That’s right 97.5 million people watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. That means 97.5 million people may or may not have been really weirded out by that talking Etrade baby who vomits after making a trade. That was just weird. And oddly, Naomi Campbell cannot dance it seems.

To speak of the game for a second: FUCK YEAH! 18-1 baby! Go Giants! That shit was just sick. It was everything you could’ve wanted from a game really (except maybe some more offensiveness). Close all the way through, both teams playing fairly well, the Giants front four mauling Brady, good things all around. And best of all, the Giants won. Also, at the beginning of the game, I said and I quote, “It would be funny if Eli Manning orchestrates a game winning fourth quarter drive,” and IT HAPPENED! Who would’ve thunk it? Great stuff.
(more…)

Curt Schilling is a huge computer buff/nerd as you may well know. He runs a blog and plays lots of MMORPG (I’m unsure exactly what the breakdown of that is, something like massive online role plyaing game). One of these such games is World of Warcraft. And apparently this is his World of Warcraft character. My man loves his fantasy games.

I guess those four days off between starts gives Schilling the time he needs to get his character to level 70. Ah, the life of a major league pitcher. Oh yeah, this guy is making 8 million dollars next season not including incentive packages.

The Good: I caught Juno this weekend and I thought it was a really great movie. Besides being simple broad characteristics such as sweet and funny, it was also an incredibly well put together movie with great dialogue. This movie must have been somewhat golden from the get go because you can tell from watching it that the screenplay must have been great. Diablo Cody wrote it (here’s a little Jezebel information on her - and of course you can find out what you can about her from imdb), and it’s really really good especially considering it was her first screenplay. It’s not just the dialogue, which I’ve already mentioned as great, but the story itself is well rounded. It does a good job of completing the circle of these people’s lives. There were some problems I had with Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman’s story arch (mostly pointed to me by my mother), but it wasn’t anything major that I thought detracted from the movie as a whole, especially when Cody does such a good job of juxtaposing the conclusion of their relationship with our general feelings towards the characters throughout the piece. So good job. Thumbs up. Go see it.

The Bad: The New York fucking Knicks. Not only did the Knicks lose back to back games to the Sixers (THE SIXERS - one of a select few (I believe its only 2-3) teams with a worse record than the Knicks), but James Dolan is standing behind Isiah with his full support. WHAT?!?!?! How does that make any sense? Only one team is worse than the Knicks in the entire Eastern Conference after this weekend. Only three teams in the whole league are worse! And two of those teams are in the midst of intense rebuilding overhauls (Seattle, Minnesota). Uch. Ugh. Mlech. There are no words. Just disgusted sounds.

I came across this interesting map regarding the birthplace of NBA players (via TrueHoop). It’s interesting to see, but one of the glaring things that they point out is the overall Eastern dominance. Zoom in on the United States and you’ll see a large cluster in the East. I have no idea why this is (less open space in the East maybe so more indoor sports instead of fields for football or soccer or field hockey or whatever?) or what it means (the Knicks could just go out and get some players from the street and be better than they currently are?), but it’s interesting nonetheless (that’s one word - always shocked me).

There’s been a bit of a dry spell here what with the holidays and my own slight freaking about grad apps (WE GOT APPS! - Beautiful Girls, anyone?), but I seem to be finally through the storm. I sent out a couple of the apps yesterday and am working on sending out a few more by the end of the week. Then it’s in the hands of a bunch of random strangers who’ll judge me based on stories and personal statements that I’ve gone over some many times by now that I’m not sure if they’re actually good or if I just got tired of reading them.

In sadder news, I’m sure you heard of the death of Sean Taylor, a Washington Redskins’ safety. Or maybe you didn’t hear about it, but either way he got shot in his home and bled to death last night. Terrible incident. Interestingly though, Michael Wilbon didn’t seem to have too much sympathy for Taylor saying,

Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain’t the first and won’t be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It’s sad, yes, but hardly surprising.

I understand where Wilbon is coming from (and in fact, this quote is taken a little out of context - read more of the link), but he really expresses no sympathy for the guy. He constantly says he’s not surprised and even seems to be a little snide to people who ask questions that suggest Taylor may have changed since the birth of his daughter. Look, I don’t know Sean Taylor and I don’t have as much access as Wilbon obviously, but some modicum of well-wishes wouldn’t be out of line. He’s even snide to people who ask where to send flowers or cards. Bizarre to me, but like I said, I suppose I see where Wilbon’s coming from (given his own explanation), I just think he could have been a little bit nicer given this was moments after the news broke.

Just one more article on the whole Marbury situation that shows how happy the other Knicks were to have him back. Best part of the article concerning this whole situation:

“I could have taken LSD, hallucinated AND been a great writer and I still couldn’t have made this stuff up,” said one rival team executive.

By now, Stephon Marbury has rejoined the Knicks and came off the bunch last night in the Knicks losing effort against the Clippers (Where’s that 2-1 start now?!?!), but before that there was all sorts of speculation going on about what was happening and people were already putting together trade scenarios (I liked the Marbury trade to bring him here - I honestly did - but now with the team we’ve got I’m not sure where he fits, we need more of a disher than a swisher to use Clyde Fraiser’s dictionary). Now, it seems that the fences are mended and the cows are all in place (for now - is Marbury going to stay on the bench?), and it also seems that Marbury may have had a pretty good reason for bolting from the team. I think people were quick to jump on Marbury because of a lot of the insanity that went on during the off-season with his non-sensical interviews, his finding of Christ (that happened or did i dream it?) and of course his testimony, but this absence seems fairly legitimate. 195K worth of legitimate, it seems.

As you may or may not have heard, A-Rod has come crawling back to the Yankees in search of money. Upon reading the ESPN article, it seems that it’s possible that A-Rod could still get a mammoth contract from the Pinstriped Men. NO! DON’T DO IT! It’s not that I don’t like the guy (I mean, I find him oddly intriguing), but isn’t it clear that other teams aren’t really willing to foot the bill. At least that’s the way it seems to me, so why overpay? Hey, he is first ballot hall of fame most likely, and sure he choked (chokes) in the playoffs, but last year Yanks don’t make it to the playoffs without him. So sure, maybe stay in the hunt for him, but don’t just jump at the first offer and give him 280 over 9 or 10 years. Let it play out a little.

In seriousness, I think there’s perhaps some better deals out there. Lowell comes to mind (didn’t he play for the Yankees once, can I get verification on this? I’m too lazy to do it myself.). I think they were talking about Cabrera, but I don’t know. Point being, weigh the options for once. Remember Raul Mondesi.

Just some fun stuff I found through the intrawebs (as usual, Deadspin). Here you go. Something like this went down in my high school though it was just percussion doing various songs but still cool. Lots of Mario Bros. Good times. Can’t go wrong with old school video game music.

I always enjoy when sports teams and players and people in general are able to step back from the ridiculousness of it all, and just have a little fun. This seemingly always happens in minor league baseball. They’re having a lot of fun down in the bush leagues. Good or them. Sometimes it seems like the teams are run by guys like me. Just in it for the fun. People who realize they’re getting paid to play a game (or manage it or whatever).