Barry's Ball Ballot

I meant to blog about this last week, but I forgot!

Did you see that Marc Ecko bought Barry Bond's 756th home run ball for 750,000 something dollars? The cool part about this? He's letting people vote on whether to send the ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame, send it to the Hall of Fame with a big asterisk marked on it, or blast it into space. Damn, I wish I had enough money to do stupidcool stuff like this. The bad news is that voting ends tonight at midnight Eastern time in the US, so you only have about 4 hours to vote if you're so inclined. You can vote here.

Hey, You Guys Want to Play Baseball?*

Ruh roh. Summer term started today. I'm taking 2 classes in the first 5 week term and none in the second. The amount of reading for these classes is insane. This isn't going to be fun at all. I don't think I'm going to be around much until July.

This post was in the pipeline:

You guys probably don't give a crud about sports, but I still do somewhat. Even though the past year has been a giant kick to the sports nuts of the DFW sports fan. Mavs blow a 2 game lead in the finals last year to lose to Miami, get butts kicked in first round this year. Cowboys lose playoff game due to a bobbled snap on an extra point. Rangers are the worst team in baseball. There's always next year, right?

On Memorial Day weekend I saw the Rangers play the Red Sox. Took a few pics.

Hey man, you got a quarter?

Best name in baseball? Coco Crisp.


Sammy Sofa

Third base? That way.

Freakin' spider, I'll squish you good!

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Hey now!

A swing and a miss.

Manny needs a smaller belt.

Hey, you think that guy stuffs his jock?

Hell yeah I can do The Robot!

Ptooey.

This is Manny after he hit a triple. Check out the look on that kid's face!

It's 5 bucks if you just want to see it. 10 bucks if you want to touch it.

Oh my god, I'm only getting paid 5 bucks to run around in a dot suit! Kill me.

Whoops.

* Bonus point if you know the movie in which the post title is quoted.

Stan Who?

Despite the fact that I am not the world's biggest hockey fan, I was interested when I heard that the Stanley Cup would be at a local mall today. I missed a chance to see it in 1999 when the Stars won it, so I decided to go take a look at it today. You can read more than you ever wanted to know about the Stanley cup here. It seems as though a lot of hockey players don't have much respect for it if the "Misadventures" section is any indication.


The guy who built the Dallas skyline out of playing cards at the State Fair was there too, this time he did a much smaller version out of hockey trading cards:





As usual, if you see any of these people today wish them a happy birthday:

• Baby Spice
• Geena Davis
• Paul Allen
• Placido Domingo
• Chan Marshall
• Robert del Naja
• Jack Nicklaus
• Billy Ocean
• Hakeem Olajuwon

Some Call It 'Futbol', I Call It Soccer

Before I commence with more vacation recap, I just wanted to give props to something I heard on last week's Top Chef. I think it's one of the best lines I have ever heard on TV, uttered by Anthony Bourdain: "It's like Betty Crocker and Charles Manson gave birth to a love child, and he's cooking for me." Giggle.

Saturday morning began for me with reading the newspaper on the couch, coffee in hand (as is my wont). I noticed that the women's soccer team from my alma mater was playing the University of North Carolina in the NCAA playoffs that afternoon. I thought it might be kind of fun to watch that, so I convinced my sister to go to the soccer game. It was a beautiful day, about 70 degrees. It actually almost felt a little hot since we were sitting in the sun. We sat right in the middle of a bunch of Carolina fans. We didn't think there were any fans rooting for my school, but there turned out to be a section that had a decent number of fans. We decided to stay where we were. It was kind of funny, my sister was actually openly rooting for my team (she went to my school's archrival), and drew a few looks from the people surrounding us. My team lost, but it was a good game and the Carolina people were gracious victors.

After the game we walked around the UNC campus, which is very pretty. Some of the buildings are quite old, the school was opened in 1795.

#9 took a full-speed soccer ball to the gut.

Still hurting.

Still hurting.

This girl later went on to commit a foul and break her ankle at the same time. Ouch. Instant karma?

When guys do this they have to protect the fambly jewels.

I'm not sure, but I think that smile is for me and me alone. Yep.

UNC huddles to determine who will get to drink the blood of their fallen teammate.

Ah, there's some of that Fall color I've been craving.

More statues with guns!

The Closing Ceremony of Olympic Blog Posts

First a small digression: It's 90 degrees outside! That's insane.

Well, the Olympics are over. I think I got a pretty good dose to hold me over until 2008 (next summer games). Here are the last of my Olympic impressions:

* Figure skating - I think we need a 'Turandot' limit. It's OK if someone skates to it, but do we need 3 people skating to it? No. No we don't.
* Man, that Turkish figure skater looked just like Sofia Coppola. I was having Godfather III flashbacks.
* Yes, a woman skated to a Madonna song.
* What is the deal with the panty hose over the skate look? It freaked me out. I'm sure there's some practical reason like it keeps your laces from flying around, but it just looked weird.
* Did you see that giant blue rabbit that someone threw on the ice after one of Italian figure skaters finished? It was bigger than she was!
* At that skating gala thing (I didn't watch all of it!), one of the pairs women was wearing flesh colored undies. Classy!
* I like saying "Oval Lingotto".
* I like how they said "Ready?" before each speed skating race.
* They've added a disclaimer to that commercial where the woman jumps out of the window into her clothes to avoid deodorant stains. The disclaimer says "Do Not Attempt". No shit, you don't say!
* That commercial with the guy eating the giant hamburger kind of freaked me out.
* I really got into watching the reactions of the athletes when they would win gold medals. There was something that seemed so pure about it, it put a huge grin on my face almost every time. That would be an incredible thing to experience.
* That was super freaky when all the clowns came out at the closing ceremony, and I'm not even scared of clowns! It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where crazy Joe Davola dresses up like a clown and goes to 'I, Pagliacci'. Wow, 2 opera references in one post!
* Those awful red noses they gave out to the athletes gave me 'Patch Adams' flashbacks. And I'm really, really sad that that last sentence is even possible! Did you notice how all the American athletes were too cool for school, hardly any of them were wearing their clown noses.
* Can we retire 'YMCA' from all public performances already? I know this was Italy, but C'MON!
* Andrea Bocelli - would it have killed you to shave? It's the freakin' Olympics - C'MON!! Miami Vice was 20 years ago dude.
* I thought it was kind of cool how the Vancouver mayor was waving the flag using his wheelchair.
* I thought we were going to have another wardrobe malfunction when those hoochies came out to dance while Ricky Martin was singing. You might want to class it up a little more next time, ladies, this is the Olympics fer cryin' out loud!
* The shot from behind Ricky Martin where you could see all the freaky-ass clowns just riveted to his performance made me laugh out loud. Too surreal!
* Do we really need commentary on the closing ceremony? In some cases it really made a bad situation worse. I think next time they should get the crew from Mystery Science Theater to commentate. I would pay to see that!

Olympics 2: Electric Boogaloo

In case anyone was wondering, we did get a small taste of winter here in the Dallas area this past weekend. Saturday was dry, but on Sunday there was drizzle all day and the temperature never got above freezing. So the bridges and overpasses were a bit dangerous and there were tons of wrecks around the area. I decided not to venture out at all on Sunday, and ironically enough even though I am a major homebody I was climbing the walls. Maybe because I didn't have control over the decision to stay in? Hmm.

On to the Olympics. The overload continues, I just can't stop watching! Some thoughts:

* How about the snowboard showoff who lost her chance at gold? That would be something that could really haunt her for the rest of her life, but I guess she's pretty young and could be back at the Olympics next time. Although you never know how things will pan out in the future. She claims she wasn't hot-dogging, but I don't believe her.
* I still can't believe that in the pairs figure skating that someone could wipe out so hard and still win the silver medal. It's crazy! I do think that was gutty to get up and finish the program, but I can't see winning a medal after that!
* I'm not a big fan of the medals with holes in the middle. They look like CDs!
* Ice dancing? Not a big fan. Any sport that has something called a 'twizzle' in it cannot be legit. All of the crashes on Sunday night did bring some excitement, though.
* Did Shani Davis the speedskater have to be such a sourpuss after he won the gold? Geez. I can understand him not participating in the team event. If he had gotten hurt he would have cost himself the chance at the gold in the 1000. It's easy for the other guy who already won his gold to participate because he had nothing to lose. But at least act a little happy after you won the gold freakin' medal! On the other hand, I suspect that there may be something else going on that we have not heard about. On the news Sunday, they were saying that Davis had gotten some hateful, racist emails complaining about him not being in the team event, which is sad and would probably make me a pissed off sourpuss too if I was him.
* I used to be a big 'Northern Exposure' fan. One of the commentators on the skiing events sounds just like John Corbett, aka Chris in the Morning. I keep expecting him to start talking about Nietzsche or Walt Whitman or something. It's fweaking me out!
* Commercials: The My Fast thing is seriously pissing me off. Bad Volkswagen, bad!
I'm still kind of laughing at the drill instructor commercial when he says "what did they send me, a dadgone Houdini?", but I fear I will not be laughing after a few more viewings.

Help me, too much Olympics!

Drowning in the Olympic Stew

I'm drowning in Olympic coverage. I feel compelled to watch just about everything that they are showing on NBC. If something else is on that I want to watch, I will tape the Olympics to watch later.

I have always thought that going to the Olympics and winning a medal would be an amazing accomplishment - not too many people can say that they have won an Olympic medal. It makes me wonder, though, how much the people who don't win a medal are disappointed. A lot of those people train for years. And the majority of people that even make it to the Olympics don't win medals. Does the non-winning figure skater who has trained for 10 years hate the speed skater who didn't even take up the sport until 4 years ago?

Here are a few things that have struck me so far:

* I liked that there was a figure skating pair that used a Led Zeppelin song.
* Did anyone see the crazy French figure skating coach that looked a little like Catherine Deneuve on the first night of the men's figure skating? The skater wasn't doing so great, and they showed her going ballistic on the sidelines. After the program, the skater was kind of kicked back a little bit drinking a bottle of water, and you could hear the coach say "body language!", and the guy immediately sat up straight!
* How about the Chinese pairs coach when the girl had that bad fall? He didn't seem to show any emotion at all. He must be fun to work with.
* The other night a Chinese speed skater won the women's 500 meter event. I thought it was really funny that she kept falling down when she was trying to celebrate afterward by holding up the Chinese flag!
* At the men's figure skating short program, did you see the skater from Belgium who had the awful, kind of 'Tron'-looking outfit?
* Wow, that snowboard cross looks like fun!
* Did you see the first skater last night on the men's figure skating long program? I thought it was kind of weird that he was skating to music from 'The Matrix' and kind of had a 'Matrix' costume. It was weird, but at least he was trying something different.