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99% of all sports fans are cheering today

YEAH!

Let's all just sit back and let this moment sink in.

Gang Aft Agley

I am once again making the pledge to myself (and to you, teaming masses) to blog more regularly. To that end, this is what we did on our summer vacation (part 1)

Last Wednesday we flew from Chicago to Providence, Rhode Island, primarily because I've always wanted to visit the city that is my Alma Mater's namesake, but also because we got a good price on air fare. The plan for the trip was to drive up to Boston for a two night stay in whatever 3.5 star hotel Hotwire chose for us, the drive through Massachussettes, seeing the sites, only to arrive at another hotel d'Hotwire in Stamford, CT, where we would depart each of three mornings, via train, to New York City. The last day of our trip was to be sent driving through Connecticut, seeing coastal towns and houses we will never be able to afford, en route to Providence for our return flight.

Here are the highlights of Boston.

We picked up our rental car at the aiport, a Mitsubishi Eclipse, which has a tremendous combination of features. First it is incredibly low to the ground, making th process of getting into it the equivalent of sitting down into an old, fold-out lawn chair whose plastic seat-defining straps have been fatigued by countless years of being abused sat-in by your morbidly obese uncle to the point where they sag to within an inch of the ground. It also has a ceiling that is just slightly too low for a man of six feet and two inches. The proximity of the roof to my head had the same effect as rubbing a balloon against my head. The Eclipse is, however, aptly named. The car itself blocks out almost all point of visual sensory input. There are mirrors in all the normal places, but there are other parts of the car that have been strategically placed to make all of these mirrors useless, unless you want to see the spoiler.

We drove to Quincy, MA to see the museum and birthplaces of both John Adams and John Quincy Adams. This was great. The town of Quincy is small and quaintly New England and the museum was fantastic. The guide was knowledgeable and articulate and because the houses remained in the family and were the homes for 4 generations of Adams's until the 1920's roughly 75% of the artifacts in the house are original, not just to the period, but to the family themselves. For fans of U.S. History I can't recommend this highly enough.

We proceeded to Boston, where we drove around in great looping, honking circles. I took my GPS with me and was using it, but Boston was laid out on a dare and irrascible pranksters from one or more of the local universities have stolen a number of the street signs. Even with my GPS we had tremendous difficulty finding our way to a seafood resaurant. We ate with Japanese business men to our right, expense count in full effect, and a middle aged couple to our right whose Salmon was undercooked. They mentioned this and then spent the next 30 minutes waiting for new food to be brought to them. They were pretty hot on the deal, and it seemed to me that they still had to pay a bill at the end of the meal. That doesn't sound like to good a deal for them, then.

We ended the day by checking into our hotel. We pulled into the garage, noting the prices posted, $10 for eight hours, $2 for each additional hour, $40 for over 24 hours, $25 for hotel guests. We walked up to the front desk and were met by the least pleasant front desk worker I've ever encountered. We were told that we were in a twin suite (two twin beds). They had some 'splainin' to do.

This is apparently one of the downsides to third party booking. Not much to be done, but Ms. Rude Latvia 2008 more or less told us to suck on it and like it. She then informed us that we would be charged $25 for the garage.

I pointed out that this is not what the sign says. If we parked there over night, for roughly 10 hours and then drove around for the day, according to their sign this should only cost us $14. My attempts at logic and reading were roundly defeated by her attempts at rudeness and quoting the policy. We were told we could choose to go find parking somewhere else (her tone suggested we should look up our own asses for these parking spaces. In her defense, we were more likely to find it there than on any street nearby). The manager came out and backed up her dogmatic stance. His point was that this had always been the policy and they had just put up some new signs. Possibly the signs are to blame.

Not wanting to get into a shouting match in the hotel lobby I agreed that possibly their written notices of their price structure were in fact incorrect and I should be held to their screw job policies. We went to bed, my wallet lighter and my ass slightly sore.

As we were unwinding for the night, I turned on the news to see just how much of the city had been burned down/looted the previous night when the Celtics (who Laura insists on calling the Kel-tics) won the NBA championship. It was at this point that I learned that the celebratory parade was scheduled for  Thursday, the only day we were going to spend in Boston, and that the parade would be going from the Garden, past Boston Common and down to somewhere else. The map below will show you the route.

The only thing we were going to do in Boston was to walk the Freedom Trail, which begins at Boston Common. Celtics fans or not, we were going to be right in the middle of the parade route, with no hope of avoiding it.

We decided to embrace it.

For all my lack of interest in a Celtics championship, the parade was a lot of fun. The city was truly taken by the whole affair. There was a dentist's office overlooking the parade route. He stopped his procedure as the parade went by.

The parade ended. We walked. We ate. We walked some more. I have now been to Boston. I was not overly impressed. I'm glad I went. I doubt I'll return.

Cambridge is nice. More later.

Two Things I'll Never Do

I can say with a relative amount of certainty that I will never develop any of my senses to the point that it would be considered almost supernatural.

I can say with nearly the same level of certainty that I will never bowl a 300 game.

The Blind 2. Me 0

This may be as good as it gets

In the interest of full disclosure, Adam beat me to this, but I put a lot of that on the fact that I was in the hospital visiting my sick father. (See what I did there? I gave Adam credit while putting that sick father thing in there to garner your sympathy) He pointed this out to me in an e-mail this afternoon.

In Memphis's last game vs. Mississippi State, Memphis was 15-32 from the free throw line for a whopping 46.9%

In their opening round game vs. Texas -Arlington, Memphis was 22-35, for an impressive 62.9%.

Now, I'm now fancy big city lawyer (gasp!) but that seems to add up to 37-67, or 55.2%, which is roughly 14.8% worse than Billy Packer's shockingly inaccurate prediction that was based on nothing.

When asked how he wrote Billy Packer so well, Melvin Udall said, "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability."

You are 100% wrong. I mean nothing you've said has been right.

I saw something yesterday that brought together a number of things I view as universal constants in one fantastic 30 second soundbite. Here are those three things

1.) John Calipari is a douche bag.
2.) Billy Packer makes predictions that rarely, if ever, come true.
3.) The Packer Method

As anyone who follows college basketball knows, the Memphis Tigers, coached by one John Calipari, are a number one seed in the NCAA and have had a very successful season. They are also a typical Calipari team, in that they are very athletic and very undisciplined. Oh, and they shoot free throws like retarded middle school children. They are considered by a plurality of people in the country (48% of respondents to the cbssports.com poll when I took it a few hours ago) to be the number one seed most likely to go out first. That assumption is based largely on their free throw shooting ability, and the fact that they are from a horrible conference made up of teams that couldn't get into a decent conference. Conference USA is like the group of kids in high school who didn't get invited to the big kegger at the captain of the football team's house and decided to have their own party and then tell everyone how awesome their party was, while putting a picture of the hottest girl at their party on a facebook page dedicated to their party, which they called Captain Awesome's Super Party, and claimed that she was the hottest girl in school. For a while everyone kind of agreed, because she was WAY hotter than any girl anyone thought would go Captain Awesome's Super Party. I mean, as much as they thought about it to begin with, which wasn't often cause their party was a lot better, plus the girls at the football party putout. And then one day the really cute, but elusive Dylan McKay type had to choose between the popular, Kelly Taylor type and the CASP girl. A lot of people thought he would choose the CASP girl, but he chose the popular girl, adn for a while everyone thought that made her the hottest girl in school, but the next week he dumped her to go out with a girl who was empirically attractive. At that point everyone agreed that neither of those other girls were the hottest. They were both attractive, no argument there, but they weren't the hottest girl in school. That's Memphis, in Conference USA.

I think they have an excellent chance of being the first number one seed to lose to a 16. It's going to happen eventually, and I would love to see it happen to Memphis.

Yesterday on Pardon the Interruption, Mr. Tony and Wilbon asked Calipari if he thought their abysmal freethrow shooting was going to raise up and bite them in the ass. I, of course, am paraphrasing here. Calipari, while giving his answer about making free throw shooting fun for his team did something I never thought I'd hear anyone do. He used someone else's Packer Method to make his point for him. Which is like citing Wikipedia in your doctoral thesis.

He said, Billy Packer was doing one of our games and said that we (Memphis) will shoot 70% from the free throw line in the tournament because our form is really good, the problem is just between the ears.

Now I will elucidate why that statement is insane.

1.) I didn't think it was possible to take the Packer Method to new heights, but Calipari did it. He used Billy Packer's made up numbers to prove his point. He didn't make up his own numbers. He went right to the Oracle for his made up crazy.

2.) Not only is he sold on Billy Packer's numbers, but he also believes his prediction. Remember two years ago when Billy Packer made himself look like the biggest horses ass on the planet when he went off on the selection committee for letting in so many mid-majors and the George Mason got to the Final Four? That's just one example of how when Packer predicts the opposite happens.

3.) The assumption that it is better to have a mental problem shooting free throws than it is a physical one is insane. To assume that kids who have trouble shooting free throws during the course of a regular season game will find calm and comfort on the free throw line in the middle of a close NCAA tournament game is mind bogglingly dumb. That's the point where mental cracks turn into opening fault lines of doubt that swallow Lois Lane's car whole.

So, to recap, Billy Packer makes a prediction (a skill he has demonstrated he does not possess) based on a horribly flawed premise, and attaches a made up percentage to it. John Calipari goes on national television and uses this prediction as the basis for his confidence in his team's ability to make free throws when it matters.

Somedays you eat the bear.

A short of list of awesome

Here's a short list of reasons the outcome of Superbowl XLII was awesome

1.) That was the most retarded catch in the history of football. (Don't ask which catch, you know the one I'm talking about.)

2.) Good for Eli.

3.) Belichick is a giant douche bag and he walked off the field with one play still to play. Douche bag.

4.) Jeremy Shockey had nothing to do with this victory.

5.) I have nothing against Tom Brady, except for spite. And that's enough.

Some people should just stay out of strip clubs

There are places where you just know you are going to get into trouble, depending on who you are. Some people can embrace these challenges and overcome then (often in hilarious fashion) case in point, recovering alcoholic baseball player, Sam Malone who bought and worked in a bar.

But it seems that PacMan Jones does not have the wherewithal to go into a strip club and not do something criminally stupid, or to be more accurate, criminal.

If you need proof of this assertion, check this out.

Robert Vaden's High Nightclub IQ

Not much more needs to be said.

Look here

Big Ten Network Opening Weekend

After one weekend I've come down pretty much where I expected to on the Big Ten Network. It's a great idea that will only get better. There was IU football on this weekend, as well as (and this is almost more exciting to me) IU soccer. College soccer is not something that gets much air time, unless it's the college cup. But now, thanks to the Big Ten Network, there is IU soccer on television. This may not excite many people, but it excites me. And I believe that plus all of the other sports that can now be televised will be enough to excite a lot of other people.

The best news, however, for the Big Ten network was that Appalachian State v. Michigan game on Sat. It was the first game on the Big Ten Network and it was a classic. The Big Ten Network needs games like that to fight the argument that the cable networks are putting out there that BTN is only carrying second tier games. I guarantee there were a number of people pretty pissed they could watch that game.

On the negative, I'm not a huge fan of the look of the soccer game. The shots are a little tight, and it doesn't look like an ESPN quality broadcast. It looks more like one of those BET football game productions. The other thing that should get tweaked is the graphics. The screen that listed all the scores for the day was various shades of black and grey. Not easy to read. Easy fix, and I'm sure they'll straighten that out.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the BTN, and glad I've got Directv so I can watch it.

Las would be proud

I've driven past this place 1000 times and always had the same thought. And it was always about John Laskowski and his preference for open sided MRI. I had to go here last week for an ultrasound on my abdominal aorta (thanks genetics). I thought it was great that I finally had cause to enter a place offering the fabled open sided MRI.

Then I had the worst ultrasound ever. My stomach still has a six-eight inch internal bruise that is sore to the touch thanks to the mortar and pestle style in which the technician ground the magic ultra sound wand into my stomach. For close to 45 minutes.

I know that Las was only trying to help, and also that he was only talking about Open Sided MRI, but I can't help but hold him partially responsible.

Thank God Todd Leary has never told me to get any medical procedures. It takes a real man to follow his advice.