Random

The frequency (or lack thereof) with which I blog is pretty pathetic. So here are just some random thoughts so I can at least post something and try to get back into some sort of blogging schedule.

* I saw Kick-Ass and it was almost mind-blowingly entertaining. I'm trying to think of a movie I've seen over the last decade with a more rewarding third act and I'm coming up empty.

* The Red Sox are back to .500, thanks to stellar starting pitching the last two games: Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz combined to go 15 innings, allowing just eight hits and one run while striking out 15. I still feel good about the composition of this team, especially once we get healthy. The starting pitching is strong and deep, and the defense can't help but play better than they have. If we need another stick or a power bullpen arm, then we'll go get it at the deadline.

* The Celtics looked pretty strong in the first round demolition of the Miami Heat. Drawing the Cavaliers in the second round is a nightmare, but I at least think the Celts will make it interesting. The C's were actually stronger on the road than at home this year, so if they can steal game one in Cleveland then the series could be epic.

* I love The Office and I still watch it every week, but if next year is the final season of Steve Carell's deal then that is the perfect time to shut it down and say goodbye. The last two seasons just haven't been as funny as what came before it, and right now the show is consistently running fourth out of NBC's Thursday night comedy block for me. They had a great run, but I'd hate to see them hang around too long.

Yeah 'Sheed!

Rasheed Wallace to sign with Boston Celtics

This is going to be a tough one for me, at least at first. Admittedly, I root for the laundry. I always have, and I always will. But let's not sugarcoat this one: I hate Rasheed Wallace. I think I started disliking him in college, and then I grew to downright loathe the man when he started racking up technical fouls in the NBA at a rate that would shame a crack baby with Tourette's. 'Sheed was the only player ever ejected from the McDonald's All-American game. That's an All-Star game, in case you are wondering...for high school kids. He demolished the NBA single season record for technicals with 41 in 2001. That's not a typo. That's 41 Ts, or a rate of one every other game over the course of a full schedule.

But now that he's going to be wearing the Celtic Green, I dug a little deeper. I always thought 'Sheed was just a crybaby, but it turns out he thinks he is misunderstood and treated unfairly. Guess what? He has been! Wallace was suspended for seven games for confronting a ref after a game about said unfair treatment. Just hothead 'Sheed out of control, one would think. Well, what if I told you that the ref in question is currently serving time in the federal pen for rigging games? A-ha! Maybe poor 'Sheed was right all along!

Oh, who am I kidding. This one's going to take me a little while. I haven't felt like this since the Red Sox signed David Wells, who I hated with a passion. I found myself yelling "Yeah, Boomer!" during his opening start and I couldn't even get that out with a straight face. I'm sure it will be the same with Rasheed for at least a while this fall.

But I'll be well over that issue when the playoffs roll around and we grab banner number 18.

They sure did

Did Hometown Refs Benefit Bulls?

Yeah. Yeah, they did. It was awful. I actually had to do something else while watching the game, because the way NBA playoff games are officiated is so infuriating. It's small consolation to hear that clearly the game was, in fact, a complete bag job. But very small. There were probably five calls against the Celtics in the late fourth quarter and the overtimes that were outright fabrications--defensive fouls when replays showed no contact, offensive fouls that were beyond ridiculous, you name it. Maybe more. Throw in another 5-10 borderline calls that went against Boston and it made me want to throw a brick through the TV. And the Celtics still almost won. Absurd. I know that we're not winning the title this year. The painful part is that it doesn't matter how well we play. The NBA Finals will feature LeBron James vs. Kobe Bryant. The rest of the league doesn't even need to bother trying, and honestly, as far as the league cares, the rest of the Cavs and Lakers could sit this one out too. They might as well have Bron-Bron and Mamba play seven games of one-on-one. It's despicable.

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.
  

2007 Lists

The end of the year seems to prompt everyone to write all sorts of different "best of" and "worst of" lists. I figured I'd do the same thing. However, for many of these, I prefer to use the term "my favorite," since that is really all anyone's list is. Who is to say a movie is "better" than another movie? Anyway...

MY FIVE FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2007

I need to preface this by saying that since the little addition to our family came along in March, my movie attendance rate has plummeted a staggering amount. I almost never get to the theatre anymore, which means that I have not seen most of the late-year awards bait flicks that will grace most other "best of" lists. Netflix is now my dear friend. So...

5. Ratatouille. It's smart, it's cute, it's fun, and, as all Pixar movies do, it looks phenomenal. I've only watched it once so far and my only quibble is that it feels about 10-15 minutes too long. However, it's already in the collection and I eagerly look forward to watching this with A.J. in the not-too-distant future.

4. Live Free or Die Hard. Maybe it's because I was able to keep my expectations low, but this flick totally delivered on every level. If you're going to see a Diehard movie in 2007, this is exactly what you're looking for. Sure, some of the action set pieces go ridiculously over the top in the third act (*cough* JET *cough*) but it didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. Thank you, John McClane.

3. Superbad. And this actually might be #1, but I need to see it a few more times and see how its rewatchability compares to the top choice on my list. But this is a hilarious movie. Absolutely genius. I'm just happy that we live in a world where a movie like this can make $100 million. There's not enough good I can say about Judd Apatow and the movies he is involved with right now. He is making the world a better, funnier, more enjoyable place.

2. The Bourne Ultimatum. This is potentially the only trilogy in which each subsequent movie is better than the last one. Despite not getting to see it in the theatre, my expectations were really high and it came through on all levels. The story is compelling, the direction and editing is flawless, and Matt Damon is just so great it's ridiculous. His Jason Bourne is truly one of the great characters of the new millennium. Bourne would kick Jack Bauer's ass before that CTU flunky had a chance to whip out his uber-PDA and text for help. Bourne would pummel James Bond, to answer a question that apparently was posed to Damon frequently on the press junket circuit. Hell, Bourne could even take Batman. I see him ripping off the Dark Knight's cowl and beating him senseless before he knew what hit him. This is a guy who kicks ass with a rolled-up magazine, for god's sake, and completely makes you buy it. Long live Jason Bourne.

1. Knocked Up. Apatow again, naturally. I love this movie. I love that Seth Rogen can be the leading man in a huge box office success. I love Apatow's entire stable of go-to guys, including Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. I love Katherine Heigl, although I love her a little bit less after her ridiculous negative comments about her experience on this blockbuster smash movie. I give this one the #1 slot because I think it will hold up and remain a movie that I revisit again and again.

NOT IN MY FIVE FAVORITE MOVIES:

300. Yeah, it looks cool. That's it. Tepid script, cardboard characters, and terrible acting-slash-horrible direction choices. Thoroughly underwhelming.

Ocean's 13. They're killing me with these sequels. It's not as atrocious as 12, thank god, but it comes nowhere near the perfection of the original. I had high hopes for this--Julia Roberts thankfully gone, Pacino as a baddie, a screenplay by the "Rounders" guys...and yet it falls painfully flat. Either this franchise is done, or 14 will have to be something incredible. I don't know which I want at this point.

Ghost Rider. AWFUL. Yes, I am complaining about the quality of a movie in which Nic Cage plays a comic book character who rides a motorcycle while his head bursts into a flaming skull. Somehow, they managed to cock this up enough to make it boring. This was a Netflix rental and I almost couldn't get through it. I think I watched an "extended" edition, and that only made matters worse. This was my worst movie watching experience of 2007.

MY FIVE FAVORITE HOUR LONG SCRIPTED TV SHOWS OF 2007

5. Lost. Season three was a vast improvement over the maddening season two. I just re-watched season three again (thanks, Netflix) and I really enjoyed it the second time around...maybe even more than through the first run. I picked up little bits and pieces I may have missed and it also looks absolutely gorgeous on Blu-Ray. The big twist in the season finale is brilliant and I really can't wait to see what they have in store for season four.

4. The Sopranos. I loved the ending. I also think that Tony survived. I think I'm in the minority on both counts.

3. Chuck. I raved about this show pretty early on and I'm sticking with that call, as it is easily my favorite new show. I love everything about it, actually. I really hope that the strike doesn't do anything to mess this up, as NBC really needs to keep this one around.

2. Dexter. I had my concerns about season two, but the show completely delivered, taking the story in unpredictable directions and making the lead character even more interesting in the process. If you have never watched the show, start with the season one DVD. I hear that CBS is going to run an edited version of season one and I just cannot see how this show has any chance to succeed under those circumstances, on network TV. Clearly the strike is making people desperate, but I see no good coming of this. Don't watch that version, and don't let anyone else do it either. Hold out for the real thing.

1. Studio 60 (RIP). It's still hard for me to come to grips with the fact that this got canned after one season. Look around at some of the stuff that's on right now. And I don't even mean the reality shows, although those are getting more ridiculous than ever, and we're seemingly just weeks away from seeing some of the stuff in "The Running Man" come true. Climbing for Dollars, anyone? But honestly, this show was just too good. It got better in the spring, and ended on a beautiful roll...and NBC still bagged it. Smart writing, an amazing cast, great acting, compelling characters, engrossing stories...I just don't get it. How did this "fail?" I'm pained.

MY FIVE FAVORITE SCRIPTED HALF HOUR TV SHOWS OF 2007

5. Curb Your Enthusiasm. All told, this was probably Curb's weakest season and it still ranks as one of the funniest shows on TV. Larry hosted a family of hurricane survivors (named the Black family, of course) and while I wasn't sure if this was a device that could last a whole season, it worked very well. The season finale was especially solid.

4. Entourage. Once again, not its best season. But still thoroughly entertaining. The premiere was shot like a behind-the-scenes documentary during the making of Medellin and I really thought that was a cool idea done well. However, there were way too many side plots about Ari's family. Nobody tuning in wants a B story about his kids' private school, sorry.

3. Californication. Wildly entertaining. Duchovny really goes for it and he is incredibly fun to watch. I have no idea what they have planned for a second season, but I'm just happy that there is going to be one.

2. The Office. In hindsight, starting off this fall with a series of super-sized episodes was a terrible choice. First, they could have done regular half hours and had more fresh shows ready with the strike looming. Secondly, and more importantly, the hour-longs were just bloated and not as funny. It's still a brilliant show, but a couple of missteps knock it down to #2.

1. 30 Rock. I didn't watch this from the start, but once I picked up season one on DVD I was absolutely hooked. Tina Fey is great and Alec Baldwin is ridiculously funny. This show is great and it keeps getting better.

MY FIVE FAVORITE UNSCRIPTED SHOWS OF 2007

5. Survivor
4. The Biggest Loser
3. Rock of Love With Bret Michaels (maybe the most ridiculous show on TV)
2. Dinner: Impossible
1. The Amazing Race
honorable mention, since it is a game show: Duel. Loved it.

MY FAVORITE POKER ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2007

I didn't really play a lot of serious poker in 2007, so I only have two even worth mentioning: I won a 90 man No Limit tournament on Full Tilt early in the year, and I made the final table and cashed in the only live tourney I played all year, at the Gold Strike in Tunica.

MY FIVE FAVORITE SPORTS MOMENTS OF 2007

5. The Chatham Bluefish win the SWBA. Okay, you probably missed this one, since the team and the league aren't actually real. So here's the story (geek alert): it is a computer simulation baseball league that I'm in using software called Diamond Mind, which is an incredibly realistic baseball sim program. I joined the league five years ago, taking over a mediocre team and rebuilding it entirely. This is a hardcore league, with tough rules for bad teams since every team gets to keep their entire roster from one year to the next. So for five years, I have been building this team through the draft, selecting rookies such as Kevin Youkilis and Jonathan Papelbon. This year it all came to fruition, as my hand-crafted club stormed through the regular season with 110 wins, and then fought through three epic postseason series to claim the crown. It was awesome.

4. ASU football wins ten games under new coach Dennis Erickson. I really think he can take us to the next level, and this was a great first step.

3. The Boston Celtics become relevant again and roar out to the best start in the league.

2. The Red Sox win the World Series. Wow. How can this possibly only be number two?

1. The New England Patriots have the greatest season and the best football team OF ALL TIME. 16 down, three to go.

MY THREE FAVORITE ROAD TRIPS OF 2007

3. Arizona in September for ASU-CU. I was there for about 36 hours but I had a blast.

2. Las Vegas in October for Kev's surprise wedding. A great time with great friends.

1. The Whiffleball shoot in Chatham, May-June. One of the best months of my life.

That's probably enough lists. 2007 was quite a year.

Paradetown?

“Things are changing, and I think that’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch, and witness, and be a part of. This is a town that has a chance to literally have two or three parades a year for the next decade.”
--Curt Schilling on the new face of the Boston pro sports scene

Wow.

The period in Boston sports from 2001-2005 almost seemed like an embarrassment of riches. The Red Sox actually won the World Series before I died and the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Three times. Typing that actually still makes me want to giggle a little bit. The sum total of those long-awaited and hard-earned championships brought me enough joy, satisfaction, and outright happiness that, as Bill Simmons noted, I would have no right to complain about anything for years.

Cut to: 2007. Suddenly not one, not two, but three of my hometown teams have legitimate and simultaneous championship aspirations. The last, and maybe only, time that we came close to achieving the unprecedented "trifecta" was in 1986, when the Celtics had the best team of all time and the Sox and Pats each lost the championship in different yet painful fashion. I even remember proudly wearing a "City Of Champions" t-shirt emblazoned with the logos of all three teams. But that title wasn't thoroughly accurate. Close, but not quite.

It's amazing to think that we could possibly be on the precipice of topping '86. The Patriots have to be the favorites, and naturally I see nothing less than another Lombardi trophy this year. Even during the recent championship seasons, I said that I thought that the Patriots hadn't been as good as they could be, and this season could prove that. They aren't just going to be good, they are going to be ridiculously good. Mark my words: this is the Pats team against which all others will be judged. The Randy Moss acquisition is such a coup that the transaction itself will be looked at with sheer disbelief by future generations. Moss will have a plaque in Canton and a couple of New England Super Bowl rings, and people will wonder how the hell we ever pulled that off. Tom Brady to Randy Moss. Sick!

Kevin Garnett is a Boston Celtic, finalizing a rash of moves that made Celts GM Danny Ainge look like a college freshman with his first credit card. The most amazing thing about the current state of the team is that he has completely shredded the entire team concept and the way that the whole roster had been put together in the span of one summer. We had a nucleus of promising young talent that looked to be 2-3 years away from possibly being a factor in the playoffs. Instead, we now have the best trio this side of Phoenix and we're the odds-on favorites in the Eastern Conference. And if you don't believe that, then just tell me the rest of Cleveland's starting five, aside from LeBron James, that led them to the Finals this year. Heck, name two other starters. Right. The Ray Allen and Garnett trades are a huge dice roll, to some degree. We parted with picks and talented young players that could have helped us with the previous plan. But now there's a new plan: win. Win now. For the first time in five years, the Boston Celtics are relevant again, and for the first time in around fifteen, we're actual contenders. And man, will they be fun to watch.

Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox have the best record in baseball, due in large part to the game's best bullpen (pen ERA of 2.74). So what did they do? They added the game's only active reliever that won a Cy Young award, the nasty Eric Gagne, who will now be tasked with setting up for Jonathan Papelbon...along with Hideki Okajima, who has only put up an eye-popping ERA of 0.87 so far. Our bullpen, as I noted before, was great before. Now, if they all stay healthy, I'm not sure I even know which adjective to use. Filthy? Sick? Disgusting? Unfair? Pick one. It's a pen built for October, and with the way the schedule break the Red Sox could conceivably win the Division Series using only six pitchers: Beckett, Schill, Dice-K, and the lights out relievers.

Naturally I'm looking at all of these scenarios incredibly optimistically. There are still lots of things that could go wrong for each of my favorite teams.

But if a few things go right, we might have three more parades in less than a year.

Happy Birthday, Larry Legend

Wow, I'm old.

Red

Rest in peace, Red.

Thanksgiving wrap-up

We went up to Memphis on Wednesday and stayed through Sunday, and it was great to have an extended visit with the family. My niece Kate is now a little over two years old so it's fun to see her communicating more clearly...at least more clearly to me. My nephew Logan is almost two months old and I can't believe how much he has grown since the last time I saw him, which wasn't that long ago! Thanksgiving day was great. I fried a turkey since most of my family had never had it that way, plus Mom roasted one so there was plenty of bird to go around all day and all weekend for leftovers. Beth and I went to the Memphis Grizzlies-Houston Rockets game on Friday night--Dad bought a ten game pack of tickets and this is the first time we've gotten to go. Now, the following will make me sound like a bitter, old man but the NBA certainly wasn't like this when I was a kid. For me, the most jarring thing was the music that they blast during every single play. I knew that it would be a "show," rather than a game, but the tunes while playing caught me off-guard. Granted, I'm used to the Boston Garden in the '80s, with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and company, where nothing but the finest basketball team in history was needed to keep the crowd's attention. And I'm all for blasting music--I even got into it a few times when they played good stuff. But it was the presence of the pre-loaded 24 second snippets that they played every single time that really threw me off. But the FedEx Forum is a great arena and the experience was definitely fun. On Saturday, Casey and I headed down to a casino in Tunica for a few hours. I had never been there before but it was about what I expected. I played $3-$6 limit Hold 'Em for a couple of hours and although I didn't catch any cards and lost a little bit of money I was amazed at how bad the players were. At a table full of ten people, there were maybe three that seemed like they knew what they were doing, and the rest were just awful--calling down to the river with second or third pair, no kicker, etc. The twenty five cent-fifty cent games on Full Tilt have much better players, no joke. Anyway, I can't wait to go back with a nice roll and sit in for an extended session, because I have faith that I could destroy that game. The Pats game on Sunday was pretty bad, but they are so banged up that I really can't even be disappointed...we just don't have a healthy enough team this year. Case in point, we have six defensive backs alone out for the season. Six. I can't complain, or at least I won't, given how much success we've had the last few years. We should still win the division, so we'll see how things go, but I'm certainly not expecting an automatic Super Bowl win like I have the last couple of years.

Great weekend

We had a very enjoyable and relaxing holiday weekend in Memphis. Beth got out of work a little bit early on Friday and she had taken the dogs over to her parents' house during her lunch break so we were able to pack up quickly and get on the road. The only snag at all came when we stopped to fill up just outside of town and it ended up taking almost half an hour. The "pay at the pump" machines weren't working so every gas-buying customer had to go inside and pre-pay, thus clogging everything up.

Friday night in Germantown was very low key. We had some pasta and then watched one of the documentaries from the Seinfeld DVDs. Kevin arrived on Saturday and we spent the day just hanging out and catching up. He's got a great new job in Washington, DC, so we heard a little bit about that as well as the Little League team he's coaching. I've known Kev since he was in the 4th grade and it's great to see him finally catch a couple of breaks and to be doing something so rewarding. He also flies back to Boston once a month to continue his former job as a tour guide at Fenway Park. Nice gig!

On Sunday afternoon I caught Revenge of the Sith for the third time because Casey hadn't seen it yet. I think he really enjoyed it. And I loved it (again) because this theatre had a digital projector--the first time I've been able to see one in action, and it was great. Incredibly crisp picture, no reel breaks...just awesome. Every theatre should switch. Any, my brother was very psyched to see the flick. He even popped in the Episode II DVD beforehand to get warmed up. On Sunday night we intoduced Kev to The OC by showing him a few of the classic episodes from the season one DVD. That really cracked me up because he just doesn't seem like the type who would enjoy that show at all but he did. But then again, Casey doesn't either but he has gotten completely hooked as well, calling it the TV equivalent of bad crack. He's got a point. Kev and I stayed up until about 2:30 AM, just talking and catching up (and having a couple of shots of Cuervo that Kev served up in plastic mini Sox batting helmets). We capped the night off with a little bit of the Larry Bird: A Basketball Legend DVD, which was a perfect way to end the night.

We headed home at about noon on Monday and then went to the Hillis house for barbecued ribs for dinner. They were excellent--definitely one of Jim Bob's specialties. Then we even managed to get a little more unpacking done at home. My friend John Kinsman, an actor living in L.A., is back in Boston right now to move some stuff out and he'll be stopping here sometime this weekend so we need to get the guest room all set. And Beth leaves on Friday for a wedding in Connecticut. Throw in physical therapy for me today and Thursday and it will actually be a pretty busy week around here.

Here's a picture of me with my brother, my niece, and Kevin

The Celtics stink

Wow...what a disastrous showing by my Celts in game 7. Nothing to say, really, aside from "we sucked."

The weekend in Memphis was great. Very low key, just hanging out with the family, playing board games, good stuff like that. The family is all excited about my poker stuff and I had a free tournament to play on Saturday so we hooked the laptop up to output to the big screen so that they could check in and watch periodically. The tourney went well. It is hosted by Card Player magazine and it's a sweet deal--for signing up with their website and making some quality posts a few months ago, I now get to play in a monthly tournament for free that gives out real cash to the top fifty finishers. There were almost 800 players this time and I managed to crack the top 20, taking home $30 for my 17th place finish. I was happy with the way I played, especially after losing about two thirds of my stack right before one of the breaks.

Not much happening on the home front. I won another single-table tournament today and I'm almost done with Harrington's book, which has been brilliant. Other than that, just counting the days until Episode III. Yes, I'm a geek, I know...

More poker reading

I finished the Hold 'Em sections in Super System 2. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't too helpful because there is just no way I can play the way that Doyle Brunson advocates, because that style is just too aggressive for me. So I recently picked up Harrington On Hold 'Em by 1995 WSOP champ Dan Harrington. He is ironically nicknamed "Action Dan" because of his conservative playing style but he's also the only player in the world to make it to the final table of the main event the last two years, which have had by far the biggest fields the event has ever seen. I'm part way through the book so far and it's really good. He also has a volume two coming out later this month and I'll probably pick that one up as well. My favorite tip of his so far is that you tend to win the most money by playing the opposite of your traditional style--tight players win by getting a little looser, and vice versa. Simple, but true.

On Thursday I won a single-table tournament on Full Tilt. The entry fee was only $4.40 and there were just nine people but it means that I now have a "satellite chip" that I can use to buy into a more expensive tournament of my choice. The entire World Series of Poker consists of around 45 total events this year, including the big one that I am in, and Full Tilt runs a lot of qualifying tournaments into the other events as well. Who knows, maybe I'll win my way into another tournament out there too!

We're off to Memphis for the weekend to see my family. Mom and Dad are headed back to Cape Cod for the summer so it will be good to see them before they go. And I haven't seen my brother since January so it will be fun all around. I'm sure we'll be watching game 7 of the Boston-Indiana series on Saturday. GO CELTICS! I want a piece of Sully and his World Champion Detroit Pistons in round two.

Little Rock...my new home?!?

We arrived in Little Rock early on Thursday afternoon without incident. Dad and I swung by the new house first to drop off the Focus, then went on to the Hillis residence. Dad quickly got on the road to head home to Memphis...he was clearly pretty fried and ready to be home. I still can't thank him enough for all his help.

After Beth got out of work, we went to our house and I got to see the inside for the first time. To put it mildly, it's a little disappoiting. It's smaller than it appears from pictures, it's located close to a pretty loud street, and it just seems dingy to me. The good things are that it should be okay, space-wise, as it's bigger than our last apartment, and that it is substantially cheaper. And since I won't be able to work for a month or two, that's a pretty big deal. I'm sure I'll feel a lot better about it once we clean up the inside a little and get all of our stuff unpacked, but for now I'm completely underwhelmed. I'm trying not to be too negative about everything but I think my attitude is wearing on Beth a little already. It's tough to be too optimistic with the way things are for me right now.

Good news: the movers called and now it appears that they will arrive on Saturday morning after all. That threw a kink into Beth's plans because she wanted to do some painting and cleaning on Saturday before our furniture arrived but we'll be fine. I'm happy about the idea of having everything set by Saturday afternoon. The Sox play, the Celtics have a playoff game, and it's NFL Draft Day, so clearly I need my system set up!

And to address one of the anonymous comments: I have NEVER owned leather pants--come on, I don't think they make those in a 44 waist. The yellow shades died years ago, although I do have some more subtle green Ray Bans. But I had the cheap black wraparounds going for the trip. And Steph, my Dad really enjoyed "Saturday" so the recommendation was a success.

Off to run some errands. Thanks for the comments and keep them coming!