? I'd gladly give up one of my, I don't know, 8 shopping channels to move tennis somewhere else. I think I even have a tennis channel. I have no idea what's on it. Seriously. I wouldn't even watch tennis if they had a Stalker Cam that didn't follow the action, but stayed trained on whoever's the current hot Russian. O.K., that one's a lie, but still, not over the NFL.

Is Hot Russian not a drink yet? I don't know. I don't drink in bars anymore. Order it in a strip bar and see what they bring you. And let me know. I'll be back here waiting, not in a strip bar.

This weekend's purchase for the middle ages was a mattress. It's almost as degrading as buying a girdle or hair plugs. Prior to middle age, you never really had to buy a mattress. They give you one when you show up in college. It doesn't matter what it feels like because half the time your drunk and sleeping on the floor anyway. After that, someone's always in transition, and the first thing they dump is the mattress. So you sleep on the abandoned mattress for 10-15 years until it resembles a hammock. Hammocks are fun to sleep in in Fiji, bad to sleep in in the suburbs. The mattress is just another thing in your life that reminds you, just like your pants or your wife, that "Hey, you don't weigh what you did in college". Your wife is fond of pointing out how the slope on your side of the hammock/mattress can only be accurately expressed by using a graphing calculator. (Little joke for the parents in algebraII/pre-calc)
There's no fun in the buying process either. Of course, you have to test each mattress. It's like your own personal John Lennon/Yoko Ono sit in. People walk by you and stare while you lay prone on the mattress. I guess they're hoping that since your in a bed, you might start something, and then they could watch. They could come to the house and have as much chance of seeing anything as they do at the furniture store. Then the mattress salesman asks the inevitable, "What do you think?". I think I'm embarrassed. Then the wife peppers the salesman with her pre-purchase interrogation. All the answers are a none too subtle reference to the issues I face beyond this mattress purchase. Hopefully, the mattress we purchase will have an attachment for an IV stand, and can later be converted to a coffin. I throw out my lone question of the inquisition, "Which of these mattresses muffles farts the best?" The wife shoots darts so large that the salesman knows he can safely sidestep that one, but I know she would have liked to known the answer.

There was more to the weekend, but it will be next weekend if I don't get this out of Save Post. Save it for what? Nobody reads this any way. Enjoy.

USA Basketball

2006-09-01T09:59:00.000-04:00

When I woke my younger son today to go to school, I told him we had lost to Greece.
In his words, "How?"
20 of 34 from the line for 59% vs. 23 of 33 for 70%
9 of 28 from 3 for 32% vs. 8 of 18 for 44%
That's how.
11 percentage points from the free throw line.
12 from 3.
Teach your kids to shoot, or find somebody who can.

Survivor

2006-08-25T11:52:00.000-04:00

Media's great for finding a way to draw attention to themselves, whether it's embedded journalists, contrived celebrity romances, or injecting social issues into a story line. They can plausibly defend an altruistic motive for any them, but at the end of the day the goal's always the same. "Psst, Hey, John Q. Public, I need you to look over here, just one more time."

Survivor can suggest they want to explore every aspect of the human dynamic as it plays out in the forum of their show. Really, they're just doing it for the publicity, and give them credit for that because it worked. Ask yourselves this, What wouldn't a television producer do to keep his franchise alive? Do you think Janet Jackson's nipple pops out because it wants to? It popped out because it was told to.

Me? I don't care. I think it raises lots of fun questions. What if they make the immunity challenges racially stereotyped? How about if they make the reward challenge rewards racially stereotyped? What if Probst slips? "The crackers win immunity". Then you might have an issue. Unfortunately, you can't hardly make a joke about any of that without offending someone or being labeled racist. The problem is racial jokes in the wrong hands are, well, racist. Racists screw everything up for everybody.

I think back to that classic Saturday Night Live skit with Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase. Chase is conducting a job interview with Pryor using a word association that becomes increasingly racially charged. I wonder if any one would have the stones today to run it like it that today.

USA Basketball

2006-08-23T13:14:00.000-04:00

I think I'm like the rest of Basketball America when I say, I don't just want these world championships and the next Olympics. I want to go 10 years without losing. Yes, the world is catching us. No, the world hasn't caught us, not completely.

We are still deeper, by far, than any other team in this tournament. That alone spells championship. Who are the best non-Americans in this tournament? Dirk, Yao, Ginobli, Tony Parker, and take your pick on the 5th guy. Only Dirk would replace any starter on the U.S. team. Don't say Yao, please. I'll take Dwight Howard over Yao, D-Wade over Ginobli, Chris Paul over Parker, and Carmelo over all the 5th guys. That leaves Lebron and Dirk. Did I say Dirk would replace? I meant might. I would imagine one day you'll see a team that can go 10 deep with the U.S.. That team is not now in Japan.

The international players are evidence of how the world is closing the gap through their developmental programs. Bottom line, right now the world shoots the ball better than we do. Shooting is a lost art in this country. It's a failure of a generation of basketball instruction. I don't mean shoe teams and AAU. I mean at the youngest levels we are doing a poor job of teaching the game. That's a post for another day.

That said, it's still not enough. Our athleticism should be enough to take any shooter off his game. Argentina and Spain wait in the next, the hardest, part of the tournament. I still like U.S., and if we have any kind of chance to, I hope we run it up in the title game.

Flip Side/Devil's Advocate
We are playing a ton of pressure. When the pressure's beat, you get mismatches and open looks. If you can knock down those looks, you can win. That simple, and already said, the world can shoot.
I understand what we're trying to do. Get a deep rotation going. Keep 'em happy. Wear other teams down. And that's what's been happening.
I see spells where we overplay the man & the ball. Some of those times I think we're better off sticking with the primary responsibility, and forcing bad shots. I know it's an art. It's like playing with the volume from song to song. I just wouldn't want to let anybody get on any kind of run, and subsequently let them build any kind of confidence.

Quick Hitters
-Kudos to ESPN for choosing Fran Fraschilla over Bill Walton. Fraschilla's been excellent with the background on the individual players, and his insights on the international style of play. I'll take a down-played insider like Fraschilla or a Hubie Brown any day. All Walton does is say nothing forcefully.

-Another kudos to Shane Battier taking a charge, on a big guy no less, today against Italy within a step from the rim. He's been in the league long enough to think he can never get a charge that close to the bucket. Just overcoming that NBA halo rule in your memory was enough. Then to take it on a 5 man was decidedly un-NBA. I wasn't sure when they made the team if he wasn't a Duke payback to Coach K. An unselfish, sacrifice play like that shows you why.

-O.K., as I reread the top of this post the 5th international guy would be Paul Gasol. Sorry NeckBeard, I forgot about you. I'd still take Carmelo.

-Speaking of Carmelo. LeBron's already recognized as the anointed one, D-Wade's got a ring, and neither has been the best player on this team. Carmelo has been, hands down, the go-to-guy/mvp of this team. When they've needed a bucket...o.k. the few times they've needed a bucket, he's their guy. They talk about these 3 as the new golden age of the sport. That seems fair. Basketball more than any other sports thrives on its superstars. It certainly seems as if the baton has been ably passed to a new generation.

-How about the chippiness of the Italians? Kind of sets the Zidane thing in a new light. Me, I'd like to see us take the roster to 15 guys. You only need 10 for the regular rotation. Those last 5 we'd keep for , not so much a goon squad, let's call it an insane squad. I'd take Ron Artest, Rodman, Barkley, maybe just some roid-ripped wrestler, and, you know what, we'll take the Zidane guy. You want to get chippy? O.K., Guess who we're putting in? It would be worth it just to see faces when they look back at the table. You won't need them more than a couple possessions. Just a reminder to the world that in addition to basketball, we still lead in reckless behavior.

-O.K., more on the 5 best international players. Wrote most of this post yesterday between the actual broadcast and the replay last night. When I saw the replay ESPN had a graphic with those 5 players that I did not see in the original broadcast, so credit where credit is due. It's not like coming up with those 5, running ESPN, or writing in this silly little blog is rocket science. ESPN shows dominoes tournaments and I mock everything in this vacuum.

Just Noticed

2006-08-22T12:39:00.000-04:00

I see I'm selling as many testosterone pills as I did bean bags. One thing's for certain. Floyd Landis, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds have not stopped by my blog. And if they did I'm prepared to testify on their behalf that they have not purchased a bean bag.

By the way testosterone pills appear to be the second actual product this blog has attempted to sell. Testosterone pills and bean bags. Great!! I'm an online head shop. What's next? Beads and black light posters? No Adsense, Don't!!!

Back to School

2006-08-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

I don't have a kid left in elementary school. Subsequently, I no longer enjoy a cheery familiarity with any of my kids teachers. These days I only stop in at the middle school or the high school, or, as I like to call them, the factories.

Elementary school's the last place you get any semblance of a one on one feel in education. Your teacher knows you and your kid. You get to meet face to face with the teacher. Possibly, an administrator or two knows who you are. Other teachers know your kid. It's the last concierge level in education.

Now we ship them off to the factory. The factory jackhammers the education into them. You bring them home. Inspect them for defects. Send them back to the factory. Like a Buick. Most times any defect is the fault of the Buick, in which case you smack the Buick, like you would a real Buick. Follow?

From 6th grade on your kids got 6 or 7 teachers. Your lucky if half of them learn your kid's name by Thanksgiving. If an administrator knows you or your kid, it's a bad thing. Basically, the goal at this point is for parents, teachers, and administrators to never see each other again. If you do bump into one of them, it's uncomfortable. Sort of like an ex-girlfriend.

I miss the familiarity. I know I'll never get it back. I do, however, have a plan. This week starts the open house season. At the factories it's a cattle call. They herd parents from room to room where they get approximately 11 minutes to hear a 10 minute & 45 second dog & pony from each of your kids' teachers. Then you go home. That's it. It's like a peep show without the $1 tips.

There's little to accomplish in those 11 minutes. First, you focus on the teacher and try to pick up clues to their background. Focus on terms like medicinal, micro-anything, and insert your term here. Then you scan the room and take inventory of the other parents. Now you'll make a mental note to lock your car more frequently, apply for a concealed weapon permit, and to watch this week's episode of America's Most Wanted. Outside of that, little productive value occurs.

That is until now. This year I'll be introducing what I like to call, this year's plan. Nothing's really required of you as a parent during those 11 minutes except to sit there quietly. Sure, some people manage to interject their personality. There's always the Happy Affirmative sitting there cluelessly shaking their head yes while smiling from ear to ear. In the business world we call this a kiss ass. If the teacher screws up, and only runs their presentation to 9 minutes, there's always an available supply of idiots to burn those last 2 minutes with stupid questions. Idiots always rise to fill the void of any useful time. The idiots and the affirmatives have at least succeeded in using those 11 minutes to make themselves memorable.

That's the goal of this year's plan, to make myself memorable, and, perhaps, notorious. The plan is to do something obsessive/compulsive for 11 minutes straight. Not weird-hyper ocd like a squirrel examining and burying a nut, but scary ocd. Make your eye twitch, or slowly and deliberately scratch your armpit. Anything that resembles a suppression technique and hints at a closet full of insanity.

What will this accomplish? Maybe nothing. However, it might give your kid's particular class in that particular period benefit of the doubt/tie goes to the runner status through the end of the year. Say your kid's on the bubble for a grade. The teacher knows one thing. 4th period is where Twitch or Armpit Guy is. They don't want a conference with them. Guess which way the grade falls off the bubble.

Some may take exception to this approach. The system has rendered me anonymous. I have acted to shade that anonymity. They don't need to know who I am. They just need to know I'm out there.

This Week in Middle Age

2006-08-14T13:20:00.000-04:00

The Rolling Stones
Suffered a cancellation in Spain when Mick Jagger's voice gave out. So let's see on this tour they've been plagued by doctor prescribed rest, fell and hit head, and walks with limp. Wait that last one's me.

Sylvester Stallone & Chuck Wepner
Settled a lawsuit for undisclosed terms in which Wepner, known as the Bayonne Bleeder, claimed to be the real life inspiration for Rocky Balboa. I don't have a joke here other than to note "Bayonne Bleeder" has to be one of the worst nicknames of all time.

Junior Seau
Retired from the NFL. Now that you're retired, how about a grown up name? How about Fred? Fred Seau? That sounds like you're retired.

Another Grey on the Ghost

2006-08-07T15:48:00.000-04:00

My oldest got his regular driver license last week, and I'm another day older. Milestones rarely get me. Birthdays & anniversaries skip by me leaving nary a mark on the old psyche. Last year, though, sitting in the waiting area of the Department of Motor Vehicles, I had the "life flashing before your eyes" moment. A year later, I didn't do much better.

They've got a little schtick down at the driver's license place. They ask, "Are you ready Dad?". My first thought as to a response was to ask for clarification, "Am I ready for the expense, the fear, or to face my own mortality?". Second, I thought perhaps I had an option to answer truthfully in the negative with, "No, I'm not ready. I would like to exercise my perogative to stop or reverse time, and prevent this intemperate act from occurring." In the end, I came back with the standard weary, "Yes."

The wife and I are doing pretty good every time he leaves if pretty good means dimming the lights, holding our knees close to our chests, and waiting quietly until he returns. Friends say this will pass, and we will come to enjoy this new found freedom in middle age. I'll have to trust them, but it does sound good. Of course, like every creature comfort at this age it comes at a price. By price in this instance I don't mean some rhetorical price, I mean a dollar price. Those who have gone before know. Those whose time awaits, don't ask.

All in all he appears to be a careful driver. I could be doing a lot worse. It's not his driving so much that scares me. It's those classic teenage moments when he asks a question so thoughtless & inane that you look at him to see if he's suddenly gone cross eyed. "No son, ice cream has no bones.'"It's at those moments you question the wisdom of entrusting him with a vehicle.

The Ghost plods on.

One Media, 3 Sports

2006-08-04T15:59:00.000-04:00

Mel Gibson
My question is, was the cop Jewish? If it is then Mel can defend himself with, "I'm a Jekyll & Hyde drunk. I've got a problem, and I lashed out at what was available to my distorted mind. I'm sorry, and I didn't mean any of that."
If he wasn't Jewish, then Mel's a drunk and anti-semitic.
All in all, pretty ironic from Hollywood's religious guy. Too, an interesting tact in getting out of a ticket. I've never seen the angry rant be too successful with law enforcement. Maybe it works better in California.

Floyd Landis
Gets his results at 5 in the morning Saturday. If he's awake, maybe I believe him. If he sleeps in, it's because he knows the result. Either way, I'm rooting for him only so I can make use of the elevated testosterone defense. I'm seeing me blaming a lot of randy behavior on the elevated testoserone. Besides, it sounds way more fun than an angry rant.
Good Luck, Floyd.

Chase Utley
I'm not sure if I'm rooting for him or against sportswriters. For 60 years there's been no down side to predicting someone's not going to get Dimaggio's record. It doesn't make you some insightful wizard to say it. That, and journalism's tendency to revel in people's failures has me in a Phillies cap. Go Chase.

USA Basketball
So far so good, all though the '04 Olympic squad won their first game impressively. That said, the biggest difference is the pressure defense. In '04 I about had a stroke every time a point guard walked it up the floor unchallenged. It looks like we have a coach that understands the inherent advantage of being 12 deep with superior athletes. Goodbye Larry. The other question I had that summer that's been answered now, what does Richard Jefferson give you that you don't get from Lebron? No offense Richard.

The Paris Hilton

2006-08-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

I saw this quote in the July 31st issue of Time Magazine:

"Every decade has an iconic blonde like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, and right now I'm that icon."
-Paris Hilton, socialite & heiress, on her place in society

You are an icon all right honey. There's no denying that. However, you're an icon more along the lines of a Linda Lovelace or a Monica Lewinsky.
Normally, I would not give a crap what Paris Hilton is up to. This comment though was too easy not to take a shot at. Can someone straighten her out soon? Is she not on overtime for her 15 minutes?
She appears to have no redeeming skill, aside from the one that thrust her into the public eye to begin with, than striking the same stupid pose in front of every camera she sees. Normally, I defend children of inheritances. It's not their fault or decision that they were born into a life of opulence. They deserve judgment based on the strength of character alone, just like any one of us should.
Well Paris, it's judgment time...You're an idiot. I think saw parts of 2 or 3 episodes of her reality series. My thoughts coming away from it was, "No wonder the Muslims hate us."
And Time, next time you quote her, instead of identifying her as "socialite & heiress", why not identify her has "vapid twit & skank". At least she earned those.

Testosterone, Viagra, & Whatever Comes Next

2006-07-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

I used to feel pretty secure in my masculinity. Wait...scratch that. I was very secure in my masculinity. Today, though, I'm not sure I'm quite the man I could be. With another doping scandal in the headlines, I ask myself, Why can't I start doping?
If testosterone makes you charge up an Alp or hit 73 home runs, just think what I could do with it. Yell at the kids louder. Push a grocery cart faster. Anything!
All I'm saying is some of this stuff sounds fun. I see now where Floyd Landis is claiming he has elevated levels of testosterone to begin with. Yeah, don't we all Floyd. When the wife shuts you out for a month, most of us could fly up a mountain too.
Floyd couldn't really go with the athlete's favorite, "I don't know how that got in there. It's probably somebody's from my posse" defense. It's urine. Even a posse can't help. Maybe he got crossed up and had a testicle sandwich. I can't read a French menu either.
Of course, like Viagra before, the wife has barred me from taking any testosterone. She momentarily reconsidered when I pointed out that by needlessly ingesting Viagra or testosterone, or better yet Viagra and testosterone, I might accelerate my own mortality. She quickly deduced that even if I were to live for only a few hours, those hours would be a living hell for her.
So, Merck? Pfizer? Don't spend another dime on my account. Shutter all the labs dedicated to middle age ennui.
And, Floyd? Barry? Want me to hold anything for you? C'mon, help a brother out. Consider me posse.

Media Bits

2006-07-26T12:26:00.000-04:00

Harold Reynolds
Nothing surprises me anymore after O.J. . You can just never assume that the guy with the good guy image isn't capable of doing something completely out of character of his public persona.
I liked Harold Reynolds. His best attributes were his affable manner and enthusiasm. It made him a great ambassador of the game.
But let me tell you something. You've got a grab a lot of ass to get fired from ESPN. A lot of ass. Harold will bounce back. Clinton set the tone for all ass grabbers till the end of time.
It's just another example that ass grabbing is pervasive in guydom. Unfortunately, it happens everyday. Today, all across corporate America human resource managers will decide today's a good day to pull out the Sexual Harassment Panda video. Thanks Harold.
The ass grabbers all use the same tired m.o. . Throw out a ton of bait, if you get a strike? Great! If somebody objects? I was misunderstood.
Look, I'm not against office hook ups or hook ups of any kind. But unless you've got a 2 way street going, man up & pick 'em up in bars like the rest of us. Spare us the Panda.

Revenge of the Nerd
What exactly does Ken Jennings have against Jeopardy & Alex Trebeck?
The show gives him his 15 minutes of fame & 2 million cash, and he tries to trash them?
I'm lost. I say "tries to trash" because the whole rant had that classic ubernerdiness to it. Nothing against nerds, God love 'em. One thing nerds can't do. Nerds can't fight.
I'm guessing Ken has an agenda here? Which is? He's got his own game show? A competitor to Jeopardy? Or he's hosting a Dungeons & Dragons tournament from his garage. One of those.

Not Vacation

2006-07-18T16:38:00.000-04:00

I've been off hiating with the in-laws. Fortunately, in-law hiating occurs less frequently than the Olympics. Good thing. It takes an Olympic effort on my part to get through them.
We all sit around & tip toe around each other's idiosyncrasies. My idiosyncrasy's kind of hard to get around. I just pound Beck's till I'm numb to anything they might say. They tip toe away from me because they know I might say anything. I call it in-law detente.

Hiating - Read the archives. That was a word the only known visitor to the Grey Ghost used to describe the site. It means "on break", or "slack". I can't tell which. I know I'm guilty of both. I'm going to give the word legs legs by using it more.

Beck's - The Ghost will be using more product placements in up coming posts. Every other media outlet uses them. Why can't I? Also, I'm sick of not selling bean bags (again, read the archives). Of course, Beck's didn't ask me to. I'm not sure they'd want to be associated with the act of in-law numbing. No matter. Beck's is the official Import Beer of the Grey Ghost. Unless, of course, the special is on Heineken that week. Beck's & Heineken, it's a vicious cycle.

Back with the Full Power posts soon.

Blogger Neighbors

2006-07-12T13:50:00.000-04:00

Ever look at your Blogger neighbor? See the "Next Blog" button in the upper right hand corner? Go check & see who your neighbor is. I'll wait.
I suppose every time you post you get a new Blogger neighbor? I've gotten in the habit of checking on my Blogger neighbor after every update.
I don't do so good with real neighbors. If you don't have a barking dog, a loud stereo, or a zoning violation you can live next to me. Everybody else is who I have problems with.
That's why Blogger neighbors are the best. I never hear them. I never see them. I didn't even know they were there until I hit the "Next" button.
I've had some pretty weird Blogger neighbors though. Last week I was rooming next to a guy who likes to walk around graveyards. Not, apparently, for any historical significance, he just likes to walk around graveyards. After that I was next to either a Goth or deeply disturbed or I'm not sure what blog. Basically, it looked like the attic of the guy who walked around graveyards. When Blogger says "Next Blog" does it mean that my blog is the natural progression to death blogs?
This week I saw I was next to some blog that consisted entirely of talking anime characters. Not only did it remind me of my lack of technological prowess, worse it reminded me of my neighbors.

World Cup

2006-07-11T14:31:00.000-04:00

I know. I trashed it and swore it off. But basketball's over, football training camps haven't started, and you can't get through a Sporstcenter without seeing the highlights.
Further, I don't just ramble on hear alone. I just repeat here some ramble from outside that I've already spewed forth on. Thus...Defenders of soccer who I am acquainted with have pointed out that the Zidane head butt refutes a lot of what I've said about soccer. Unfortunately, the action before and after the head butt only reinforces what I've said. Don't get me wrong, I'm now a big Zidane fan. Too bad he just quit, now I have little reason to begin watching.
First, let's just guess what might have occurred post head butt in any other sport. I'm going to guess something more than a sissy roll and a fake ankle grab.
Second, so I've just called an opponent a terrorist. He now reverses course away from the ball and comes right at me. Am I to assume it's go time, cookie time or head butt time? And, given my assumption, my anticipatory reaction is what? I guess soccer players like cookies. Me? I don't think I'm letting cookie time get all the way to me to get off a punch, let alone a head butt. Very nice head butt though.
Finally, the whole red card/mock outrage discipline act plays into the sissification of the whole sport. I've been taught by nuns scarier than any soccer ref. Maybe that's not a good analogy. Those nuns were scarier than just about anybody. Still, let's see an ump give, say, Lou Pinella a red card. What might happen to that card?
Zidane needs to come over here to America. I think he just made himself a ton in endorsement money. Here's the script: Walks around the commercial looking all French & cool, detects concealed product, Head Butt!!!, product revealed, fade to black. Then he bumps ChuckNorris off of a couple infomercials. Flies home. Dibs on those ideas Z.
So if your scoring, I've got it at, Zidane - 1, Soccer - Status Quo.

My Buddy Adsense

2006-07-06T14:07:00.000-04:00

I'm not even sure I can talk about this. I thought I saw in the Adsense legalese something about not intentionally promoting the ads on your site. At this point, I think I'd welcome the monitoring.

I would imagine a common interest we all have is checking to see what Adsense thinks of our blogs via the ads they run on our blogs. In my case, Adsense is the only thing with an opinion on my blog. So far, my buddy Adsense has decided the only things I have any shot at selling are services. Yesterday, though, the Grey Ghost displayed its first ad for a finished good. Adsense decided, that given the content & my zero readers, the Grey Ghost was a good candidate to sell sports bean bags. That's right, sports bean bags. Adsense's decision then is that the perfect product for the atypical Grey Ghost reader is shapeless, malleable, and sports oriented. Sounds like me. Needless to say we won't be leaving the day jobs. I also hope I haven't caused any damage to the good people down at the sports bean bag factory either because by my count the Ghost & Adsense haven't sold one bean bag.

Which got me to thinking, given that the blog is nothing more than my own personal reflections, would not I be the perfect target market for whatever Adsense drops above the fold? There's a problem then because I don't want a sports bean bag. I don't want any bean bag. If I got into a bean bag I'd probably need assistance getting out of it. Maybe I'm the one with the problem. Who am I to argue with the expertise of Adsense? Face it Ghost, anyone who either pumps out or reads this sophomoric drivel is likely to have a dorm room chic decorating sense. Next I'll become the outlet for neon beer lights and anything with the Playboy Bunny logo tattooed on it.

As I said, I may have violated the contract by blogging about this. If I have, I apologize. I'm guessing I'm safe in that I'm nowhere on the radar. If the Adsense Monitoring Police do stop by however, Welcome!!!....Buy a Bean Bag.

News & Views

2006-07-05T14:06:00.000-04:00

North Korea - Glad to see me & the U.S. have the same type of problems. Me? It's the kids down the street got fireworks way to strong for them to be shooting off. You tell them not to. They don't listen. Same problem. Different scale.

Bin Laden - Love the balls on this guy asking for his buddy, Al-K-Rappi's, body back. Sure, Bin. We were going to use it as a pinata, but you can have it instead. It was starting to smell anyway. We'll send it right over. What cave you in?

Views -Views? I don't have any. You should know that by now. I just put it up there because it rhymes with News.

Other Things
- The march to 1,400,000 place on Technorati continues. It's easy to do with 0 links from 0 sites. Blogging in a vaccum worked to perfection. Thank You. I'm here every week, but no one else is.

-Went back to reread some old posts, and found typos that spellcheck missed. Before I fixed them, it occured to me, what's the point? If an apostrophe fell off "it's" on this blog, would anyone hear it?

-Couldn't be more bored. I'm actually doing house projects. That is the height of boredom in middle age. Come on here & mock something or hang new drop lights? Option 3 would be jumping from my 2nd floor window and ending the boredom. I don't think the 2nd floor is high enough to do any real damage. I'm too lazy to climb to the roof and do it right. Too lazy, and bored.

NBA Draft

2006-06-29T09:25:00.000-04:00

-One last shout out to Cinderella, as George Mason got to the Final Four knocking off a team with 4 first round picks & 1 second round pick

-Dick Vitale's Annual Collegian vs. European Rant is getting tired, just like his schtick. I don't disagree with him sometimes in regards to specific picks, but the generalizations (us vs. them) have to go. Dick, watch the Oympics lately? We get beat. I want to see Dick defend the Nowitzki-Traylor deal. Dick needs to face paint an American flag, just in case anyone misses his point.
I do enjoy how Dick winds down through the night, culminating last night in Dick openly bailing on the broadcast. This is how I think it goes at the Vitale house on draft night:
7:15 Dick jugs 8 Red Bulls
7:30 to 10:00 Dick spikes the systolic with his 5 spots
10:15 Mrs. Vitale pries the remote from his hands
So, Dick, college basketball's biggest promoter, by checking out early, you're saying what for the guys drafted in the second round?
Oh, and what room in Dick's house are they shooting from? Is that the dream sequence set from Twin Peaks? They should have the little guy from Carnivale (same guy in Twin Peaks) waltz through every shot. He came with the set, baybeee!
Ever seen an ESPN Classic game with early Dick broadcasting? You would think he came to work with stomach cramps he's so subdued compared to today.
If you're counting, I just typed Dick nine times. Makes for better blogging.

-Speaking of schtick, Stephen A. Smith's got to go. The hardest job in sports broadcasting has to be casting the funny third wheel. Smith's bombastic outrage act is straight out of sports radio. Worse, he's a sportswriter with, by my count, zero credibility to pull the act. I think if Smith stays with the outrage, he ought to work in some rhymes with it and shoot for the NBA's version of Jessie Jackson. Either way, Charles Barkely's job is safe as the funniest broadcaster ever.

-At the end of the first round, why did everything turn into a fighting analogy for Jay Bilas? Did he need help getting to his car?

-How about J.J. Reddick turning the tables on the Carolina homer Stu Scott during their Q&A? How long was J.J. waiting for that one? 4 years? That's my guess.

-Saer Sene, Seattle Supersonics. I guess you can never have enough 7 foot projects. I guess. Maybe they need someone to go on double dates with Robert Swift. I think I saw Kevin Bacon in his highlight video.

-Thabo Sefolosha, Chicago Bulls. Shouldn't cops use his name for field sobriety tests instead of the reverse alphabet? I like this idea. The NBA's always looking for branding opportunities. How about the Nikoloz Tskitishvili Field Sobriety Test. Maybe J.J. and 1/2 the Jailblazers walk the next time they get pulled over.
Jailblazer, "That bust Russian center for Denver."
Highway Patrol, "That's close enough. Drive safely sir."

-Isiah Thomas. So much will be said here, it's really too easy. I do have one question I haven't heard yet. Is there anyone in the room with him? Anyone? Is it just Isiah and a phone? Or is there nothing but yes men standing around him?

Weekend Wrap

2006-06-27T14:23:00.000-04:00

Like most weekends I come out of them tired. When I was younger my useless day used to be Friday because my weekend started Thursday night. Monday is now the useless day of middle age. Cap a weekend full of activity with a drive Sunday, and Monday's shot.
What, this is already Tuesday? See?

Accompanied my older son's high school basketball team to a camp/tournament at a major university. Fortunately, there was enough basketball and enough parents that I didn't have responsibility beyond my son and one of his teammates. That allowed me the luxury of making another questionable parenting decision.
One night the team debated where might be the best place to eat. Herd mentality reigned. While the team dynamic is an important consideration, dining with any team can easily slip into the realm of elementary school cafeteria. It was Saturday night, my tanks were low, and I didn't have the energy to deal with that. Plus, it embarrasses my son when I threaten to crack a dinner plate over a teammate's skull and cut his throat with a broken shard. Why I'm asked to chaperone, I'll never know.
I pulled my son and his friend aside, and told them that they had an option that they may not had considered yet. I said, "I have five words for you, Hooters in a college town." That's all it took.
What was I going to do with them? If you're visiting a college, you can look at the campus so many times. After a while, you want to see some people. If you're a guy, by people you mean girls. So where can you go if your a high school teenager? They can't go to a bar. They can't go into a sorority. They could walk through the library, but where's the fun in that. If they stare at girls in there, they're labeled as a stalkers. Trust me. Hooters in a college town! There's got to be coeds working there, right? And Hooters encourages that stalker mentality, as long as the stalker tips.
True to form the place is loaded with talent, and they can barely speak. Taking them there, is like putting little kids on the kiddie coaster, while the monster coaster is on the other side of the park. They know they're on a ride. They think they're all tough for getting on it, but really they have no idea. My son's friend looks up about halfway through and says, "Coming here was the best idea ever!". I bought his wings for that ringing endorsement.
A side note. Some jokes you can't make with the teenagers. We were there late, when they start to thin the wait staff towards closing. Our girl wants to check out & close us out, but introduce us to a replacement girl if we want anything else. She brings the replacement girl over, and the girl is pregnant. Cute girl but about 5 or 6 months pregnant. I'm not commenting on the girl. I'm not judging Hooters. I'm not making a statement on federal labor laws. I'm just relaying a fact germane to the joke I was about to make. So the pregnant girl intro's and then leaves, and I turn to the teenagers and say, "Gee, does it look like we have a fetish?" I guess the over/under on fetish jokes is 23 because it goes right over their head.
Leaving, the girls all say goodbye and the teenagers blush like idiots. At the hotel, the trip gives them street cred with the team, and I get parent cred for coming up with the idea. I didn't much expect I'd be using Hooters to raise kids. Funny how that worked out.

Blogger, Google,Yahoo, & Technorati

2006-06-22T15:48:00.000-04:00

Way back in post number one in 2003, I think I talked about a secondary goal in creating this blog of "ramping up my technical knowledge". Wait. Forget that. I just checked the first post, and apparently I've deleted that. Trust me, it was in there.

I do a lot of things just to see if I can do them, and this blog is my current "thing". I guess what I want to see is if I can get it to X # of hits a day, and I don't necessarily know what X will make me happy. It's a moot point currently as I continue to be stuck on zero.

I know I need to be patient. I know I can't expect results after only posting regularly for a week and a half. I also know I can't hardly find me out there. Maybe I don't understand the search engines mechanics. I do understand that whatever that mechanic is it thinks I'm irrelevant. Thank you search engine.

I think I have a problem with too generic a name. I go through a lot of Weimaraner sites looking for mine. No, I don't have Weimaraner. A couple posts back I talked about the girl from strangeblueghost.blogspot who stopped by while exploring liked named blogs. I wonder how the hell she found me? Of my original goals, about the best job I'm doing so far is staying anonymous.

On Google, the only posts of mine I could find where all titled "Report Objectionable Content to Blogger". Sigh? Normally, I'm pretty proud of myself if I've offended someone, unless I've been censored. I can cuss with the worst of 'em, but I've tried to keep it clean here in order that it might have the broadest possible appeal. I haven't used F---. I've said "crap" instead of S---.
Apparently, you can't say "manboob". For that post, there was no getting around "manboob". Sorry Blogger or Google or whoever's offended by "manboob".

So my to-do list is find a new catchy blog name that's not trademarked and easy to find, and clean things up a bit?
F--- That!
How about I just take it straight to raunchy lockerroom, bar talk. Get myself banned from Blogger. If I go down with zero readers, at least I go down in flames.

Ooo, BannedFromBlogger, let me see if that domain's still available.

2006-06-22T13:48:00.000-04:00

World Cup

O.K., last time, and then I'll give it a rest. I gave it fifteen minutes today, the U.S.'s last fifteen. I was fully prepared to go with a mea culpa if they pulled it out. Not to worry, they got beat by, as I've already pointed out, Africa's Oregon. By the end, I was enjoying watching Ghana & their fans. I'm going to guess anybody on Ghana's team is going to have a hard time paying for their own beer in Ghana anymore. It's nice to be immortal.

Stayed with the broadcast to the studio show. Julie Foudy and whoever the guy talking head is proceeded to dismantle a) the team & b) the coach. Yea, and if they had a dog we'd kick it too! Foudy was a nice choice for studio analyst because she could talk from the pulpit of having played on a team that was tough.

Finally, the whole soccer dynamic of pretending like your mortally wounded every time you lose the ball just kills me. Baseball has knockdown pitches. Football has unnecessary roughness. Basketball has flagrant fouls. In general, men have testicles. Soccer has the pansy flop. I guess we need to except the McBride guy who took an elbow in the Italy game & kept playing. Claudio Reyna today, gets picked, maybe they knocked knees & that can hurt, but the ball is going one on one at the goal. Claudio please, not for America, but for men, chase the play.
Claudio then takes a stretcher off the field, but somehow miraculously returns to play. Must have been a magic stretcher. Here's the list: blown ACL's, broken weight bearing bones, neck or back injuries that require immobilization, line drives or fastballs to the head, you get the cart. Everything else? Walk off the field.
Could we take the lead in fixing this? Would it not be refreshing to here an announcer say,"The Americans will not flop for a foul call."

I guess I don't get it. I now return to my chronic indifference for the sport.

2006-06-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

Return of ManBoob

With the World Cup on now, I recently had the conversation with a friend where you play, "What would I rather watch?". You know the game. Assuming your big 3 is football, baseball, and basketball, in whatever's your particular order, what comes in fourth place? ESPN lives to fill that fourth place vote, and every vote out to 92nd place as well. Usually, you attach some sort of qualifier to that fourth place vote.

This week we've had three good fourth places with their qualifiers. Hockey had the Stanley Cup, soccer's got the World Cup, and golf had a major. Hockey? I'm in the South. One day I'll post about marketing hockey in a place that doesn't stay frozen for more than a day. Not today. World Cup? I've already backed the dump truck up on that one this week. Golf is today's easy target.

Let me preface this with, I suck at golf. A lot. I don't hate it. I'm just not very good. The only time I played with any regularity was right after college. Broke 90 a few times. Mostly shot 95- 105 depending on the course. Never took a lesson. Today if I play it's most likely in a scramble format. If I'm not in a scramble, I don't bother keeping score. I like the social nature of the game. I don't like how much time I have to be out there. 9's not enough holes, 18's to many. I could drive off about 13 holes most days. I have a club membership, but I just use the restaurants and the pools. I'm sure I'll be playing more of it soon as it the popular diversion of the hard artery set. I say all this not to bore you further, but to frame the depths of my indifference.

Be that as it may, a golf major is going to be my fourth place vote. Golf finals also dovetail nicely into the life these days. This weekend I caught a good bit of the final round of the U.S. Open. I'd put a long weekend of family in, so I was due the down time. Down time in this case meant getting a nice dinner ready while watching the U.S. Open. Getting a nice dinner ready is also code for getting a nice dinner ready and having a few beers. Wives give you the pass on the few beers when you're productive during the few. It's only when the few turn to many and cloud the reasoning, do you catch trouble. "Honey, I painted the house." "Why did you paint a stripe on the dog too? How many beers have you had?"

I digress. Watching the U.S. Open Sunday, I started having the, "Is this even a sport?", argument with myself. Deal with a tremendous amount of pressure? Yep. An incredible level of concentration? Sure. Requires a high skill level? No argument, but then again every other sport deals with these also.

Working against golf are a couple of things. Is anybody trying to stop you? Well. Anytime a girl tries to compete with them do some golfers get their panties in a wad? That's embarrassing. And, finally, the best golfer out there now...are those manboobs?

Nobody's making any effort to stop you in golf. There's no 300 pound guy chasing you trying to rip your head off. Nobody's sticking a 90 mph fastball under your chin. So there's no real peril in golf. Often times, like Sunday, your most direct competitor isn't even near you. It's really just one big game of H-O-R-S-E. You make a shot. The other guy's got to make a shot or you win. Now if they allowed you to compete say with your own vices, that would be interesting. "It's the 13th hole, a par 5, he's lying 2, with an 8 iron, and that's his 26th beer in his hand. I'm not sure if he cares if he hits the green here, just as long as he doesn't piss himself."

I lost a lot of respect for golf during the Annika Sorenstam episode. Although, I don't hear as much crying this time with Michelle Wie. If your worried about a girl beating you? C'mon, how tough a guy are you, and how hard is this "sport"?. Granted, it was only a few knuckleheads, but it was enough to drag golf down. And nothing against the ladies, I love 'em. If Jennie Finch could pitch in the bigs, she can go right ahead. In fact, take the locker next to mine. Just no crying from the boys, please. Needless to say I was rooting for Sorenstam to stomp some people's guts out.

I don't have anything against Phil Mickelson. I've read some people on the tour don't like him because he's arrogant. Arrogance is pervasive in sports. I realize he came up short Sunday, but 2 straight majors and a second in the third? He's the best golfer out there right now. Golf, though, needs Tiger Woods back in the worst way. Tiger looks like he could play something else. Phil? I don't even want to make jokes about those. You got embarrassed looking at them, like you got caught looking at some girl's chest. That's bad...for both of us, me & Phil.

But my point is, if that's your best guy? Not a sport. Sorry. Still got my 4th place vote, but it's not a sport.

2006-06-19T18:31:00.000-04:00

Now What About Ghana?

My younger son walked in the room and asked that after he heard me & my older son talking about the World Cup. Yes, what about Ghana? It's another fun idea from soccer that you can play like crap, tie, then beat up on Africa's Oregon, and still advance. Seems fair.
Every four years (is it 4? I don't honestly know) the World Cup also gives my older son the chance to lambast me yet again for my one season of inglorious soccer coaching, and my advance on goals differential coaching blunder.
One of the baseball guys I coached with doubled as the soccer recruiter. He comes to me one day with, "I see your son is signed up. We're going to need you to coach a team."
To which I quickly reply, "I don't know a damn thing about coaching soccer."
But he's ready for me with, "You don't need to know anything. You're coaching Americans, and better yet their parents are Americans too."
Which sounds reasonable, and also which is why he was the recruiter. So away I go. I do the requisite cram session with soccer books, but it doesn't buy me a good ten minutes of soccer practice. In no time I've got the worst thing in the world, bored kids. My practices quickly degenerate into playground sessions of soccer baseball and soccer home run derby with no practical instruction because I have no practical knowledge.
This works for a while. The kids are having fun. I dump them out of practice tired, a positive for the parents. Nobody seems to mind that we're getting beat like cheap rugs every Saturday. It starts to get bad for me at practices. The practice facility has three adjacent fields with me in between a) an Englishman and b) a Brazilian. The English guy is running like a Bridge on the River Kwai soccer boot camp. The Brazilian's got some kind of Soccer Carnivale thing going on that looks like so much fun I want to go down there and play. Worse is their kids are getting better, and having fun. Mine? You can only kick a ball over a fence & scream "Gooooaaalll!!!" so many times. The season can't end soon enough for all of us.
We get to the playoffs, and through some miracle win our first game. Actually, it's not much of a miracle. We beat the team with the only other baseball guy/soccer coach. It's no particular joy to me other than to be able to say to the parents, "Hey, you could have had him."
Our next game is a more formidable opponent, but now, in true miracle fashion, we find ourselves deep in the second half tied. This is where, to my son's perpetual consternation, I screw up. I never expect us to advance, so I never gave more than a cursory glance at the playoff rules to advance. I think I know them, and I think a win and tie is enough. I had two kids, my kid and another one, who were good athletes, not soccer players, but athletes. So I pull the air out of the offense, stick those two back on defense, and try to stall it out for the tie. My kid spends the last ten minutes of them game clearing balls out of our end and yelling things at me like, "Are you sure?", and, "We can win this game!!", and, finally, "ARE YOU SURE!!!???" It was really cute coming from a ten year old.
Over the years, I've tried to tell him I tanked it on purpose. I tried to tell him it was better to go out like that than advance, and take another 10-0 beatdown. I tried telling him that a win, a tie, and the parents not lynching me were the three miracles needed for sainthood, and more than anyone could expect from that team. And I tried, "I had us & 3 goals, so, hey ho, who got the dough?" He believes none of that.
Thank you World Cup...On Father's Day.

2006-06-16T12:46:00.000-04:00

I like the anonymity of the web. I hesitate to talk to specifically about life events lest I inadvertently identify myself. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way. If exposure becomes inevitable, I'm comfortable with it. Discussing this within the vacuum this blog exists in is tantamount to paranoia. As for now, I'm sure I'm safe.

Thus...

Looking out the window today, I'm watching 6 years of a struggle finally result in tangible progress. It doesn't sound like much, but I'm getting drainage improvements installed for the block. To say that I spearheaded the effort to get the county to do this, implies that I had help. Further, I did it will managing to avoid seeking relief through the civil courts, a very real option the entire way. We will see if any one thanks me for my work or restraint.

I don't have a lot of time to spend with this today, but I did have a couple thoughts I could share.

Fantasy
No, it's not always about women. I wonder if my involvement entitles me to the free use some of the construction equipment. They've got a little mini steam shovel I've got my eye on. I'd like to take it, extend the shovel straight out phallic style, then ram a hole in my neighbor/nemesis garage door, work the shovel in & out of the hole a few times. I think it'd be pretty clear what I'd be implying. Too subtle?

Send Me 5 Men
I've got about 15-20 guys on the block right now. Starting out, the county repeatedly sent me one, at most, two guys at a time. One guy can easily set anything aside. Two can easily conspire to "hot potato" something to oblivion. But 5 guys? That's a lot of finger pointing.
It can't just be any 5 guys either.
First, it has to be 5 guys none of which has a shovel in there truck. You need decision makers. Save the shovels for the end.
Second, they all have to be from the same agency or department. That way you avoid the interagency fumblerooski. If you hear, "Let's get Bob from Highway in on this" that's the equivalent of "I know a special tomb to drop this in so that we may never hear of it or pretend we've heard of it again".
Finally, surveyors don't count toward the 5. County use surveys to placate you. I call survey flags the illusions of progress. It's a low cost way to fool you into thinking something's being done. I've been surveyed so many times, I came to think the surveyors just took turns watching porn through that little sighting thing they carry around.

Anyway, middle age beckons, so I am off. I think I'm going to ask about that steam shovel on my way out.

2006-06-15T13:03:00.000-04:00

Welcome to today's unique & interesting content. Can you tell I've been reading blogs on blogging in order that I might drive more traffic here? Right now, Cary Grant saw more traffic standing in that field in "North by Northwest" than I'm seeing here. A plane buzzing my ass would be an improvement.

I pretty much discard any advice relating to writing code because I don't write code.
Virtually every time I've tried to "code" in some improvement, the blog comes out with a "Frankenstein took a spin in a rock tumbler" quality to it. So I'll be following the standard policy of inertia, "Dance with the One That Brung Ya".
That then pretty much limits all blog improvements to this, unique & interesting content. And let's face it, it's not my decision or any other blogger's what's unique & interesting. It's you, my imaginary reader's decision. All I can do is throw it out there everyday. That I've made three days in a row is my best effort to provide U & I C. You're welcome.

On to today's tale from middle age...

About 6 or 7 years ago, I changed what had been just about a life time hairstyle (part on the side, hair swept over) to a total razor cut (2 on the side, 4 on top). I did it because I was tired of messing with my hair. It was easier to deal with, much cooler in the summer, and as you'll come to know if you read this blog enough, I'm all about the simplicity. I think it was in a style at the time, although that didn't matter much to me. I had reached an age & understanding with the wife where, short of tattooing swastikas on my knuckles, I could get away with just about anything.
So this works out until about 3 months ago when the older little Ghost looks at me and says, "You look bald." Now it was an exaggeration on his part as a teenage son is prone to do to his father, but he had a point. It's not like I hadn't seen it. You look up one day and realize what was once scalp was now head...forehead. Gradually like beach erosion or suburban sprawl, you lose turf that you'll never get back. I'm at terms with it. I made it to 2006. I'll certainly use that against the friends who didn't make it out of the 80's.
It's a dilemma today though because now I need somebody to cut my hair. When you're getting a 2/4 razor cut, anybody, up to and including your yard crew, can do it. Even when they screw it up, the wife can play giant Ken doll with your head and touch it right up. Today, I'm getting an artful & distinguished pre-combover actual haircut, and I need it done right.
I've been going to a place that's all walk in, and it's worked out pretty well so far. The regular crew consists of one cool guy, a bunch of girls, and a schleppy guy. If I had to pick one to cut my hair say for a wedding, I'd pick the cool guy because he's done it best. The girls I'll take any day because, and the married guys will attest to this, a haircut is the only time when another women is allowed to touch you. So it becomes a "two birds with one stone" deal for married guys, get a haircut and get touched by another woman. The schleppy guy, no offense, is not touching my head. I'm no metrosexual, but if you look like you've got half a chance of coming out the door with your underwear on outside your pants, you're not cutting my hair.
The problem now is I've had to negative request the guy so many times, including an "anybody but him", it's getting uncomfortable. It's going to drive me back to a salon. I used to go to a salon, but the girl I had always had drama in her life and then started busting appointments. I already have a woman in my life who drives my crazy, and I've married her. I don't need two. For the expense & inconvenience of the salon, you do get that shampoo where she leans completely over you, if you hear what I'm saying. It's the Champagne Room of haircutting.
I think I miss that, and I think I've talked myself into it.
Thank you Blog.

2006-06-14T18:18:00.000-04:00

Technorati Profile

O.K. so Technorati said to do this so that I can expand the reader universe beyond just me. Techno was also kind to point out I'm currently ranked 1,377,405th. I'm very proud. What would it take to get to 1,377,404th? What's more likely is that I'm over 2 mill by next week.

Techno also gave me 20 tags to describe the blog. I used 5. Who uses 20 tags? If your using 20 tags to describe your blog, people probably avoid you at parties. Please, get to the point and shut up about yourself already.

Well this is a milestone. Posted on consecutive days, turned on ads, and got on a blog listing. I'm practically retired already.

2006-06-13T12:12:00.000-04:00

Despite my best intentions, I can't seem to hit this more than once a month. Insert your obvious middle age joke here:_____________________________________.
I have managed to activate the ads. I'm interested to see what Adsense thinks of me. Probably feels the same way as Mrs. Grey Ghost.
Here's some quick hits:

Bidness
Had to walk in an office building yesterday. Can we do something with the smokers out front?
They've turned into this generation's gargoyles. Yes, we all benefit from the smoke free work place, but somebody's suffering from the lack of productivity. Maybe they could hand out fliers. Get something out of them. Or they could hand out their performance reviews. Shame the crappy ones back inside. "Your lowman. Your killing our benefit costs. And you've decided to waste some more time giving the building a blood bank ambiance. Thank You." I shouldn't generalize. Could be the smokers I'm passing are productive. "Nice month, Bob! Enjoy the cancer stick." How about a smokers suite in every building? Just like that iron lung chimney stack room they've got for smokers in airports.
My other problem with them isn't the second hand smoke, it's the second hand smell. I don't care about the smoke. I'm sure I have plenty of tangential contact with death causing agents. I care about smelling like I've smoked. It happened to me yesterday. I walked by the gargoyles out front, and as I walked by a woman in the building, she gave me that sideways glance sniff. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she didn't smell the smoke. Maybe she thought I crapped my pants. When I got home, the wife did the same thing. Sniff? "Did you smoke?" If I'm going to get busted for something, I'd like to have at least enjoyed it to some obscene, gluttonous degree. Say, like a 1/2 a bottle of scotch & a pack of Marlboro Lights in a strip club, that's worth it.
There's no convincing the wife though. "No, honey, I didn't smoke. I walked into a building." Sniff? "Was the building on fire?" You can see the level of trust I've developed. "No, honey, I had to walk through the smokers that guard the front of the building to get into the building." Sniff? "Did you crap your pants?"

World Cup
Speaking of crapping the pants, how about the U.S.? It's not like I'm rooting against them. I'm just amused by all the tremendous build up to a 3-0 beat down. Miracle on Ice this ain't. The coach immediately starts pointing fingers. I'm not saying he's wrong. I didn't even watch. But whose job is it to bring your team in up? And how hard is it to get them up for your sports preeminent event? Herb Brooks he ain't.
It's o.k. though. Soccer in America just goes back to Who Cares. I know we have a lot of kids coming up in the sport. I know people feel it's just a matter of time. Heard all that, plenty. Until we see some results, Who Cares. If this was a tv show, it's a 2 episode cancellation.
Unless they beat Italy...then I tune in for Ghana. U-S-A!!!

2006-05-15T13:51:00.000-04:00

O.K. so I figured out why I can't see any comments on here. There aren't any. So I guess I don't need a hit counter either.
Actually, I figured this out after hitting a milestone in the existence of the Grey Ghost blog. The Ghost blog got it's first comment, and, like the Ghost's first reader, it was just spam. Thanks anyway, spam.
A couple years back I decided to buy everything that came through spam. All I ended up doing was increasing the size of my mortgage's penis. I didn't like having a mortgage with a bigger penis than my penis, so I've never trusted spam again.
That joke's a big hit on the cocktail party circuit, so feel free to use it. And if you come back by, leave a comment, or a couple dollars. Anything to motivate me to hit this thing daily.

2006-04-24T14:33:00.000-04:00

So a month and a half has past, and, right as rain, I'm here to post. Not because it's been a month, not because I have something profound to share, but because, like many bloggers, I don't feel like doing any work. I think I hear ad copy in that. "Blogger- About as Counter-Productive as Microsoft Solitaire".

Old Biz
Couple of posts back I mentioned I thought I had a reader. I thought I had a reader because I received an email saying my blog was inquisitive, and inviting me to read the sender's blog. I was happy until a couple weeks after that I got an identical email from somebody different. Oh. I don't have a reader. I'm on a list.
I had to laugh. I thought I had a reader like my grandmother thought she had a million bucks if she bought 50 magazine subscriptions from Ed McMahon. I thought I had a reader like my mother-in-law thinks a Nigerian prince will swap her a million for one of her CD's.

So it led me to search around to see if this blog is mentioned anywhere. And the answer is basically, no. I was mentioned by one blogger who was looking for blogs of a similar name. So what, it's a reader, and more importantly it's a girl.
Thank you Rebecca Billings at strangeblueghost.blogspot.com . Thanks for stopping by. Rebecca stopped by last summer, and noted that I am "often hiating". That is classic. First, I didn't know that hiatus had a verb. Second, If my wife starts using "hiating", I'll know that she and Rebecca have talked. Finally, if I wasn't already rolling with Grey Ghost, I'd change it right now to Often Hiating.
Rebecca was even kind enough to quote me from my first post. Which means, she read the whole thing. I'm not sure Rebecca will stop back by often as she likes Thomas Hardy novels and doesn't like sports. Me, I haven't read Hardy since a professor said I had to.
No matter. As for now, Rebecca Billings is the reigning Grey Ghost's Favorite Reader. Thanks again.

Back to hiating.

2006-03-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

Couple of TV comments just to throw something up here.

Knight School
I was dying for this one. Early on, I was a little disappointed in it. I didn't like the floor level close up shots of the basketball action. That movie cut editing doesn't show you anything. Basketball people are watching this. Give us that 10 rows up basketball shot so we can assess the basketball play. I could watch an extra hour of raw footage of just drills and have you down to the final four candidates easy. But then you wouldn't have a month's worth of programming.

You have to suspend belief for the coaches roundtable segment. C'mon, do you think these guys don't know which kids even remotely have a chance? And, maybe I'm being harsh here, but do these guys suck or what? Could be the editing's killing them or could be they suck. I think if I could see a little bio on each player it would spice it up a bit. At a big school, it's not unusual to find really good players just walking around. Some guys burnout. Maybe they didn't get recruited right. They didn't want to go DII or too far from home, but they were leading scorer/all conference in high school. If I know this I might not judge as harshly. If you were 11th man on a 5-18 private school team, you either suck or your the underdog the whole show can get behind. Tell us something about them.

Knight comes off well in this. However, I wouldn't think he would explode in a walk-ons only practice. I remember at the end of the controversy at Indiana, Vitale came on ESPN and said there where a hundred college coaches more volatile than Knight in a practice. I believe that. High school & beyond, most coaches will, sooner or later, have a vein popping Vesuvius style blow up. It's how they are away from those moments that you judge them. I think Knight has empathy for his players.

The Telfair Movie
Truth be told, I still need to see the second hour. Like a lot of people, I'm sure, I flipped over to The Sopranos halfway thru. There going to repeat it, right? Like they don't throw enough poker repeats at us. For ESPN, poker repeats are this generations version of Australian Rules Football.

I digress. I heard "best sports documentary since Hoop Dreams". I don't know about that. I like the brother in Greece. I think he's a story right there. Leading scorer/All conference, thinks he's in the first round, ends up in Europe. That's closer to Hoop Dreams than Telfair. And it's the same story arc I just asked for from Knight School.

If I have anything more significant to add, I'll weigh back in after I've seen the whole thing. Props though to ESPN for bringing it. ESPN Reality has got to be their next channel. Dibs on that idea, but I'm sure they won't pay me for it.

The Sopranos
So The Sopranos jumped the shark for me back somewhere during the dream sequence episode/too much trouble with the wife stretch. I tuned back in last year & watched most of the last season in repeats to see how they iced the girlfriend/snitch.

I guess if there's only a season and a half left I can hang to the end. If I don't, it wouldn't be the first show I bailed on. I think I stopped watching NYPD Blue at least 1/2 way thru Sipowicz's next to last partner.

Sopranos is landmark television, but like a lot of things on tv it's pretty repetitive. Tony's already been shot before this Sunday. Hell, Dallas only shot J.R. Ewing once. The fringe characters have a "guy with the wrong color shirt on Star Trek" predictability to them.

The social issues are tired. Tony's mom didn't love him. Junior's got dementia. Christopher's got a drug problem. Now we got a gay wise guy. "We're mobsters, with real problems." Got it. What's next? Mad Cow? Speaking of which, knowing what they know, would the FBI guy eat a sausage sandwich from that butcher shop? Please.

So, I guess we all watch & wait for A.J. to wack his first guy so the torch can be passed. Ooops, did I let out a secret? If not, dibs.

2006-02-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

Talking to a friend today, and we do what we commonly do these days, lament our ages. It's a standard theme in middle age, and for this blog as well. Today, in particular, I was noting how responsible I've become in dealing with problems relative to how I dealt with them when I was younger. For instance:

Problem: Tree is tilting at precarious angle threatening house
Middle Age : $40 to county for removal permit, several hundred to tree service to remove
College: Liquor up friends, Take tree down like goalpost

Problem: Car making noise clearly indicating mechanical trouble
MA: Another several hundred to mechanic to repair
C: Turn radio up till noise is no longer distinguishable from backbeat

Problem: Dishwasher throws rod, makes noise like bird being sucked into jet engine
MA: You guessed it, several hun for new dishwasher
C: No real need for dishwasher as we ate with our hands & used pizza boxes & big gulp cups as tableware. If we had used it, it would have been as high powered bidet or mini-sauna or something inane like that.

Problem: Toilet continuously runs water
MA: Trip to hardware store, install tank repair kit, call plumber as you could sooner tune a violin on a tight rope than adjust your sensitive toilet, only $50 this time
C: Disable noisy toilet, defecate in yard

Problem: Car gets loose in turns & rain
MA: Leave several at tire retailer for 4 new ones
C: Pump tires full of more plugs than you could find at Men's Hair Club of America, fishtailing becomes your signature

Problem: Compressor & air handler on house blow at once
MA: This one's over a thou, plus another hun to shack up in a hotel for a night while it's getting done, oh & $20 to board the dog too
C: Your only appropiately clothed in the spring and fall, summers you're nude, winters you look like a Sherpa

2006-01-20T14:54:00.000-05:00

O.K., So it turns out Antonio Davis' wife is, ahem, difficult. It doesn't change anything. She might be a crazy b----, but she's his crazy b----. He had no choice.
Now if she remains crazy, and Antonio decides to stay with her, then Antonio is fairly labeled crazy too. It's the Crazy Spouse Syndrome. Married to someone crazy? You're crazy. And next time he goes in the stands, when he comes out, Stern's waiting for him with the key's to Artest's timeshare.
You know someone with Crazy Spouse Syndrome. Someone about whom you've said, "You know Bob's wife is insane, but Bob seems so normal." No he isn't. Bob's insane too, or soon will be. Sooner or later you'll see it. You'll have that "aha" moment of, "Bob's crazy too." There's only three possibles when you're married to a crazy person: 1) Walk- It's why football teams have punters and America has divorce lawyers, 2) Bob was crazy to begin with- Maybe not as overt as the Mrs., but it was always there, close to the surface. That's why there's an attraction in the first place, 3) He's heading down the crazy aisle also- And why not? They have something in common, and its good business for the psycoanalysts.
Anyway, Good luck Antonio.

2006-01-19T11:49:00.000-05:00

November 28th since last post, eh? Could mean I'm ultra busy. Maybe I had nothing to right about. In the end, all it really says is I'm two months closer to death, whenever that is. Hope you didn't stop by for a cheery thought today. I'm fresh out.

By the way, a shout out to my one reader. Hope I didn't lose him during the posting drought. So in two years I'm up to one guy. At this rate I'll insert witty analogy here. Of course, as I said originally, I'd trade him straight up for a girl reader. No offense One Guy.
Maybe it was just an auto response, and I'm still stuck on zero. If I could enable comments or stick a counter on here, I could get a better read. Email me if anyone's out there, especially girls.

That said, on to the comments...

NBA

More pseudo-drama, with Antonio Davis of the Knicks heading into the Garden stands to protect his wife.
Let's back up to the Ron Artest thing for a second. I got sick of all the morality and preaching that came out of that. I'm not questioning what David Stern did. It was his perogative along with the Pacers, the player's union, and I guess law enforcement to deal with as they saw fit. Everyone else is who I got tired of.
Here's the big message that everyone should get coming out of the Artest deal,
Ready...Here it is...Don't throw beer on Ron Artest!!!
That's it. Nothing on the dual role of athletes, the integrity of the game, or anything else. Please. Don't throw beer on the guy.
Back to Davis. You know, I havn't hit anybody in a long time. That's a good thing. If the wife or kids are in peril however, it's go time, even in 2006. That's just one of those things you can't ignore.
Let's say you're out one night with the wife or girlfriend. A guy treats her poorly, then throws a beer on you. What's your next move? You're either going to give or take a beating, or let him know you're willing to try. Yes, some would now preach at me, but let's face it, that's how we are.
Should Antonio Davis be treated any different than you or I? No.

NFL

Officiating again...sigh.
Didn't we just go through this with the NBA Finals last year?
Which leads to point # 1,
Its the playoffs. Everything is magnified by a factor of ten. There's blown calls all year long. There's no conspiracies. It reminds me of "The LAPD framed OJ conspiracy." The LAPD wasn't smart enough to concoct a conspiracy on the fly, and sports isn't a good spot for a conspiracy either. Is a ref thinking, "Hey, next set of downs, I really need to get the conspiracy rolling somewhere."
Point # 2,
You try it. It's harder than it looks. Much harder.
I know basketball rules. I don't know football. When I say I know them, I know them cold. I have the rule books. I've read them. I reread them when I'm looking for an answer on something I've seen. I read officiating forums to contemplate different situations and stay current. I'm sure I could take the high school referree rules exam and pass easily.(By the way, I do it because I coach and it's the sport my kids are into. I'm doing it so I can teach effectively, not because I'm some rules weirdo know it all.)
Have you, the average fan, made that effort? Almost assuredly not. Then you are qualified to comment on rules interpretation...how?
I will concede this. What I find tiresome is when they come out of review, and preface their remarks with, "By rule..". That almost always means, "He caught it. It looks like a catch. It quacks like a catch, but I know about a tricky little rule that nobody else does and it's not a catch." That to me is just a ref inserting himself in the gameplay. If thats "the rule", the rule's b.s.. Change it.

Let me wrap it here. Middle age beckons with the responsibilities. Hang in there One Guy, ...and Any Girls.

2005-11-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Just a quick RECAP on the last couple posts...

I saw a letter to the editor in SI regarding "What if Wellington Mara was in baseball?".
Said it first!!
Not too hard to come up with though. I bet they ran the one letter out of a thousand that said that.

The Lions fired Steve Mariucci today. It appears to be one of those, because we can't fire all the players move. Maybe it was all his fault. I'm sure he bears some responsibility. I think he was dealt an awful hand.
Harrington's terrible. Rogers appears to be addled by his drug use. Mike Williams is said to be unprofessional about his practice habits. Thanksgiving day, Roy Williams scores at the end of an embarassing blow out, and still manages to execute an obviously orchestrated touchdown dance. I don't know what's happened to Kevin Jones.
What's Mooch supposed to do with all that? The old refrigerator magnet says, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." What about when life gives you turds? What do you whip up then?
In any case, the Lions appear to be the perfect franchise for the Run the Franchise reality show. One playoff win since 1957. That's almost fifty years. Maybe Matt Millen already won the show when no one was looking. He drafted most of these guys, hired Mart Manwearingthin before Mooch, and now this. Manwearingwomensclothes might have been one of the worst hires ever. He was certainly top ten in looking most shellshocked on television.
For all this Millen got an extension last year. Maybe the Fords are firing him while I'm typing.

New/Knew Stuff

Speaking of reality shows, loved the ESPN Beyond the Glory with Dick Butkus and Ray Crockett. Crockett was tremendous. He can coach my kids any day. Great quote at half time of a tough game, "It's not about football anymore. It's about being a man."
Butkus was good in spots, but came across a little dated. He's clearly credible, but at times he struggled to communicate effectively and sometimes seemed disinterested.
For me, Crockett stole the show. I can't imagine that he doesn't get a real coaching gig or broadcasting job out of this if he wants it.
When is the Bobby Knight/Texas Tech walk on thing? I'm dying for that one.

Have you seen the Clippers' Chris Kaman yet?
Has anyone made the Frozen Kaman Lawyer joke yet?
If not, dibs.

2005-10-26T14:35:00.000-04:00

What if Wellington Mara had owned the Yankees, and not the Giants? ...
What would baseball look like now?
Would there be quite the disparity in payrolls that we have today?

When you think of baseball payrolls, you think of contrasts. Yankees/Red Sox vs. Royals/Rays.
In football, you exceed the cap. Then what? Your team spends some time in purgatory, then they return to the norm. No obvious discrepancies come to mind.

Maybe that's not fair to baseball. When Mara pooled the tv money in the 60's, the pot wasn't quite what it is today. Plus, the football money's came from pooling one source on a broadcast occuring on one day. Baseball's issue has more to do with the size differences between the markets, and the money that comes from that market alone.

I always felt Steinbrenner got a bad wrap for having a large payroll. They would kill the guy if he didn't have that big a number on his roster.

Still, watching the obituary for Mara last night, I had to wonder. Maybe that's a little bit of a tribute for him also. Could the guy have fixed another sport?

2005-10-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Fantasy baseball ended with me clutching another silver medal. The whole fantasy thing's got me conflicted. I think I benefit from an enhanced interest level in sports I enjoy, by watching individual games I wouldn't otherwise have an interest in. Jose Contreras versus the Royals, Grab Him!
I'm getting indifferent from the fact that it's been so easy. Yes, a second place isn't exactly dominance. However, the end of seasons bring some dynamics that are difficult to control. Your playing a team that has Travis Hafner & Chase Utley go off while the Indians & Phillies scratch & claw to the last day. Meanwhile, Pujols has apparently quit trying about a month ago.
Football, I find myself either totally disinterested in other games, or arguing with my son because he took out Priest Holmes & put in Julius Jones.
I guess I stick with it because without it, I might lead myself to the only other alternative, gambling. Maybe I should gamble on this.

I was watching George Shinn, the Hornets owner, on NBA Training Camp last night. Then I saw where the Rangers hired a 28 year old to be GM. I don't know, maybe the kid's qualified. The Magic drafted a stiff European who stiffed them, and stayed in Europe.
Where am I going with this?
I wouldn't go on Survivor. I don't have 35 days to spend picking nits out of my pubes. Not that I'd even want to. I wouldn't go on The Apprentice. I'm already paid well to do an easy job, and I don't have to kiss anybody's ass to do it.
But if they had some sports reality, where you got the chance to run the franchise, hell, I'd do that. I know it's harder than it looks. There's a lot of spots, though, where it would be hard for a qualified man on the street to do worse.

2005-09-21T10:37:00.000-04:00

So I do a search, and I see where I'm not the only Grey Ghost out there. There's four of us here, and that's on Blogger alone. Two of those are high school girls, one of whom's blog is far technically superior to anything I aspire to do. Great. A high school girl with pictures. I'll have to change the name on this in no time.
The newest Grey Ghost appears to be older, or it's a really boring teenager. Good luck new guy. I'd link to everybody if I felt inclined to figure that out. I don't.

New Shows -

This is Earl
Kinda funny. I'll give it another chance. Didn't strike me as over the top hilarious. That said, its got half chance at being a hit with all the low brow humor opportunities. I'm a sucker for the lowest common denominator. Pile it on.

The Office
I think it started this summer. I never saw the BBC show it's based on. It's brilliant, but almost painful to watch. At some point you'll have to suspend belief with the Steve Carell character. No one could be that big an ass for that long without getting a) fired or b) punched. Sounds like some upcoming episodes! I'll watch until I'm burned out with it.

Lost
Premieres tonight. Watched some of the replays this summer. So the mystery is tropical polar bears, a sealed hatch, french radio, a powerful numeric sequence, or child snatching pirates? I'm lost. I got sucked in to Carnivale on HBO like this. Wait, just one more episode, all will be revealed. Come to think of it Carnivale had a bear also. Its a good year for supernatural bears. I think I'm breaking free of this one.

2005-09-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

Random B.S.

Hey, it's time for my quarterly update!! Always a good time for my zero readers.
And why don't I post regularly?...Life, life, middle age, middle age. That's life squared times middle age squared for those of you helping the kids with math.

I was talking to a friend from college last month, and we were droaning on about our lives. The difference now is our lives are filled with things we must do. In college our days consisted only of those things we wanted to do. See the difference? You can probably also see what kind of college student I was. The fun kind.

Wrapping up fantasy baseball this month with a trip to the finals all but guaranteed. Just did the football drafts this past weekend. I think I'm jumping the fantasy shark. My kid dragged me reluctantly to football last week.
What happened? It's too easy. I think it's too easy for the reasons I can't listen to sports talk radio. People are idiots.
I do the ESPN leagues, head to head, just the 3 major sports. I'm in year 3 and the worst I've ever done is miss the playoffs on a tie-breaker. I'm either in the playoffs or have won in all three. And, no I'm not running 50 entries out there just to get a banner. I only 3 pack football. Baseball & basketball's one entry only.
Football is in the "Let's see if this guy is an idiot by offering him a garbage trade" stage. I wish ESPN would just give me some filter to get rid of these sportstalk callers, so I don't have to deal with them.

Starting up with basketball for one of my kids. Really, I started this blog to practice for the ultimate goal of writing the comedy book on youth sports. That's where I have the plethora of material. Every season never fails to deliver at least a chapter's worth of stories.
Oh, and what I said earlier about fantasy idiots? Some of them have kids, then bring them to me to coach.

2005-06-23T15:51:00.000-04:00

Game 7 tonight in the NBA Finals. I'm up for that. Of course, I'm up for any Game 7 at any level in any sport ,I'm watching.
With no personal bias or affinity for either team tonight, I'll make the Game 7 wish for every fan, "Let's see a good game." By that I mean:

No Carping at the Refs- Hear that Pistons? The refs heard you . Quit crying about every call. See all the T's, they're tired of it too. Just Play. And no I'm not a ref.

Why, though, in a playoffs where the league has been dealing with question marks about the officiating, do they continue to show the highlight of Jordan shoving Byron Russell in the hip? You think Stern would have said, "Run the Magic baby hook, run a blooper tape, but don't run that." Do you think if Russell had shoved Jordan there would have been a whistle? Not a good time for the league to be answering that question.

Clutch Play in the Clutch- Hear that Duncan? Those were some terrible looking free throw attempts Tuesday. Shaq's one thing. Shaq has at least three discernible hitches in his free throw, but at least he goes through them slowly. Duncan looks scared, rushes it...o.k. he is scared.

It's turning out to be the Finals of diminished legacies, except for Big Shot. There was an article in Slate this week that pointed out all the times Horry hasn't had a great series, and suggesting he was undeserving of his reputation. I love when journalists who have no concept of sports write crap like this. Yes, he's not an all star. No, your not going to build a team around him. Tell you what Slate, ask this around the league. You're down 2, one possession left, pick 5 guys from around the league for that possession. See how many times Bob gets picked.

2005-06-17T16:09:00.000-04:00

NBA Finals:
I'm conflicted on what to write here. No way does the NBA fix games with refs. That said, when people are starting to compare your sport to wrestling, maybe you got a problem. Let's just say that of the major sports, the NBA has the most maddeningly inconsistent officiating.

I cut this down to that because I want to do another post dedicated to officiating. My position might not be what you'd expect. I'll leave it at that for now.

When Larry Brown talks about "playing the right way", does he mean crying to the officials about every call? I have a great respect for champions, but the Pistons are diminshing themselves in this series with all the whining.

Hit Me Baby One More Time
You can't beat it for the high comedy.
Last night's highlight was Sophie B. Hawkins giving her dance rendition of "When the Soccer Moms Have Too Much White Wine at the Block Party". Not to be confused with it's precursor the "I'm Beautiful Acid Dance" from the 60's. Both of which are marked by their total lack of rhythym.
Or perhaps the highlight was Cameo wearing his red cup outside his pants. I bet that's easy to find in his bat bag. Did anyone tell him? "Dude, your cup's on outside your pants." "Yes, I know. I had the one hit I sold it to a Coke commercial. It's time to re-establish the brand by painting my unit red." "Ummm, just so you know."
The host might be the worst ever. He reminds me of Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange". Which led to, wouldn't it be great if Malcolm McDowell's gang from that movie came out in costume and beat the host with those long sticks every time he said the show's title? Wouldn't it?...Anyone? Tell me the wouldn't try that to save a rating in the summer.
Musically, though, it reminds me of Willie Mays with the Mets in the '73 Series. They're just tarnishing the memory.

Dance with the Stars
This reminds me of when some local sportscaster goes out on the field and does some drills with one of the local teams. They suck, they shouldn't be out there, and it's not entertaining.
No idea on who two of the stars were, which I guess is par for celebrity reality.
I was hoping Holyfield's partner would jump up and bite his ear.
My mind wanders some time.

2005-06-13T16:47:00.000-04:00

Quick Hits

The guy in the NFL Sunday Ticket commercial. The guy who plays the agent on the Larry David show. Yeah, that guy. Does he pay royalties to Norm from Cheers? Is he Norm from Cheers? Maybe they just lyposuctioned/metrosexualed Norm, and that's what you get. "Norm, your not going to get model good looks out of this, but you are going to work. It's the best we can do." Everytime I see the new guy, I think of the second Darren from Bewitched.

Would it be fun for Andrew Bogut to wear a Sam Bowie mask to the NBA Draft? I'm not saying Marvin Williams is the next Jordan, but no way I take Bogut over him. He's got journeyman written all over him. Another addition to the line of Utah white guys, Van Horn, Doleac, & Bogut. "No wait, this one can pass & he's Australian!" Please, then the line is Andrew Gaze, Luc Longely, & Bogut. And Bogut moves like he's in lead boots.

Phil Jackson back to the Lakers? So did Kobe say, "I'm really not a moody primma donna who got you fired the first time you were here." And Phil said,"Yeah, and I'm not the guy who put all that down in a book." You can bury the hatchet, but you always remember where you buried the sucker. Yes, I'll be rooting against the Lakers hard just to see how this soap opera develops.

2005-06-06T16:31:00.000-04:00

So I missed the live finale of The Contender. Sorry. Had baseball tickets, and used them. With ten replays on CNBC & MSNBC all week, I knew I'd catch it eventually.

The next night, me & the kids get pizza & wings, commandeer the big screen, and wait for the first replay. CNBC overides the programming guide, and runs that talking head/idiot Cramer instead. That I owe the guy for providing the easiest short ever with his own company, thestreet.com, is little solace to my kids.

We relinquish the big screen back to the wife so she can catch the last hour of American Idol. That show really bores me, but I take the marital bullet and watch it with her. Watching established musicians singing with the contestants, reminds us why these singers, like the boxers on The Contender, are on a reality show to begin with. They aren't as good as the real thing. The real acts were clearly ratcheting down at least a notch so as not to overshadow the amateur acts. George Benson threw in a little scat riff in his number just to remind his two remora fish who had the goods. He may as well have reached over and slapped one of them.

So when I finally got to The Contender final, I was a little bit jaded. I'd watched a replay of the Wright-Trinidad fight, a couple of bouts on ESPN Classic, the aforementioned Idol final, and I felt the same way. It was like watching a minor league all star game. Maybe they'll be something one day, but for now there's a reason they're in Wichita.

No matter. It got me watching the sport again. Fare thee well Contender.

2005-05-12T15:01:00.000-04:00

I guess about ten years ago I stopped following boxing. I need to look back and figure out which fight it was that tipped me over the edge. I know it was a Don King fighter with a crooked decision, and I haven't looked back. Today, I bet I couldn't name ten current fighters.

I still watch Legendary Fights on HBO and just about anything they put up on ESPN Classic, much like I'll watch the same movie over and over. Maybe I'm just old, and not jaded. I still like the sport.

I mention that as a pretext because I think I'm coming back. Sometimes a team brings you back, sometimes its a player, in my case, of all things, it's a tv show. Sunday nights I can't miss "The Contender".

Of the four fighters left, maybe only three are pretty good boxers. The guy who won last Sunday I just can't see going too far, although he clearly hits hard. I showed my kids Leonard-Hearns on ESPN Classic a week ago, and they both said the same thing, "Leonard would kill these guys." Yes, and so would Hearns.

I don't care though. Sport is at it's purest when it comes down to one guy exerting his maximum effort against another guy trying to stop him. That's boxing, and your getting that every week here.

Same guy who created Survivor is behind The Contender. Couple of weeks ago, one of the Alabama idiots got voted off on Survivor. In his exit shot, he was still in denial as to what had just happened. I think he said something like, "...it was not my time...". Sure it was.
Same week on Contender, the loser's crying because he let his family down. His comments went something like"...my father will have to go to work, my mother will have to ride the bus, and my sister will have to ride the el, because I lost." Just a stunning contrast in human drama.

Good job. I'm hooked, and I'm back for boxing.

That said, here's additional comments on the show:

Theme Music
The absolute best this side of NFL Films. The pre-fight trumpet blare & drum beat I want playing every morning I go out to get the paper...with me coming through the fog machine. Then after a couple mornings of that, I want the Contender trumpets to blast every time the neighbor I hate goes in his yard, just so he'll flinch and look to see if I'm coming.

Sly
Does anyone take him seriously? Just him, and the people he pays to take him seriously. I laugh at least once a round at his spontaneous comments during the fight. The show would be poorer without those.
Why does he sit behind the desk at the end? That was an ego thing for him, right? I can tell he's sitting on a phone book. More on this later.

Sugar Ray
With the exception of the one punk who tried to rough him up sparring, I like the reverence the fighters show for him.
Half the time, I don't know what he's talking about when he's setting up the challenges. The challenge has to start, and then I get what the rules are. I want to see an outtake of; Ray explains the challenge, the fighters look at each other like somebody just spoke to them in tongues, the producers step in and explain what the object is, they do the challenge. I know they have this. Let's see it.

The Crusty Trainer Guy
I keep expecting him to split open Men in Black style, and have Billy Crystal step out of him.
He's in a weekly battle with Sly to see who's playing the biggest caricature of themselves.
Sly's winning.

Mature Sexpot Manager Lady
I think she's got Joey Gilbert in a set of Speedos chained to her bed. That's what happens to the losers every week. That's why they're sobbing in the locker room.

#1 Daddy
Can someone please show the guy the old SNL commercial they did about #1 hats? Please.
Just hang your kid's crappy art work up in your office like the rest of us. I didn't know everybody else was playing for #2. Would your kids have still given it to you if they had any idea you were going to wear it this much?

Potential Undercards
Manfredo's Dad vs. Joey Gilbert's Dad
Manfredo's dad appears to be the most over the top intense sport parent since Roy Turner in The Bad News Bears. It's comical when the wives approach the corner to give instruction, "Honey, could you go back and sit down? This guy's trying to beat the crap out of me right now. Yes, I'll try harder. Thank You. Very inspiring. Go sit down now."
When Manfredo pere had the corner withhold water until he finished his rant, might have been the best moment of the show. The best part was the corner, especially #1 Daddy, looked genuinely scared of him.
Him vs. a Navy SEAL, I want to watch that more than the title fight. Except the SEAL gets to fight bare knuckles. The guy just came back from Afghanistan, you know he knows 20 ways to kill a guy with his pinkies.

Sly vs. Sugar Ray
The battle to sit behind the desk.
It should start with a war of words,
"I won an Oscar for a boxing movie"
"I won an Olympic Gold Medal, world championships, and beat Hearns & Hagler, actual boxers."
Bonus dividends for deflating Sly's ego, and showing all pseudo tough guys it's not a good idea to mess with somebody who does something for a living.

Next Season- Heavyweights
I'd watch for the challenges alone.

2005-02-23T14:08:00.000-05:00

Bonds

I can't decide, does he join Pete Rose & Bill Clinton in "The guy who stood up in front of the most people and told the biggest bald faced lie" hall of fame, or does he stand alone as the biggest jerk ever? Either way, nice choice you've carved out for yourself Barry.

I used to defend the guy. Whether you think the 72 home runs is tainted by the juice, I thought the year after was amazing. The man rarely got a pitch to hit, and still led the league in hitting. He averages probably less than a pitch to hit per at bat, and he still hits over .380. Incredible. Has to rank as one of the greatest seasons ever. Last time I gush over that.

Yesterday, Barry made the argument that every great record could have an asterick on it if you dug deep enough. Nice. Isn't that the same logic that Kobe used with the Aspen cops & Shaq. "Hey, I'm in a jam here. You know what would help? Let me throw some bodies under the bus."
He should get his own asterick, juice or not. The jerk asterick.

He's better off yesterday if he lays down a"no comment", and goes off to bp. Instead, he opens up the sewer pipe. I wonder if he saw ESPN lead with him and about 2 minutes straight of his turd bombs. He probably still doesn't get it. "More rope to hang yourself with Mr. Bonds?"

Francis

Continuing with our athletes behaving badly, Stevie Francis. Misses a plane & a practice Monday, admits it's because he was celebrating his own birthday, and stinks up the floor Tuesday with like a 2 for 10 from the floor and a zero for zero from the contrition line while his team gets drubbed.

His quote, "I've been fined before." And I guess, by implication, you mean you'll be fined again. Thanks for the "heads up" Stevie. This being the NBA and all, I'm guessing there wasn't a clown & a pony at Stevie's birthday but there was an open bar. You have to love that kind of job security. "I'm planning a big drunk. It will affect my preparation and performance. And at some point in the future, I'm even money to do it again."

The Magic broom McGrady. They take a shot at his character on the way out the door. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he didn't. But this is an upgrade, how?

Miracle on Ice

Now for something upbeat. Watched a good bit of the 25th anniversary tribute on Classic last night. Wanted to make one point.

When they list all the reasons the country was in the crapper and the game became a focal point, you always get; hostages in Iran, recession, Soviets in Afghanistan, and Olympic boycott. They never mention the '72 Olympic basketball. That game was the first time we faced them in anything of significance since Munich. In '76/Montreal the Russians lost in the semis to the Czechs or Yugoslavia who promptly got drubbed by Walter Davis et al, thus saving the Russians from a deserved ass kicking. With all the other things (Iran, etc), the country was down and wanted something to feel good about. It's what got Ronald Reagan elected. For this game,I wanted to see us stick it to the Russians in a sport. Payback's hell, and we didn't need terrible refs to do it.

I'm sure nothing diminishes the hurt for those '72 guys. I wish somebody would ask some of them, though, if maybe they all got a little more jazzed about the Miracle game than you or I did.

2005-02-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

Maybe if I just do ramblings I'll hit this thing a little more. A little more than never.
That said:

All Star Weekend
How did Amare & Nash come up with the header dunk? Did Amare ask for it? Or did Nash say, "Hey, I think I can lob it to you off my head." For pure entertainment, I had that as the dunk of the contest. The Smith-Martin chair thing was great too, but that's a variation of dunk that's been done before. Smith's 'Nique tribute was classy. 'Nique's windmill, though, was faster, and he did it in games.
Still, a great resurrection for the dunk contest. I'm sure Stern wants to give them all a hug. I heard talking heads moaning that the major stars weren't in the dunk contest. So what? Two kids made three dunks that will get talked about for more than a day, and they picked up the 3-point contest's fumble. It was good business for the league.

Speaking of the 3-point contest, what a bomb. What won? 18? I was hoping Kerr came out of the TNT booth with his tie on to challenge the winner. Was Bird in the building? He could have won that. Why not put an old timer in that contest every year? Doc is not going to come off the judge's table and win the slam dunk, but the 3-point somebody could still compete in. I'm sure I lot of guys truly hang it up when there done, but I guarantee somebody still goes out & shoots. I think the Jet was saying something about it in the broadcast, but I had one ear open and didn't catch all of it. There was an old guy at my court yesterday. 70 if he's a day, 18 feet was about all his range, ugly looking two handed overhead heave. We watched him hit 14 of 15 off the wing. Some shooters are just born. They don't lose much with age. This could work.

How about Adrian Dantley wearing a watch? Was he dressing out for PE in between math & science? I wish he had tucked his jersey into his underwear outside the back of his uniform to complete the look. I had no idea he was such a nerd.

Magic Johnson looks like the answer to the question, What would Barry Bonds look like if he got about 75 pounds fatter?

Yankee-Red Sox
So who's surprised by A-Rod ducking out of the war of words with the Red Sox? Why would he risk tarnishing his endorsement money to get in a pissing match with Trot Nixon? He risks Nike. The other side puts up Framingham Dodge. Stupid he's not.

Anything Else
Has anybody made the Jose Canseco injecting everyone and everything including Paris Hilton joke yet? Probably...if not, dibs.

2004-07-01T18:49:00.000-04:00

Hey, I got an email link up! Now you can tell me how much I suck. But listen, seriously, I only want to here from the girls. I'm going to assume that all guys think I suck, so why bother? But girls, even when they're pissed at you it's amusing. I love women.

2004-07-01T17:53:00.000-04:00

Just deleted 9 months of "O.K., here goes", drivel I threw up here.

So "here goes"... again.

At least the insomnia's kicking back in. No insomnia in the winter, comes back in the summer. This just in ...I'm a bear or a vampire. I can't decide. I've decided. I'm a vampire bear. I'm a vampire bear with a blog.

Another irreverent blogger...great. What we all need.

Only 6 months to the next...

Delete

2003-10-14T18:40:00.000-04:00

Started something almost a week ago, left it in there, just posted it cause I can't remember where I was going with it anyway. My blog mocks me. It's a metaphor for my life.

I'll do better...Right. Like my plate's getting any clearer. I'll take two majors off the list tomorrow, and still see no light.

The List. The List is a living thing. I first became aware of the List in marriage. It was the wife's List with things she wanted. I've gotten everything on the List several times, but the List won't go away. Beware single men. Your future wife has your List.

2003-10-08T15:03:00.000-04:00

So I should probably get on this thing more than once every 2 weeks. Did anybody ever get better at anything on a once every 2 weeks practice schedule?

Blogger wants 15 minutes for a survey to help them improve. Ask yourself Blogger, if I've been gone for 2 weeks do I have 15 minutes for you?

Lost fantasy baseball on the last day by the slimmest of margins. The guy who beat me sent me a gracious email the next day. That's a switch from the usual discourse you find in those things.

I hate losing. I don't know who likes it, but I especially hate it. I don't kill myself on games in which I have no control. If I have the least amount of effect on a result though, forget it. I'll obsess a loss to death. The real curse of it has been I get little help from winning.

2003-09-25T03:20:00.000-04:00

I'm in the last week of my fantasy baseball playoffs against some guy in Seattle. A guy on the west coast has a definite advantage when it comes to roster moves. I'm the only kind of animal that can counter that...an insomniac in the east. I think I hear a new fantasy team name. I hope my insomnia holds through Saturday. That and my roster catches fire. That would help too.

Spent some time monkying with the HTML stuff. It's no longer a secondary motivation for doing this, nor a tertiary. Who am I kidding? If the truck makes a noise, I turn the radio up. Anything I pick up from this point is going to be by accident. Let's make fun acronyms for HTML.Half-ass Try Might L-word. I'm sure tech savy people have wittier acronyms than me for HTML. Some that probably mock you. I bet they don't use L-word. If I could figure it out I'd put in Comments and we could all play.

I guess I'll put something somewhat accurate for the description if only as a courtesy. Let's see if I can effectively use the Bold and Italics buttons. Baby steps. Here goes.

2003-09-21T01:21:00.000-04:00

Here's one secondary motivation: maybe I'll learn some HTML tricks. Then I look under the hood, maybe I'll learn to fly first. Like I have time for this.

First time I wrote I kept it in a journal. Probably had about 100 pages done in it. Lost it in a move.

Stopped for a while, then started keeping everything in an old 486. That's all lost in an "I don't know how, but it's fried" mishap. I suppose that is technically recoverable as it sits now in the garage eating square feet. It's in "Stuff Purgatory".

Stuff Purgatory is that time between Stuff's last usage and the day you decide either to use it again or toss it. Clothes are most common. "I have not worn this shirt in a year. I'm never going to wear it. And besides I want something new."

Except for ties. I keep my ties. I come to think of them as a time line of my life. My tie wearing life. Once in a while I'll try to bring a tie off the timeline into the rotation. Sometimes it works, and sometimes about lunch, I look down and think, "What compelled you to wear this brightly colored turd around your neck?" It's like a bad flashback.

My son has occasion to wear ties for school functions now and then. He and I have a blast picking them out of my little museum. His youthful ireverence allows him to pick freely from the collection. Watching your son go off in a tie you wore ten years prior, that's a good time to be a father.

When my wife figured out I was keeping ties, she wasn't pleased.
Wife,"What else are you planning to keep for the sake of nostalgia?"
Me,"Anything that might annoy you."
At the time I used as a rational that a son might wear these one day. This was well in advance of any children. Nothing is sweeter in a marriage than pulling out an "I told you so" a decade later. Nothing.

Did a guy like Nostradamus do stuff like this? In addition to everything we know, he probably had this great body of undocumented work that was nothing but hassling Mrs. Nostradamus. It's not like he could shut it off.
Nosti.,"I told you 10 years ago your bum brother would be on his 12th job by now."
Mrs. Nosti.,"Will you shut up, take the garbage out, & take a stab at something out about 500 years from now."

I can see how I'll do this now. It's a stream of consciousness blog. Like we need another one of those.

2003-09-19T15:59:00.000-04:00

This has to start somewhere. But where?

I can't even come up with a description for what this blog might be. Then what are my motivations?

Now I'm having a conversation with myself...on the internet....for everyone to read.

I guess I've been away from writing for a few years now, and I want to get back. Blogging is apparently the medium of choice. Until a few months ago I didn't know that blogs existed. Now it appears everyone has a blog. They're like an SUV. I have 2 SUV's. I can have one blog. I hope I like it.

Here goes