"You couln't get it done without me" -Shaq

Oops, my apologies, Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World got posted in the wrong place.

Does anyone realize how little sense Shaq's rap was about Kobe not being able to get it done without him because he fell in the finals. Kobe in fact did get done what Shaq couldn't do with less help. Kobe beat the Spurs, Shaq had two darkhorse MVP contenders in Steve Nash and Amare on his team and lost to the Spurs. Kobe beat the Spurs, how does Shaq have a right to talk?

I've also heard about Paul Pierce hating on Kobe, as if he has a right to do that. Rediculous. Without looking too much in the stats of it all, Paul didn't beat Kobe, his team beat Kobe's team, and Paul's team had Ray Allen and KG on it.

I'm sick of this notion of us measuring our stars by whether they can bring home a championship. Teams bring championships, stars don't. The truth is that while we don't like the image of a selfish ballplayer, and we like a guy who does all he can to help, a star can't realistically bring home a championship on his own. We have to stop holding a measuring stick up to our basketball stars based on whether they win, win, win, and win again (4 series gets you a championship). Kobe won, won, won (against the defending champ Spurs), and then lost. I'd call that pretty freaking impressive. I'm tired of the notion of whether this guy or that will be the true franchise savior and bring his team a championship because that guy doesn't exist. No one has ever singlehandedly brought his team a championship, and that's the beautiful thing about this game: It takes a team. So let's celebrate the great individuals and celebrate the great teams, and let's not confuse one for the other. The best players we've had have managed to take teams to the finals by themselves, AI, LeBron James, and now Kobe. That's pretty hard to get any farther than that.

Winning a championship is something that also plain just can't happen no matter how good you are, because it's usually a crowded field.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of throwing two guys into a cage in a fight to the death and rewriting the history books on a yearly basis, to lavish the winner and condone the loser. This is why every coach of the year in the last few years, Byron Scott, Rick Carlisle, Mike D'Antoni, Avery Johnson, Larry Brown, etc. has been fired or run out of town in one way or another, because they can't ever live up to their expectations. If people really had some sense of perpsective, they'd realize it's not wise to fire your coach just because of a single losing streak.

Here are examples of coaches who shouldn't have gotten fired:
-Rick Carlisle, 2006-2007, Indiana Pacers-The front office made a trade: Stephen Jackson, Saraventus Jukavics and Al Harrington for Ike Diogu, Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy and they didn't make the playoffs. Not his fault, it takes time for teams to gel after a trade. By that same logic....

-Avery Johnson, 2007-2008, Dallas-Same deal. The GM, Mark Cuban, made a move that by his own admission would either sink the team or elevate them to a championship, it was a risky front office move, and it's not Avery Johnson's fault. You can't get a team to gel that quickly

-Byron Scott, 2003-2004, New Jersey Nets-He had a losing streak in the middle of the season. Big deal: He had made the finals the last 2 years and the season isn't over until it's over. New Jersey made the playoffs for 6 straights years and in some cases, they didn't make the playoffs until the final game of the season. Granted Frank Williams turned out to be good, Byron Scott turned New Orleans into a championship contender this year, which is a similar situation to.....

-Scott Skiles, who got his team to the conference semis and an impressive sweep of the Miami Heat in the playoffs the previous year. They fired him in December of the season because the team wasn't playing well. Well, they weren't playing any better.
Here's what John Paxson, Bulls GM had to say:"I don't have a long-term solution as of today. I'm disappointed in the way we're playing, the way we're competing, the energy or lack thereof that we're playing with on the floor. I know expectations coming into the year were really, really high and we're not even close to those. I honestly believe we're a better team than we've played this year."
So basically, the guy didn't have a long-term solution, or in other words he has no clue if what he's doing is a good idea. He just admits to being momentarily unhappy and discusses being plagued by his own expectations. Like Cleveland, the act of firing Flip Saunders ensured the season's fate as officially lost. Chicago wasn't remotely in contention for a playoff spot in a weak year in which newcomers Atlanta and Philadelphia made the playoffs.

-Flip Saunders, 2004-2005, Minnesota Timberwolves-Kevin McHale fired Flip and coached the team himself. The end result wasn't that much better, as the Timberwolves had one of the greatest loss differentials from season-to-season in NBA history.

-Paul Silas, 2004-2005, Had a 12-game losing streak somewhere over the course of the middle of the season and got fired for that. He still had his team above the 500 mark at the time but the reasoning was that earlier they were fighting for the division title and now they were in danger of missing the playoffs. Well, firing Silas didn't help any, they still missed the playoffs anyway and the replacement coach had a worse record

-Brian Hill, 2006-2007 Orlando Magic, He got the Orlando Magic into the playoffs for the first time since 2003, but still got fired because they lost the first round in a sweep. Did we mention every other team from the South got sweeped that year in the playoffs?

-Rick Carlisle, 2002-2003 Indiana Pacers, Got his team to the conference finals twice in a row and won the division outright. Got upset by New Jersey in the conference finals. So basically, this is a team that didn't live up to seeding. It's like if a #1 seed in the tournament got upset by a #2 seed in the elite eight. Big deal. To be fair, most people felt Carlisle's firing was unfair.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

From 1963, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes place over the course of a particularly eventful day along the highways of Southern California, where a group of strangers comes across a man's dying confession that a large sum of money is hidden in Santa Rosita, California. The group of four or five different cars and about a dozen people can't agree as to how they're going to split this money so it becomes every man for himself.

The film is also the loose inspiration for the 2001 film Rat Race except it was a far more solid film that doesn't compromise its audience with overly crude or pandering humor. It's based around a timeless concept: the humor of the chase, and that has been used by every great comic Buster Keaton's The General, to Harold Lloyd's vertical version of the chase in Safety Last. And it never gets old.

The film is also directed by Stanley Kramer who primarily made message movies (i.e. Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and while it's tempting to think that Kramer was just taking a break from heavier themes and just having fun, the movie isn't entirely morally devoid of any theme. There is a certain undertone amid all the comedy of how money corrupts absolutely. Watching the film a second or third time with that theme in mind might make for a different viewing experience.

Stanley Kramer made the film with the aim of casting as many comedians in the film as he possibly could, and he succeeds quite well, so the film ends up being a who's who of the '60's. It is interesting to note that a great number of the stars of this film are completely unrecognizable to my generation today. They are unrecognizable to myself and I'd like to think I've seen my fair share of TV and movies from the old days. Here is who I knew and didn't know:
-I had heard of Sid Cesar because he gave Mel Brooks and Woody Allen their starts, Carl Reiner I knew as the director of some films and I've seen him on Whose Line is it Anyway?
-I had heard of Phil Silvers because I knew he was the inspiration for Sargent Bilko, but I had never seen him in person
-I knew Buddy Hackett, Spencer Tracy and Ethel Merman
-The cameos of the Three Stooges and Don Knotts I recognized fairly instantly
-I had heard the name Milton Berle but couldn't recognize him
-I had not ever heard of Edie Adams or Dick Shawn. Dick Shawn, may I say, is quite funny.
-I knew Mickey Rooney but couldn't recognize him on sight
-I've heard references to Jimmy Durante in TV shows like the Golden Girls, Dick Van Dyke Show and I believe I Love Lucy, etc., but still wouldn't recognize him

i dread the weekend

Oh man, the week just ended. I actually worked pretty hard this week after having had irregular employment, i really worked hard just now, but the weekend is so much more pressure and there's a good chance I could emerge broken-hearted or bitter at the end of it because I will attempt to do something social and it will not work out because my friends and potential people I might want to date will all be too busy and I then wasted time trying to make an effort.

I could also do some group activity, or maybe go out of town, but I will have to expend a lot of metnal energy trying to decide this stuff. So tiring.

I just don't want my weekend to pass me by because that's my opportunity to do stuff, but I also don't like the pressure to do stuff.

I'm sorry, I don't even have the energy to write this particular article very well.

Back to the Grocery Store

Before I hop into the most recent trip to the grocery store, I need to point out a somewhat local story. Check it out here. Apparently, we have shifted back to the Red 50's and now we can spend as much as we want to stop terrorism at home. Maryland police actually used tax dollars(fortunately not mine) to spy on anti-war and anti-death penalty groups. What threat does a group that is against violence for the sake of revenge really pose to the general populace? Maybe you could say that they might have a deleterious effect on the government, but isnt that what democracy is about? Its kind of disheartening to see the post-9/11 facism that is prevalent throughout the country. It is even worse when you think about how it only took a few misguided fundamentalists to bring down an entire country, where as in the 50's it took an entire country.

Ok, so now for the grocery store adventure. This trip wasnt nearly as eventful as the last, but there were a few minor instances that really caught my attention. The first happened when I was entering and I saw an elementary school aged kid wearing a Pre Lives shirt. If I were at a track meet or at a road race, I wouldnt find this to be a big deal; but this was at my own beloved Safeway in upper NW. I am not sure how much detail I have given to the describe the atmosphere of this Safeway, but I will say that I am a part of a heavy majority. There is at least one security and occasional police officer hanging out just in case of who knows what. Even more telling is that every time I get fish or shrimp, the guy asks if I would like some catfish with that(this has not happened anywhere else I have been, and if it did im sure it would be something other than catfish). So, when I see a kid wearing Pre Lives shirt, I am somewhat taken aback. I can only imagine what drew this kid to a white(no relation) 1970s(no relation) runner(no relation).

After shoppping for awhile, I head over to get some lunch meat and end up waiting in a relatively long-ish line. I am fourth in the line, and as I am next to order, I notice the first guy who was in line when I got there was still waiting. One of the women helping says to him "I am almost done" and he cleverly replies "I have heard that one before". She clearly did not pick up on it, but I quickly picked up on it and had a nice internal laugh.

Outside of those two things, nothing really out of the ordinary occurred.

Free Jazz

Check out Free Jazz every friday in the sculpture garden. Its free and they have a good selection of food and drinks...at least it looked good. I did not buy any as we byob'd and byof'd.

Rollover Minutes

I finally picked up on the genius of the concept of rollover minutes. Its been almost two years and in that period of time, I have picked up quite a few unused minutes from AT&T that I will probably never use. Actually scratch probably, I will never use these minutes. I did not sign up for this company because of rollover minutes, but I am sure there are quite a few people who have. Its really hard for the customer to actually benefit with rollover minutes, because you have either myself(never uses minutes) or the person who almost always goes over on their minutes. You can only really get any benefit from rollover minutes if you plan to go over on your minutes, and most likely any benefits will be negligible because if you can over one month you are probably really close or have gone over on another in past months. The only possible way I can think of somebody benefiting from rollover minutes if they moved to a new area and they wanted to keep in touch with old friends or if they went from single to being in a relationship. Both of these cases would not be premeditated and of course would require somebody like myself who was already well below their monthly minutes.

Sad Sad News

Anheuser-Busch will no longer be selling alcoholic energy drinks. This article points out that due to some pressure from state attorney generals, they can no longer sell these drinks because they were marketed towards minors. Granted Sparks is not an Anheuser-Busch product, you can only imagine that the current unhealthy legal climate will have a potentially deleterious effect on my beloved.
For those who somehow missed this craze in recent years, these drinks have canceled out any need for red bull in those instances where you were feeling a little tired to head out for a night on the town. These products had some serious side effects in addition to their many benefits. For example, long periods of sleep were not an option after a night of consuming Sparks. I personally would wake some Sundays way too early after just a few hours of sleep, heart racing and more jittery than a 1 week clean crack addict. But the few side effects were greatly outweighed by the benefits. I swear, I have never had a hang over after drinking sparks. One night I had 2 40's and somewhere between 2 and 4 Sparks, the next morning I woke up(heart racing of course) with no hangover. I may have been acting insane(dancing like a maniac at a small party), but I felt great all night and the following morning.
So in closing,Sparks has had a monumental effect on my being and I would like to use this post as a potential requiem for one of the greatest creations know to the modern college student and those few and proud who have kept the tradition alive after graduation. Please feel free to share any memories of Sparks that you may have below.

A Response to Orrin

I will avoid my typical 'I used to work in a restaurant and this is why you should tip'. My question that I ask is would you really want to go into a sit down restaurant where you didnt have to tip? The easy reply is yes, but here is why you should say no:
1)The waiter/waitress would have to be paid a higher rate, say $10/hour up from their $2.13/hour. As a result the restaurant now has to find a way to make the extra $7.87 per hour. So the only viable way to make up for this shortfall is to raise the price of food. Even worse is that a new inequality will be created in that the smaller parties of people will have to pay more and the larger parties will get a better deal on food, that is if my thinking is correct.
2)Your service will be much worse. I think it is pretty easy to figure out where I am going with this one, but I will explain a little what I mean. If a waiter/waitress is getting paid mostly through tips, they will work harder to impress the customer, whereas if they get paid a flat rate, you better get used to waiting longer for your drink and not expect too many refills.

So I think those are two great reason why you should want to pay the 15% tip...but I am open to other rationale as to why you may not want to tip.

should you ask out every girl in sight

I was waiting outside Clarendon Ballroom, just talking to girls.

Most girls were inside the ballroom and i was just outside on the street, but I had two conversations with two girls that went rather well. One was not particularly attractive but one was like a really good conversation, and in niether case did I ask their phone number. I think if you don't ask them out, you preserve your dignity a little or you seem more secure, if you don't ask them out within 5 minutes of meeting them. But then I'm like, I'll never see them again, what do i have to lose?

a post that will annoy allen

As allen knows, I'm not a fan of waiters and waitresses and how I have to tip them on top of whatever else I'm paying. Recently, this over-the-counter restaurant which is one of my favors switched from over-the-counter food to employing waiters. To me, that's paying 15% more money for the same meal. It annoys me so.

Here's a letter I wrote to the manager.

Mr. Iskandar,

I am a long time customer of your restaurant and greatly enjoy the food there. I think the food is truly delicious as compared to other Mediterranean restaurants I service. Recently, however, I dislike the fact that unless you are eating your food outside the cafe, you must sit at a table and be waited on a waitress. Before, I considered your food affordable, but now, with a waiter bringing me food that I can easily pick up myself at the counter, I have to pay an extra 15% on top of whatever the price is.

I question why the establishment feels a need to hire waiters, when one can just as easily hire people to man the cash register. I also think that there should be a seating section where you do not have to have a waiter or waitress.


Sincerely,

O. Konheim

Thievery Corporation Live

Before I start check out this Thievery remix to get a feel for what they are all about.

This past Saturday night, I was treated to the sublime aural experience of seeing Thievery Corporation live in Columbia, MD. We arrived at Merriweather around 7 and joined a number of others with an impromptu tailgate that included a couple of red stripes and some parking lot tennis(yeah, not sure how that came about either).



After a couple of beers, we proceeded to enter the venue and take in the end of the Ladytron's set. Its hard to really judge as we were hanging out way up in the lawn, taking in what was left of the sun while simultaneously enjoying some not-so-overpriced concert beverages.




Next up was TV on the Radio... a band that I am a really big fan of. They are the type of band that you have to really be in the mood for, but when you are they are very rewarding. They have a very unique--take up as much space as possible while using as little sound as possible--style. This translates into an interesting live sound, as some songs were pretty amazing, while others were definitely rough around the edges. Overall, I was really happy with their set. I am sure its pretty tough to recreate their studio recordings live, and they did a great job at trying at least.

Finally, it was time for Thievery Corporation. I had heard from a friend of a friend, that there live show wasnt that great, so I was kind of apprehensive heading into the concert. Fortunately, they were proved wrong, as Thievery Corporation put on an amazing show. Almost every song had a different vocalist, which really helped keep the energy up and made every song feel almost as if they were starting over again. My favorite vocalist was the woman who sang on Lebanese Blonde. It was known that this was on of their biggest tracks(featured on the Garden State soundtrack), and she did a great job of teasing the crowd by downplaying the song at the start and then gradually picking it up as the song progressed.

They did a great job of keeping the crowd moving by switching up the vocalists and throwing a more uptempo track in the mix every now and then. The lights and sound were pretty flawless, except for one minor issue with the first singer that came on who couldnt hear what she was singing and was forced to try her best to make a guess of how it sounded. There are way too many great tracks to try and list here from memory, but the tracks spread from their first album up until they played a song or two from their latest album which has not been released yet. I will say one of my other favorites was definitely The Richest Man in Babylon. They started this song unplugged before launching into the electric crowd sing-a-long type of song that it is.

This was one of those unfortunate concerts that were so good, there was no great way to end it. Its funny how that works out, you are enjoying yourself and having a great time, and then there is sudden comedown where you feel kind of letdown. Occasionally you get to soak in the punch drunk post concert haze, but other times you can only be satisfied by the encore that never really came into fruition.

Movie Recommendation

Straw Dogs.

I have been watching a number of so called classics recently and somehow managed to slip into a movie coma. Earlier this year I realized that I had fallen into a musical coma after I was brought back to life thanks in part to MIA's Kala. No offense to the movies that I had been previously watching(The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces), but they didnt have the same awakening effect as Straw Dogs.

This movie fallls nicely into the Psychological Thriller genre thanks its use of wavering tension by transforming seemingly innocent construction workers into eventual murdering menaces. Usually when I am watching movies at home, I usually shift around a million different times trying to find the most comfortable position; in contrast, I was frozen in the same position during the last hour of this movie. The only moving I really did, was in reaction to the increasing tension and that was still minimal. I would go into the plot and other typical aspects of a movie review, but I am too lazy and I think this movie is one that is much more enjoyable if you dont know how things are going to progress throughout. So check it out and let me know what you think.