March 2008 Archives

Although the Red Sox and Athletics played last week in Japan and the Nationals and Braves played last night in Washington, I feel like today is the real opening day. Almost everybody is playing games today, and nobody is more than a game out of first place. I have a lot of hope for the Yankees this year. They will need to depend on a young pitching staff and a hope that the mashers in their lineup stay healthy, but I feel good about this year. Call me crazy and superstitious and romantic, but I feel like the house that Ruth built will have something to say about things before they tear it down for a new Yankee Stadium. Chien Ming Wang is on the mound for the Yankees vs. Roy Halladay of the Blue Jays. Unfortunately, I have to work so I won't be able to watch the game, but there are 161 more I have to look forward to.

And if you love baseball and love legos, you'll love these lego recreations of baseball stadiums.

UPDATE: Dammit New York weather! Rain delay until tomorrow....

People that know me would probably never guess that I used to be all about the drama. As in the theatre. OK, I was never really all about the drama, but whenever I enrolled in summer camp, I always took the theater class. It was fun, and the straight guy to girl ration was always in my favor. I probably didn't think about those things back then, but in retrospect, I was clearly ahead of my time. I recently got a hold of a few pictures of my old thespian days from the mother of a good friend of mine. The answers to many of your questions like "Who is that hottie you're holding hands with?" are yours if you just click ahead....

Hideki Matsui is one of my favorite baseball players. Before playing for the Yankees, he was one of the most popular players in Japan and a huge celebrity. He loves baseball and baseball fans, perhaps even more than his famously large porn collection. All of this means I was very happy to hear that Godzilla got married in Manhattan yesterday. It all came as a huge surprise to his teammates. From Peter Abraham's blog at Hudson Valley News:

Hideki Matsui not only got married yesterday, he completely suckered Bobby Abreu and Derek Jeter.

The three made a bet at the beginning of spring training over who would get married first. Whoever got hitched first would win. But there was a caveat: the losers could keep their money if they got married as well.

Abreu, because he already has a girlfriend, would get six months. Jeter, who is single, would get a year....

..."Derek has a year or I win," he said.

Asked whether he got married just to win the bet, Matsui let out a loud laugh. "Maybe," he said.

The prospect of Matsui getting married to win a bet would go down as one of the greatest spring training pranks of all time, but I don't think that's the case. Matsui was very proud of what happened, and showed everybody a picture of his new wife...sketched on a piece of paper. The press release says that she has a reputable position at a highly respected company, so I am happy she won't bring shame upon Hideki's ancestors, at least until he asks her to star in one of his movies.

My day job at UCLA is fairly uneventful. I fix some computers, send a few e-mails, fix some computers, watch the Mariah Carey video, fix some...you get the idea. Most of the students are gone on spring break, attempting to remove everything they have learned in the last ten weeks through a methodical process of sun, tequila, and wet t-shirt contests, but that doesn't mean the campus doesn't have surprises.

I was grabbing some lunch the other day, and I thought I saw somebody who looked like Michael Dukakis. I must confess, my first thought was, "Wait, is Michael Dukakis dead, or is that the other guy?" Quickly remembering that it was the other guy who passed, I realized I was at that moment, closer to a Governor of Massachusetts than I had ever been. I was still a little skeptical (as if the eyebrows weren't a dead giveaway) until I heard the voice. It was Michael Dukakis!

I wanted to quickly think of something humorous to say like, "Hi, I'm Mitt Romney, no, the other one!", but didn't want to interrupt the eager future Lewis Rothschild from gleaning all the political knowledge he could while his mentor declined peppercinis on his wrap (a crude mockup of which I provide for you above). Besides, it looks like Mike comes back every winter to drop some knowledge in Westwood, so I'll just stalk him in the sandwich line in '09 instead.

UPDATE: Another Michael Dukakis sighting today (3/27/08). Sitting outside, eating an apple. Maybe next time, he'll have his cousin with him...

I was excited to come home from work yesterday and watch Syracuse in the NIT. The team was playing well, having beaten Maryland last week to put them in the NIT quarterfinals against UMass. Syracuse lost at home to UMass earlier this year, and it was considered a "bad" loss because UMass hasn't made noise in the A-10 for a long time. That loss was one of the reasons they didn't make the NCAA tournament.

I don't want to dwell into too much detail and get too worked up over an NIT game, but the Orange had a 22 point lead with a little over 14 minutes left - and lost. I got home just as the second half was starting. I called my dad to make sure he was watching the game, and thought I would enjoy a nice little blowout before making dinner. Oh how wrong I was.

Syracuse has had a tough year, losing their top player with a knee injury during the season, and their best shooter to a knee injury before the season even started. They started two freshman, two first year starters, and a juco transfer. I guess I should be happy that they were able to throw together such a team and get into the playoffs, but getting blown out like that sucks. As the game was winding down, it seemed like the Orange players wanted to throw an alley oop after every possession. That will happen with any young team, but they forgot to play defense and UMass remembered how to shoot threes at about the same time, and that was all she wrote.

I do think Syracuse will be a very good team next year. They had a good recruiting class, should return all of their players except perhaps Donte Green, and will get their injured players back. That means the team will have depth. Since so many of the young players had to play this year, it means we'll have experience. Hopefully everybody will remember how it feels to be embarrassed in your own house, and use that as motivation to kick ass next year.

Whenever I see a car with a vanity plate, I try to imagine what sort of job that person has. Is there such a thing as "personalized license plate squatting", because I have no clue why this guy would adorn his late 80s Chrysler Le Baron other than he hopes that Les Moonves wants to get the Chenbot a really nice anniversary gift in a few years.

As a lover of bad movies, I appreciate the SciFi channel doing all it can to make sure I have plenty of original content for me to look forward to. Yes, I love Battlestar Galactica as much as the next guy, but besides a few more recent original series, SciFi is filled with some crazy stuff.

This movie clip is from A.I. Assault and carries the tag line Programmed To Think. Wired To Destroy. If that doesn't suck you in, try the plot synopsis:

When a plane carrying a pair of top secret military robots crashes on a deserted Pacific island, a team of Navy seals must find them and turn them off as soon as possible for the longer they are activated, the smarter they become.

Still haven't sucked you in? Tony Gonzalez makes a cameo! Yes, the Kansas City Chiefs star tight end apparently decided to try a little acting on the side. He is co-piloting a plane with George Takei at the helm, and, well, let's just say he's no match for secret military robots. In the battle of professional athletes who moonlight as co-pilots, you have to give the edge to Kareem Abdul-Jabar.

I got into a little bit of a fender bender on Wednesday night. Long story short, on Sunset Boulevard, not enough time to stop, and I tap a Lexus slightly from behind. There are plenty of things I like to hit from behind, but a Lexus is not one of them, especially in my Acura. Come to think of it, I should probably work on hitting something from behind instead of blogging on a Saturday night.

The most important thing was nobody was hurt, and there was no damage to my car, but as you may have seen on my Facebook update, the other person in the accident was Jack Bauer. To clear a few things up, I did not hit Kiefer Sutherland, but rather John Bauer from Woodland Hills. In the end, it worked out for me, especially since I wasn't tortured for my little indiscretion.

Meanwhile, enjoy another addition to my vanity plate collection. I am not sure why this driver was advocating this aroma but for some reason I think I don't want to know.

In this episode of our ongoing Respect the Booty series, I would like to bring you another Levi's commercial. This one is called Up/Down and it features a couple of girls trying on jeans; it's as American as apple pie. We respect the lowrise and Levi's continuing efforts to enhance our favorite body part.

Even though I consider myself a Bracket Pro, I am not having very good luck with my NCAA tournament bracket. My bracket has waaaay too much red for me to win, but I can't complain because there have been lots of exciting games and plenty of upsets. I would actually be OK, if it weren't for UConn. Once again, my faith in the Big East does me in, but San Diego really did deserve that win for the way they played.

Anyway, I should be rooting for UCLA since I work there now, but I am going to jump on the West Virginia bandwagon (and I as you see from my bracket, I did pick them to beat Duke). I had some family who went to school there and they are in the Big East, so it's a natural choice. I also have always loved Bob Huggins teams, even though he graduates like 2% of his players and his teams try to beat you into submission. Still, I have always liked the intensity his teams bring to the court.

I think this year has shown us how much quality there is in college basketball all across the country. Yes, Duke lost to West Virginia, but they weren't the only big team that had to struggle today. UCLA and Stanford had to pull out tough victories in games that a lot of people didn't think would be close. I am really looking forward to the rest of the tournament.

Before Mike Malin, erstwhile member of Chill Town and current restauranteur extrodinare for the Dolce Group, became Mike Boogie, he was just another guy in LA trying to make it in town. Here he is "starring" in the Monk episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas". Poor Mike is about to win on the roulette wheel before Adrian changes his bet. Too bad. He should have taken Wesley Snipe's advice and "always bet on black".

I absolutely love March Madness. Syrcause didn't get in for the second year in a row, but they had a lot of injuries, so I am not surprised. Like I said at this time last year there is always next year. However, last year's tournament brought first round losses for Duke AND Notre Dame. And what a heartbreaker with Duke! For me and all of the others who hate Duke (about 99% of the earth's population at the time of the last survey), there is nothing better than to see Duke's collection of scrappy white kids with bad hair cuts get beaten by a bunch of even scrappier white kids with even worse hair cuts. Belmont played almost perfectly the entire game, and then fell apart in the final 30 seconds. Either that, or Duke had been sleeping the entire time and decided to wake up. Either way, this probably means Duke will be in the final four, and I'll be making unintelligible screams for much of the next two weekends.

By now, you've already filled out your brackets, but I loved this link of the characters who ruin every NCAA office pool. I am clearly the last one, the Bracket Pro, because I like to pretend that I live college basketball, always mock people for having lots of "chalk" (i.e. picking the favorites) in their brackets, and I prepare a speech for every single pick. Thanks to MariusJanulisForThree for the original link.

It's Pi Day everybody! March 14th means you have only three more days to get your liver ready for St. Patrick's Day. It's also a day for mathematicians to wax poetic about one of their favorite constants. Well, I don't know if that is actually true, but I do know that I like to take some time every March 14th and think about that wonderful day in 1933 when Quincy Jones and Sir Michael Caine were born. Anyway, when you see this picture on five thousand other blogs today, at least you'll get the joke. [ jalopnik - Happy Pi Day Everyone ]

I know that it's not the trendy thing to support giant media conglomerates in their attempt to bring web video to the masses, but I thoroughly enjoy Hulu.com, the new web video site brought to you by the folks at NBC and FOX. I know that I would be much cooler if I was up with the latest "viral" videos on the internet, but so what. I might be signing over more of my life to watch Hulu, but it does give me content that I would actually watch, with good quality, and limited commercials (about 2-4 minutes for full episodes, and maybe 15 seconds per video clip). What I am sick of is the low quality and unoriginal shit I find elsewhere (I get it, you're 9 years old and are an expert at Guitar Hero thanks). Increasingly, the good content is becoming viral and more revenue driven anyway.

Hulu gives me the ability to embed full episodes of the shows they have on their site. Here I give you Season 1, Episode 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love it because it gives us a good look at Cordelia, and I do love Charisma Carpenter, although not quite as much as I love SMG. Hulu is by no means perfect, and although they have lots of high quality content, they will need to work on making sure there is as much new content as possible every single week. If they don't continue adding seasons to their back catalog, people will get bored with what they have. It has to be more than a way to sell DVDs, and if they ever want to reign supreme, they will need to find a way to make that content portable and get it to your television. But that is the problem for NBC and FOX. Until then, I'll enjoy the freebies while they last, and move on to the next thing when Hulu begins to suck. But with all those episodes of Remington Steele available, that may be a long way off.

When I was in college, I tried to explain to a friend of mine what I looked for when viewing a movie. My answer was "Fights, car chases, you know, pimpy gun shit." One of the most reliable directors for me has always been Guy Rithcie, well except for one movie in particular. Jason Statham has always been a fairly reliable actor, When I saw previews for The Bank Job, I naturally assumed that it was directed by Guy Ritchie. It's a story about bumbling criminals who try to commit a crime, but mess things up, realize they are in over their heads, and must do everything possible to avoid being killed by my organized criminals. That is the plot of almost every Guy Ritchie movie ever made!

I was going to boycott The Bank Job out of spite, but I noticed it was directed by Roger Donaldson, and I owe him a lot for introducing the world to Natasha Henstridge in Species. Guy Ritchie's does have a movie coming out this year, and although it doesn't have Jason Statham, he is sticking to the plot he knows best. In the meantime, enjoy this great short Guy Ritchie did for BMW. It stars Madonna, Clive Owen, and the E39 M5.

Ever notice how whenever you get on a roll with your workouts, something always comes along and ruins your your healthy ways? Yes, I mean something else besides "the weekend" and "happy hour". In my case, diet death came due dozens of little cuts. Dozens, of tasty, crispy, minty cuts. I received my order of Girl Scout cookies last week, and against my better judgment, I ordered three boxes of thin mints. I'm not saying that thin mints are bad, just the opposite. I could easily eat have a sleeve in one sitting and not bat an eyelash. Too bad that amount contains around 800 calories, or if you are scoring at home, more than 45 minutes on the treadmill. In other words, I would have to put in about 5 extra hours on the treadmill to make up for all of those calories. And you know what? I would do the exact same thing if had to do it all over again.

Well, it's about time.

There is a chance that you may not remember when I was blogging about television. I started a web site called TVgasm with a friend of mine. It was awesome, we sold it, I left blogging about TV for a year, and now I feel I can start again. No longer J-Unit, but feel free to call me Mokers, or Joe, or Jo-Jo, or whatever you prefer. Since I do have a full time job, I will most likely post very sporadically. But enough about me, it is time for some America's Next Top Model. We're only a few weeks in, but cycle 10 may be the best ever. I get a bit of a chubby just thinking about it.

When it comes to women, I am an ass man. OK, that's a lie. I like all the rights curves, but especially the butt. I love the booty and really appreciate it's artistic value, which can always be greatly enhanced by a pair of jeans (in my opinion, whoever invented the low-rise is a saint). Here is one of my favorite commercials for the distinguished connoisseur. You know, I hate to see her go, but love to watch her leave.

How do I celebrate another day of blogging freedom? More Tyra! Believe or not, there was a time when Tyra was not the center of the universe. Yes, before ANTM and the Tyra Show, she was just another model trying to be an actress. Here is a cameo of Tyra from Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child doing voice work in the episode Three Little Pigs. Tyra plays one of the little pigs, and she makes her house out of...cookies, cakes, and candy. I don't want to spoil the video, but needless to say, Tyra's house does NOT protect her from the wolf and she is captured. Oh, but you don't need to worry about Tyra. She and the other captured pig, voiced by Courtney Cox, are saved by the Vietnamese pot belly pig, voiced by Sandra Oh. If you want to watch the whole thing, you can look for it on HBO Family.

So, I feel bad. I went to Target this evening and pulled my usual illegal maneuver driving in the wrong direction down one of the lanes to get to an an available parking spot more quickly. That was kind of dickish enough, but as I was pulling into the parking spot, I completely cut off another woman who was trying to do the pull-through. I looked at the longing in her face, and thought about backing out again, but there was a long line to leave the parking lot, and I had already proved myself to be a dickhead once, so I didn't. Anyway, i'm sorry that I cockblocked you from your parking garage pull through, random Target shopper in a Civic.

The beginning of March marks the end of my semi-exile from the world of television blogging. Since I left TVgasm, a lot has happened. I miss it, a lot, but it has been nice not having to set my schedule to what is happening on TV. However, I do still have a lot to say about television, and while I don't know if I'll be doing recaps like at TVgasm again, I will be posting my thoughts about some of my favorite shows (Heroes, what happened to you?).

I am going to start out with a few words on ANTM Cycle 10. It's no secret that I love Tyra, but I think Cycle 9 was demonstrated the show was getting a little bit stale. As Tyra has become busy with her other show and making Top Model a brand all over the world, I think the show has relied more and more on gimmicks and wild theatrics than producing good models. Yeah, it was never really all about modeling, but it certainly hasn't been getting any better. However, with the show returning to New York, it should give everybody a chance at a fresh start.

A lot of the theatrics would have been a lot more tolerable if the show was still wacky in the right places. I am, of course, talking about the loss of Janice Dickinson. Twiggy as awful, and so I like that we get to try Paulina Porizkova on for size. She is not Janice, which sucks, but she is not Twiggy, which rules. I give her three cycles before she is gone. By that time, Janice will realize her modeling agency doesn't make her enough money and she'll come back to judging ANTM. Long shot, I know, but one can hope.

I've always liked to wait until the girls have had makeovers until I make my predictions, so I'll say a little bit more then.

Every now and then, I come across a vanity plate that actually makes sense. I went on a hike with a friend who was walking her dog at Fryman Canyon and while I waited in the parking lot (why do girls always make you wait?) I spotted this plate on an FJ cruiser. I say it makes sense because it looks like the car was fitted with all the requisite gear for a weekend at Big Bear. The driver still could have been a poseur, but at least they got the look down.

Now that one may make sense, but this one has got me completely baffled. I do know that it was not Keifer Sutherland.