Random List of Fives

Five One Word Named Bands That I Like More Than I Used To

1. Boston
2. Journey
3. Heart
4. Kansas
5. Asia

Thanks to Rock Band, mostly.


Five Places I Have Never Been To But Would Love To Visit

1. Australia
2. Hawaii
3. Central and Northern Europe
4. Japan
5. Cabo

My All-NBA Starting Five From My Era As A Fan

1. Magic Johnson, point guard
2. Michael Jordan, shooting guard
3. Larry Bird, small forward
4. Kevin McHale, power forward*
5. Hakeem Olajuwon, center

* I'm pretty sure Kevin McHale is the most underrated player in the history of the NBA. He is certainly the most underrated key member of a team that won three championships. Unfortunately for him, at least regarding how well known and celebrated he is, he happened to play alongside The Greatest Forward That Ever Lived. But people just forget how great McHale was before he got banged up. He had the best assortment of low post moves I've ever seen. He was basically unguardable on the low block. He was a defensive force (All-Defensive first or second team six times). He routinely shot .600 from the floor and .800 from the stripe, grabbed nine or ten boards a game, and blocked a couple of shots. In 1987, just as an example of his awesomeness, he averaged 26 and 10, shot .604 (led league) and .836, and added 2.6 assists and 2.2 blocks per game for good measure. He averaged those 26.1 points while Larry Joe Bird was lighting up the scoreboard with 28.1 a night, and taking far more shots. In fact, McHale finished sixth in the league in points per game that year, but did not even rank in the top 20 in shots taken. That is efficient and it is deadly, and that is what Kevin McHale was. Imagine how much he would have scored on just about any other team. Jordan averaged just over 37 a night that year for a medicore Bulls team, but he also chucked it up about 50% more often than McHale did. What if they just switched teams? MJ tallied 5.2 boards and 4.6 assists per in '87, and those probably would have inched close to Oscar Robertson numbers on the stacked '87 Celts. Meanwhile, McHale might have scored 40 a night if he was the focal point of the Bulls offense. Or any offense, really. He was probably that good.


The Five Websites I Visit Most Often

1. GMail
2. Facebook
3. ESPN
4. Boston Globe sports
5. The Yahoo (or other) stat site for whichever fantasy sports season I happen to be in.

28 awesome things from 2008

There are always tons of "best of" lists right around New Year's Day. Here is one more. Instead of a Top 10, or a Top 100, or anything so rigid and structured, here are just 28 things from 2008 that were awesome. They are not comprehensive, and they are not in any order. But they are awesome.

• Season four of Lost, especially on Blu-Ray.
• The 2008 World Champion Boston Celtics.
• The Dark Knight, especially Heath Ledger's brilliant performance.
• Season three of Dexter.
• Metallica: Death Magnetic and LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Dustin Pedroia: Sun Devil, Red Sock, and AL MVP.
• Iron Man.
• Tropic Thunder.
• The Robert Downey Jr. resurgence in general.
• Rock Band 2.
• My second straight Chatham Bluefish Diamond Mind baseball championship.
• Scream Queens on VH1.
• Terra Naomi's acoustic hair band covers.
• The fact that a new GNR album actually came out, and it's good.
• Friday Night Lights, and the fact that it is still on TV at all.
  
• Survivor and The Amazing Race still being fairly entertaining.
• Pretty much everything AJ McC does, including his hilarious exploding vocabulary.
• Sierra Mist Free Cranberry Splash. Try some with vodka and thank me later.
• ZaZa pizza in Little Rock. The huge high heat woodburning oven is the key.
• The fact that a new movie theatre (with an Imax screen) opened right down the street, even if I don't get to go there as often as I'd like.
• That a guy who kind of rocks won American Idol.
• The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.
• Tina Fey, both on 30 Rock and SNL.
• Van Halen LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Catching my first Red Sox game in way too long, with a rooftop table under the Budwesier sign.
• Two Vegas trips, an AZ fire up, and a Cape Cod vacation (with the Boston trip in the middle of it).
• Lots of cool shows on the Food Network. Seriously.
• WiiFit.

And eight things that were not so awesome:

• 18-1. Still pisses me off.
• The ASU football season. An entirely different kind of letdown.
• The Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS when they clearly could have been champs again if just a couple of guys stayed healthy.
• Watching shitty teams flounder in the 2008 NFL playoffs while the superior Patriots sit at home. Sickening.
• The economy, including our old house still being on the market.
• The disgusting New York Yankees offseason spending spree.
  
• Heroes. Season one started great, and since then it's been pretty bad. And yet, I continue to watch.
• The complete tabloidization of the American media. Didn't CNN used to be a respected news outlet? Now they are People magazine with some news thrown in. Go ahead, check the website right now. What's on there? A video of Harrison Ford getting his chest waxed, apparently. And network news shows are just as bad. I cannot do it. I basically hate the news, now. I really do. Thankfully technology exists that lets me consume only what I want, for the most part. Okay. Rant over. I hope everyone has a great 2009.