Wake me up in February

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. A dozen ways to win the game and the Mets don't capitalize on any of them. So goes a team that does not deserve to win. The lowlight: Mets riding wave of momentum after the Endy catch (more on that later)... bases loaded, one out, Valentin up, and K's. A fly ball gets a run in, Wagner pitches the 9th, and certainly doesn't hang a change to Yadier. Such is the game of baseball....

But wow... that Endy Chavez catch. I'm honored to have been in the building and seen that in person. Right afterwards I looked at the guy next to me and said "we're going to be seeing this catch for the rest of our lives." Just unbelievable.

If you do not know the catch to which I refer, you're too much of a nerd. Move along.

Baseball's all done for me. Go... Raiders? Knicks? Islanders? Sun Devils?

Siiiiiiiiiigh. Wake me up when pitchers and catchers report.

Three down, seven to go....

The New York Mets have just finished off the Dodgers in round 1 of the NL playoffs. Next up, either the Cardinals or Padres, where they will not be facing either Carpenter or Peavy in game 1, meaning they will only see the opposing team's ace a max of twice.

To all of the experts out there who predicted a Dodger win... not to sound like a homer, becuase I'm as realistic about my teams as anyone (case in point: I don't think the Mets stand a chance against Oakland, and CAN be Detroit ONLY IF they pitch intelligently to that impatient lineup), but have you been paying attention to baseball at all this season? An opportunistic lineup that can beat you every possible way combined with what may be the best 7-deep bullpen I've ever seen, against a Grady Little managed team? Come on now.

Mets in the NLCS, no matter WHO they play, in no more than 6.

Now all of you help a brother out! Go here and sign up to be eligible for the raffle for Mets World Series tickets! It's a random drawing where those randomly selected get the chance to buy a max of 4 seats to a max of one game, and I NEED NEED NEED to win :) Deadline is Monday 10/9 by 11 PM eastern. So sign up, and help this G go see his Mets in the WS!

Is it an ego trip if it's true?

I've decided to publicly announce that I'm way too smart and charming to be doing what I'm doing. So if anyone needs a well-paid consultant for, ya know, anything, drop me a line. References on request. That is all.

Even Red Sox fans get it...

Even the Sports Guy has figured it out. Scroll down to the bottom of the linkd column to read the opinion of a newly-converted fan of The Wire.

By the way, be sure you read the Sports Guy's column regularly. Looks like he's back on form after mailing in a few months worth of columns ever since becoming a father, which I guess is understandable, to an extent :P If you have any interest in sports and pop culture, it's highly entertaining and at times even insightful stuff. Even if he is from Boston...

Mighty Fantasy Foosball Action

In the spirit of everyone else posting their recent football draft results in their blogs, here's my squad:

1. (6) C. Portis RB -clean bill of health going into week 1 (*whew*)
2. (15) W. McGahee RB -super talented, I don't mind at the 15
3. (26) R. Moss WR -too good to repeat last year's numbers. ORN baby
4. (35) H. Ward WR -rarely spectacular but alwas excellent
5. (46) A. Johnson WR -talent for days; more open looks with Moulds in town
6. (55) M. Bulger QB -numbers numbers numbers.
7. (66) J. Lewis RB -a good QB and return of a dominant D brings back the field position game. Healthy O-line says Jamal returns to form
8. (75) L. Evans WR -deep threat good
9. (86) H. Miller TE -solid, TE's real deep this year
10. (95) A. Green RB -sure, I'll take a flier on a #1 back in the 10th
11. (106) L. Maroney RB -young stud on a team w/ very creative offense
12. (115) C. Simms QB -sleeper
13. (126) A. Bryant WR -number one wideouts are good picks in the 13th round.
14. (135) Dallas DEF -top 10 D
15. (146) K. Winslow TE - healthy and pretty damn talented. Possible steal o' the draft?

Hey, look at that, no kicker!

In this draft I followed a few of my personal rules of thumb that kinda make sense in a smaller league, this one having 10 teams, the first being: why draft a kicker? 30 teams in the NFL, 10 fantasy teams... I'm pretty sure I can get someone comparable off the wire any and every week of the season who won't be that much worse, if at all, next to any of the kickers drafted. I'll gladly take talent now and watch how lineups develop going into week one than have take a kicker. While other guys draft their legs (and backup legs in some instances! Nauseated now!), I spend the last five rounds drafting a potential stud RB on a perennial winner, an up and coming young QB in a walk year, a number 1 wideout, a top 10 defense, and a sleeper TE with all the talent in the world who's finally healthy. Check please!

Another strategic decision: no D 'til very late. Again, in a 10 team league with only 1 starting defense, I know I'm going to get quality no matter where I pick.

I'm feeling good about my squad. Good depth at the RB spot should keep me in the mix if Portis' shoulder acts up again and/or Duckett gets a good share of the goal line carries. Enough depth to cover me if Randy and Jamal don't return to form as hoped.

NFL kickoff in a week! Mets continue their roll! Islanders... well, play hockey, and not very well, at that, but they're young and learning :\ Knicks... well, yeah...

And that's my 530 AM sports report. Fantasy baseball venting rant coming soon.

No Corner Left Behind...

I'm here tonight to shill! That's right, I'm shilling for of all things a television show. Not just any television show, but one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever created in the English language.

That show is HBO's "The Wire," set to begin its fourth season on Sunday Sept. 10 (or Monday 9/4 with the On Demand feature) As there are very few humans I know who watch this show, as sad as that may be, I encourage all of you heathens who are missng out to run to your local DVD provider and get your hands on the first three seasons of the show. I won't even try to explain it, as there's never been anything like it on television, in the movies, very likely even in poetry or prose. Just do it. Get back to me when you've watched them. Okay, you can finish reading this post first....

I usually don't admonish people for their taste, or lack thereof; people like what they like, even country music, as much as it pains me. But honestly, watch the first 3 or 4 episodes of this show. If you don't like it, you are a buffoon, that's really all I can say. To give you some example of the appeal of the show: any Aint It Cool News readers here? Ever have the misfortune of reading an AICN talkbalk? What's the average # of posts until it turns into a flame war, about 4-6? In a recent story about the upcoming season 4 on AICN, the entire talkback, when last I read at near 100 posts, was universally in agreement on the greatness of this show. Not one idiot on the internet who reads AICN disliked this show! If this isn't some sort of badge of honor in this day and age, I don't know what is.

Further accolade, a quote from Adam Buckman of the New York Post, after having watched review copies of the entirety of the upcming fourth season:
" I am so blown away by this show that I will go out on a limb here to declare that these 13 episodes just might comprise the single finest piece of work ever produced for American TV."

That's all I have to say today. Go watch some of the most rewarding fiction you'll ever encounter. Now.

Rumblings, bumblings, stumblings

Been a while! Let's seee, what's new...

-Infestation of bed bugs causing me to throw out pretty much all the significant furniture in my house and leading to what will be a very expensive remodeling job which will cost me thousands of $

-Wrong dosage on my thyroid medication causing me to gain about 18 lbs.

-Mentioning that I'd look into getting Bocelli tix for my mother, grandmother, and aunt for Mama's Day. Going rate is about $200 a piece. Good move.

-Baseball's on, and my Mets, despite anemic offense lately, have been playing good ball. Hell, we even got a relative gem out of Victor. That's special, indeed.

-An excellent season of the Sopranos, 24 is shaping up to a very good conclusion.

-Finally a decent Superman Returns trailer.

-A filling came out of my right bottom molar while eating a carrot. No dental insurance. Yay.

-I'm getting sick of the spectacle that the NFL is becoming. I don't need nightly, hour-long draft specials for the three weeks leading up to the draft in April. I don't need Bon Jovi, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, anyone. All this pomp is starting to remind me of NASCAR with minority appeal. Just play football.

-All of my fantasy baseball teams having a combined ERA of about 5.12 right now. That won't win me any leagues.

-A tremendous lack of free time during which to coherently address what's up in my life. Hence, you get bullet points.

-A nerdy card game visit to the NYC from J-Dub. There was much walking to be done.

-Confirmation of the fact that Sideshow Luke is, in fact, the best toy ever.

-Gearing up for both convention and baseball road trip seasons. There shall be much away time this summer. And much money spent.


I feel compelled to be productive. So stay tuned in about 2 months for more bullet points.

Fantasy Island

As I type this, I'm about 14 hours away from my first baseball fantasy draft of the year. Only two words can say how I feel about this: The Woo and the Hoo.

For It's One, Two...

Fiiinally! This summer, I shall embark on what will not quite be a complete tour of every major league baseball stadium in the majors, but a pretty good chunk nonetheless! My buddies from out west are taking a little journey across the country to visit every MLB and many minor league parks in a total of less than two months, and I'll be along for about 12 big league stops of it. Between this trip, my convention travels, and just popping all over the country as I tend to do, I look to be hitting up about 17 different major league baseball stadiums this year. Those two of you who read this who can appreciate this know how special and how much fun this will be. It gives me a warm tingly feeling all over just thinking about it, even with the foot-plus (and getting deeper by the minute) of snow outside my window right now.

It's exciting to be getting to all these parks, many of which I have never been to before: the Jake in Cleveland, the Phillies' new yard, the hideousness of RFK and Oakland's Colisseum, whatever bank's name they've slapped on Candlestick this year, etc. I'll also get to see all of my good buddies and buddyettes scattered all over the mainland, 'cause as many of you know, I gots bros and hos in different area codes.

What this does mean, however, is one less season in which to actually be productive as far as getting things together and doing something worthy of this remarkably talented brain I've been endowed with. You know what though? Screw it. I loves the baseball and I'll probably never get this opportunity again; at least not where I can enjoy it with friends.

The way I'm wired, fantastic life experience trumps graduate school or starting a business every time :P

So does a shitload of baseball.

Super Bowl Memories

Congrats to the Stillers of Peetsburgh on their lackluster win over the horribly-coached Seattle Seahawks in SB 40. Not a game to show to the young ones if you want to make them football fans.

What I am thankful for, though, is how games like this truly bring my old community of friends from school in AZ together, if only because there are several buddies of mine from Seattle and talkin the smack is what it's all about.

So while the game was, for the most part, no good, the e-mail conversation which has taken place since Monday afternoon now stands at a total of 73 different messages sent back and forth, basically each finding a new way to ridicule one or all of the previous sender's preferred sports franchises.

Some highlights:
If it weren't for the infamous "tuck rule" incident of the 2002 playoffs, Drew Bledsoe would STILL be the starting QB of the New England Patriots; consequently, Tom Brady would be out of football, but appearing as a frequent guest star as Chad Michael Murray's alcoholic older brother on the WB's One Tree Hill.

Seattle fans, take heart: your team has won both the WNBA finals and USL soccer league finals this past year. Seattle = Title Town!

Such a revelation led to the discovery that the DC United, an MSL soccer team (yes, somehow we support multiple porfessional soccer leagues in the U.S....) selected, with their first round pick in this year's much anticipated soccer draft, one Marvell Wynne II, son of the formr MLB not-so-great. I wish I were named Marvell Wynne, so I could name my son same, too. Some guys have all the luck.

In closing, thank you, Seattle Seahawks for losing. Without you, we'd have no one to pick on, and my last few afternoons would have been considerably less funny and entertaining.

The RBAM T-shirt Quandry

RBAM would be Red-Blooded American Male, in the most stereotypical sense, for the record...

In the interest of finding places to put stuff, I've decided to spend my Tuesday evening going through every article of clothing that I have here in this house. What I have found is that, it's true, I've been to enough cool events and had such excellent taste in my life that I have WAY too many excellent "shirts as mementos" to want to get rid of much. Here's an inventory, including some non-t-shirts:

• Tim Hardaway #10 blue Golden State Warriors jersey


• Chris Mullin 1992 USA Basketball "Dream Team" blue jersey


• Middle-Earth CCG "Lidless Eye" t-shirt


• 1995 NBA All-Star Game (Phx, AZ) t-shirt


• Free promo t-shirts from various sports card companies (Upper Deck, Playoff, more)


• Chicago White Sox gray baseball jersey, with 1991 "New Comiskey Park Inaugural Season" patch


• Another White Sox jersey... a hockey jersey


• New Edition reunion tour t-shirt, U2 Popmart tour t-shirt, and several other concert tees I won't mention (Billy Joel and Elton John? I didn't actually pay for this, did I?)


• Emmitt Smith blue Cowboys authentic jersey (boo Cowboys, yay Emmitt)


• Authentic (read: expensive) Vancouver Canucks jerseys: Black Bure #10, White Bure #96


• Arizona State University t-shirts featuring places to get drunk that have very long-since been shut down by the cops for serving underage alcohol to minors... the original Dash Inn on Apache Blvd? Cluck U. Chicken Company, now known as Acme? Good stuff!


• Assorted C/TCG t-shirts, such as shirts for each Wars TCG faction, dAgent, dGamer, .hack//Enemy prize shirts, DGMA Judge t-shirt, Spycraft CCG, L5R, more randomness


• Islanders 1993 Eastern Conference Champs t-shirt (shoulda been cup champs... DAMN YOU, DALE HUNTER)


• Knicks 1994 Eastern Conference Champs t-shirt (shoulda been world champs... DAMN YOU, JOHN STARKS! And you too, Hakeem Olajuwan, who said you could be the best basketball player in the world after Jordan retired {the first time}?)


• A Big East college basketball t-shirt, circa the mid-1980's, featuring the St. John's Red MEN, etc. We're talking the oldest of old school here


• Awesome t-shirt of Fat Albert, AND the ENTIRE Junkyard Gang!


• Assorted vacation souvenier shirts from trips I never took, mostly from ex-girlfriends. For better or worse, none of them still smell like any of my ex-girlfriends.


• My personal favorite, my UPS t-shirt from when I worked loading some trucks on the overnight shift for about 2 weeks. Good times... I think. Don't really remember it.

The question is, HOW DO I THROW ANY OF THESE OUT? I lubs 'em too much. *sigh* This inability to get rid of clothing reminders of days gone by is a relatively recent phenomenon that's creeped up in males around my age, and I'm totally biting into it.

No matter what, the Big East one is staying.

Time & Space

I have a lot of crap.

I'm not trying to say that's how I feel about the stuff I have, but I feel that "crap" is the best way to summarize the cornucopia of toys and trinkets I've obtained from my travels. There come times when I take a look around at all this stuff, though, and really ask myself why it's here. Point being that I think it may be time for it to NOT be here.

I don't have that lovin' feelin' for my old "stuff" any more. 20+ years of nerdy Star Wars affection collecting has left me with quite the bookshelf full of books, quite the closet full of toys. Years of being a game nerd have my home literally covered in cardboard, awash in a sea of games no longer produced, in many cases by companies no longer doing any producing.

Enter money: my main source of income these days is assembling/repairing PC's. As one might imagine, having the parts on hand to make such things happen is pretty essential to the whole gig. Having a place to put all this stuff is also a fantastic perk. Being awake 'til 6 in the morning looking for a mobo driver CD which SHOULD be easy to find is not something I need to have happen in my line of work. What makes it doubly frustrating is having to toss aside the same Chewbacca figure 11 times while hunting.

That's it, I'm done, it's Time to make Space.

I've got some cool neighbors here, some of the handful of people in this town who speak English. As the parents of two young kids, and semi-nerds themselves, we always find ourselves stealing obsessions from each other: they made me start buying Sideshow figures, I made them start buying FMA TCG cards. They've been trying to get me to get in with them on the creation of an ebay store for some time now, as they already buy and sell (and use my scanner and wireless connection for :P) all sorts of stuff on ebay. I'm thinking the time has come to take them up on this.

I've got all this stuff that's representative of the things I've enjoyed for a long, long time now. I guess, in time, your love for this stuff just goes away. Or maybe it's just 3 poorly-written prequel films? Who can say. All I know is that I've got to suck it up, invest a little Time, and make a little Space. Some extra $ is nice, too.

Oh, and the desire for, say, a 1080p HiDef TV doesn't hurt your desire to get rid of some stuff, either, does it.

Maybe it's just Time for new toys... that take up less Space :P

Eengreesh 107

Should've, would've = should have, would have, NOT should of, would of

Looser does not = one who does not win. Loser = one who does not win. Looser = what your sister is when I am through with her. (see also loosing)

Accidentally = by accident. On accident = not something one should ever say.

Carrie and Keri are not the same name.

Oil has 2 syllables.

"Do what?," while charmingly cute... well, what does it mean, exactly, and why is it so pervasive? Explanations please!

Carry on!