Wraping it up...

"Do you wanna dance?

With you?

No...With my father?

I'm Roger.

They call me...they call me...Mimi"

***************************

I'm in no way against drunken voice mails at the wee hours of the morning (just ask your ex-girlfriend - HEY-OHHHHHHHH) but I am rather perplexed by one I received last night. It was from fellow sports elitist JTBI who called me while singing a song from the mid 90s musical "Rent". The lyrics are above. And it wasn't one of the better-known songs, like "Seasons of Love" or "What you Own" (which everyone knows, admit it or not). It was from the song, "Would you Light my Candle". I would have assumed he would have sent me a VM of him singing "We Built This City" or maybe a bar from Phil Collins's immortal classic, "Easy Lover", but a rather obscure song from "Rent"? Your best guess.

Anyway, here are some links to finish our day:

• Deadspin.com's Cultural Oddsmaker

http://deadspin.com/sports/dong/who-will-win-the-2007-scripps-national-spelling-bee-261487.php

While this isn't the current Oddsmaker (I get the feeling AJ Daulerio is swimming in a pool of his own [insert bodily fluid here] as we speak, hence no update this week yet) last week's was a gem.

• A "tribute" to ESPN Classic

http://futureconsiderations.blogspot.com/2007/05/rip-espn-classic.html

Future Considerations watched ESPN Classic and found nothing (save for American Gladiators, naturally) classic at all.

• Dan Shanoff's new blog

http://www.varsitydad.com/

While I really don't like Dan Shanoff too much, this is an interesting blog and may be promising enough to merit my time while I'm at work.

• Cheerleader of the Week on KSK

http://kissmesuzy.blogspot.com/2007/05/im-just-mad-about-saffron-saffrons-mad.html

This is by far the best football blog out there due, mainly, to their lack of football-related posts and the incredibly good use of foul language and storytelling, in that order. This is pretty funny, but then again, the whole blog is. Read on.

more...

Meanwhile, in the Real World...

I work in an office where I get paid to write blog entries and check my e-mail enter judgements into computers for 8 hours a day. It's good work, and I appreciate it, if only for the paycheck that ultimately fuel my insatiable Private Dancer addiction. But I digress; what follows is a list of people who have funny names and are stupid enough to try and evade both the G-Men at the State of Ohio Department of Taxation and myself. That said, here is the (ongoing) Top However Many Names Filed while working...wherever it is I work. I'll try to keep these sports-related, but some are just too good not to mention.

Here we go.

1. James Dickhaus
That name is Legen...wait for it...and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the last part is...dary.

2. Butz Hacker Company, Incorporated.
Where the Employee of the Month gets more than just a parking space...

3. William Hanrahan
I have it on good authority that his wife's a dyke. Any Slap Shot fans out there?

4. Gary A. and Roberta D Coon
Before anyone asks, they aren't on this list because their last name may or may not be a racial slur. They are here because they represent case no. ###69, which is funny because I have the maturity of a 4th grader and I still laugh at that number and add "that's what she said" to wherever appropriate.

5. Kheire K. Khatab
I'm treading on the lines of racism, again, I know, but that's never a good set of initials to have. Ever.

6. Porta John Corporation
Not really that funny, but I bet they think the $47,220.51 sales tax lien against them is full of shit*.

*that's a terrible pun, even for me

More to come... more...

Uh-Oh Time in the Mistake by the Milake

I have watched zero minutes of the NBA's Eastern Conference Finals series between the Cavs and the Pistons. This is due, mainly, to the fact that I am broke, have no cable and usually drift off to sleep around 11:30, drug-induced or "Frasier" rerun-induced (where would we be without broadcast television). That said, I find it fitting that the game was on TNT last last night and was the lead in for either of the two shows that network airs. If I may...

Without a Trace
The way in which the Cavs and, from an outsider standpoint, having seen nary a minute of this series, the way in which LeBron James, God in Nikes, has disappeared in this series.

And, of course...

Cold Case
The only way to describe the whereabouts of the fire that the Cavs had last year during their playoff run.

There was something so refreshing about last year's Eastern Conference Semis, in that the Pistons, heavy favorites though they were, had to claw back into the series because LBJ and a bunch of other Cavs decided to take them for a ride through seven games. The Pistons eventually won, as raSHEED predicted, but not without winning back-to-back elimination games. But has a team ever looked as physically or emotionally dead as the Cavs in this years playoffs? The beat the Hibachi-less Wizards in four uninspiring games, had to win in NJ to beat the Nets in six, and about probably going to lose this series in sweeping fashion.

LeBron James needs to wake his team up and the best way to do it is to wake himself up. 19-7-6 are great regular season numbers. These are the playoffs, as Ari Gold has reminded us countless times in the commercials. If the best young talent in the NBA, the manchild the Cavs need to lead the team, can't get over 20 in the playoffs then I doubt that team will have much of a shot. Especially with the current supporting cast around him.

The series resumes on Sunday in Cleveland and some people say that a series isn't over until you win on the road. LeBron James better prove those people right, or this series it's going to be over and we will all be back to Without a Trace reruns on TNT faster than you can say Anthony LaPaglia.

more...

Edits

I'm dumb. Here are the corrections, as noted by the italics and asterisks, to my miserable errors from the previous post.

* Milwaukee Bucks.

** catalyst that ignites the Bucks and sends Michael Redd, the most underrated player in the game, to the playoffs (or perhaps even further (??)).

And, of course, I was dead freaking wrong about pretty much the entire draft. At least Greg Oden looks old enough to be tried as an adult in Portland, where he will, if he's a real team player, probably be arrested for some kind of drug-related crime. And it looks like Durrant is headed to Seattle, home of rain, Elizabeth Hasselbeck's husband and perennial WNBA powerhouse, the Seattle ________ (I don't know the actual name of the "franchise" but go ahead and be creative). more...

Ping Pong balls Should be Saved for Throwing in Cups of Beer and Sports Television Programming Should Feature ACTUAL SPORTS!

I've never been too much a fan of "sports" on television, that is to say, what the likes of ESPN or, for lack of, well, any other sports outlet, says is sports (watching two idiots with dumb nicknames play MADDEN in Times Square is cool, but it is hardly an activity, forget if it is a sport or not). Which is why I'm not all too excited about tonight's NBA draft lottery.

I'm not a fan of the NBA and I much prefer the college game and the madness in the year's third month to a playoff system that knocks out the two best teams in the league before the finals begin and somehow still has Carlos Boozer playing this late into May. But the more important playoff system, I'd argue, is the game that the bottom 4 teams in the league play over the last 20 games of the season. I know that flopping has become the recent trend in basketball, and I'm okay with a few players falling on their faces from time to time, if only for entertainment purposes. But when entire teams do it for the chance at selecting first, then that is problem number one for the NBA. Don't tell me the Memphis Grizzlies or the Boston Celtics weren't good enough to win at a better clip down the stretch. It was a pathetic limping-in session done by the bottom rung of teams, and that always cracks me up, as well, because you can suck to high heaven for the last two months of the season and only have a shot at getting the number 1 overall pick.

Pardon the tangent there. I guess I do enjoy the irony of losing by losing, but I hate that the NBA draft lottery, the NBA draft and, for that matter, the NFL draft (at a whopping 6+ hours for the FIRST ROUND) are made into appointment television by the networks. And the World Wide Leader is most responsible. I know they just showed a BoSox/Yankees game but would it hurt to throw another on? Are there other teams playing tonight? Why not show some sports on the premier sports network and dump the draft LOTTERY (not even the draft, this is the draft to find out which teams draft which players in which order) to the deuce or to News. a modest proposal.

Anyway, as I have opinions about everything, I may as well throw up a prediction for how this thing's going to go down. Let's face it - this thing is rigged to high heaven and, just like when Ewing came out in 1985, a major Eastern city has the chance to grab the premier center of the last 20 years. That said...

Boston will "win" (if you want to even call it that) the draft lottery, virtually locking up former Ohio State man child, father of 2 and 33 year old Greg Oden (whom, I assume, in the picture, is hitting that or did very shortly after) as their new franchise player. I shudder to think what will happen if the TWolves* get the second pick and use it on a player like Kevin Durrant, who may be the excuse to dump the other Kevin** to a place where he can finally win a ring. You heard it here first. more...

Playoff Pageantry and Drama... Somewhere

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By: Paul Teeple

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It all comes down to this: two of sport's oldest and most furious rivals to do battle for one final playoff spot in each team's last game of the year. The arena is a mad house, alternately ablaze with blue & white and red & blue. Each team is trying to best the other while holding off a hard-charging third contender that is moving in fast from the outside. It's all the drama that makes the end of the regular season worth a six month physical and emotional grind. It's the kind of night that reminds you what it means to be a sports fan.

Too bad you'll never see it.

Tonight at Air Canada Centre in Toronto, the hometown Maple Leafs host the arch-nemesis Montreal Canadiens in the last game of the regular season. Montreal leads Toronto by what amounts to a half game in the Eastern Conference standings and tonight's game could clinch the final playoff spot for the Habs, catapult the Leafs into 8th by themselves and/or possibly give the Islanders new life with one game remaining on Sunday. And thanks to the NHL and their ludicrous television deal, you need to either live in Canada, purchase the NHL Center Ice package from your TV content provider or live close enough to a major Canadian market so that you can pick up CBC with your bunny ears.

Why go to all the trouble? Shouldn't such massively important games be nationally televised, if not over-the-air then at least on a nation-wide cable carrier? Well, come to think of it, yes. Yes they should. But they won't be.

	You'll never find a similar button on ESPN.com

These are the days of a hockey fan's life thanks to the NHL and their nonsensical cable television deal with Versus (nee OLN). Versus, which is supposedly so enthusiastic about its NHL television deal, only has one (one!) national telecast per week, and it's on Mondays -- gravity of the games be damned. So when the season ends on a Sunday and there are huge games on a Saturday night... nothing. In fact, you know what's on Versus at 7pm? A show I've never heard of named "Holy @#$%*!" which is apparently like "Real TV" but for 'extreme' sports. You know, for all of the Worldwide Leader's misgivings, when ESPN carried the NHL they had games on multiple nights and if games at the end of the regular season had heightened importance they'd bump their billiards coverage on ESPN2 and find a way to bring the huge games to the masses.

Let's also take the NHL's contract with NBC out of the equation. Over-the-air national networks have never and will never change their schedules for sports.

When the NHL made their short-sighted cash grab with OLN in 2005, everyone who even had a cursory knowledge of sports and/or television knew that they'd screwed themselves. When a sport has marginalized its relevance with an increasingly boring product (at the time) and a decimating work stoppage, it's probably a BAD idea to move your national cable contract from a sports network in roughly 95 million households nationwide to a "sports" network with 65 million households nationwide. And that's just looking exclusively at the numbers.

Let's be honest: the difference between ESPN and Versus is WAY more than 30 million households. One network is THE name in sports broadcasting in America. Love 'em or hate 'em, when you're bored and want to watch sports, the first channel you go check out is ESPN. Not FSN, not CSTV, not FOX, not CBS, not NBC, not ABC. And most certainly not freaking Versus. ESPN is what TV people refer to as "destination viewing." For a fun way of telling the difference between ESPN and Versus, go to your buddy's place tonight to do some pre-gaming and ask 'em: "What channel is ESPN?" Then ask, "What channel is Versus?" You can make a drinking game out of it: five drinks if your buddy says "What the hell is Versus?"; chug if he says "Channel 608."

	With a TV contract on ESPN, apparently ANYTHING can be a well-covered sport.

Admittedly, ESPN drew criticism from "hockey people" south of their border from their general disinterest in promoting their hockey broadcast and at the time the criticism was well deserved. But in this modern era where the Worldwide Leader goes out of its way to promote ANY sport they're broadcasting, I have extreme difficulty believing the NHL would suffer a similar fate today. All you need for solid proof of this thought is the Arena Football League. The past four years, ESPN went out of its way to discredit the AFL and treat it like less of a sport (deservedly so, might I add, it's a piece of crap). This year, however, ESPN has erred in the opposite direction, aggressively pushing its AFL broadcasts during its shows, running all AFL game highlights on SportsCenter and running AFL promos during high-profile NCAA, MLB and NBA broadcasts.

Additionally, a lot of hockey pundits advocated the NHL use the NASCAR blueprint for regaining a foothold in the American sports psyche. Well, who do you suppose has the NASCAR cable contract these days, which they are summarily promoting the living crap out of? You guessed it.

What it boils down to is this: everybody knows the NHL dropped the ball on its TV contract. What they need to do now is make it right by their fans; swallow your pride, Commissioner Bettman, and go back to ESPN. more...

What do we do now?

Well, the college basketball season is officially over, and now all we have to watch is baseball, the NBA, or, as ESPN would have you to believe, the AFL is watchable. Right. This is the same network that a few years ago was telling us how much of a joke the AFL was. Now, it is shoving it down our throats as if they were always on board. Bon Jovi owns a team, so does John Elway. I could give a helicopter-in-the-superbowl-flying crap. You know why I don't care? Because the products and the players aren't good enough to stand alone.

If this league were any good, it wouldn't have to shorten the field or allow for stray kicks to stay in the field of play because of an all-encompassing net. There will never be a Herschel Walker type talent that chooses the AFL over the NFL, the league sucks, I don;t care how many points they score.

But it did get me thinking. What would it be like if certain players from the NFL suited up in the AFL? In an effort to peak your interest in the possiblity that this could possibly happen, I will pick one player from an NFL team and put them on the closest geographical AFL team.

Edgerrin James, Phoenix Rattlers- Many questioned the Edge's move from the Indianapolis Colts to the Arizona Cardinals, yet many people had no problem when James decided to switch leagues altogether. Unfortunately, Edge didn't realize that nobody ever runs in the AFL, and after only getting 5 carries in his first season as a Rattler, James brutally murdered Sherdrick Bonner. James contends that he didn't kill Bonner because of his lack of involvement on the field, but because "only 'crackers' should be named Sherdrick."

Andrew Walter, Los Angeles Avengers- Through getting his ass handed to him on the worst team in the NFL, Walter joins the Avengers and immediately becomes AFL MVP. To make the story even more compelling, he breaks Trent Green's leg, gets a job at a local LA grocery store, and has sex with Kurt Warner's wife several times.

Brian Urlacher, Chicago Rush- The quintessential NFL linebacker shocked the world when he jumped ship, and was also shoked to learn that he must also play center in addition to being middle linebacker for the Rush. Upon his first sensation of a quarterback's hand nestling up against his crotch, he questioned why he was so rough with all of the quarterbacks he sacked, yet the first one he directly encountered was so gentle with him.

Javon Walker, Colorado Crush- Javon Walker was brutally annihilated over one of those padded walls they have in that league, because the opposing team found out how bad he dogged Brett Favre. Even people in different leagues love Brett Favre.

Eddie Kennison, Kansas City Brigade- Coupled with the Chiefs reluctance to re-sign him and his inability to let go of the game, Eddie Kennision signed a two week contract with the Brigade. The NFL then declares that Kennison 15 years from now cannot blame Herman Edwards for his inability to help his 7 year old son blow out the candles on his birthday cake.

Troy Smith, Columbus Destroyers- After a terrible National Championship game against the Florida Gators, the Buckeye Heisman trophy winner had no choice but to join the AFL. If only he knew how close his real dad was to contacting him. Damn you, Jarvis Moss.


I left some of the high profile cities for you, our readers to come up with players of your own that have made the switch. I think it would be fantastic if the NFL, for just one year decided to play by AFL rules. No, wait, I don't, the AFL is God-awful and is a horrible imitation of the greatest game in the world. more...