C Dubya 04

Saw the REM show in Philly Wednesday night. Pearl Jam was there. Eddie came out during the encore and sang Begin the Begin with them then Johnny Mars came out and played on Fall on Me and Man on the Moon. Really fun show. I'm going to hit up the Pearl Jam show tonight. Modest Mouse was surprisingly bland as an opening band, but The National were very good. I kind of expected it to be the other way around.

I've decided that my favorite Beatles song is She Said She Said and probably followed by I'm Only Sleeping, Golden Slumbers and Across the Universe. I think that sadly I needed to hear other bands doing covers of those to really get into them but then they moved to the top of my list.

Well, I was going to save this for a little while, but I don't know if there will be a run on music picks now. Basically, I love live music, and there is no better live music program to pick than Austin City Limits. Almost every single band that I love has been on the show and really, it contains a history of who's who in rock music from 1975 until now. Can't think of a more rewatchable program for me to take to my island.

Plus, 2004 was coming off a pretty good run. I'd have a hard time complaining about a loss if my team had won the three previous.

So, this series stops all Kobe > MJ talk, right? Anyone out there still trying to get that argument going?

How the fuck can the Lakers give up open threes with Garnet standing beyond the three point line? You're playing 5 on 4 defense and giving up wide open shots. WTF?

While watching this game so far, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the refs are not corrupt, just incompetent.

I wasn't sure if anyone else would have even had it on their radar. It's a show that seems to have been forgotten about, unfortunately.

I've decided to go from a value pick last round to a quality over quantity pick this round. This show might have been around until the end, but I didn't want to take that chance. I didn't know how much people around here had ever watched this show, but it is just fantastic. Really ahead of its time by several years. David Kelly show that probably got the least press/promotion, but was also among his best. The acting, directing and writing are all top notch on this series. Philip “Fyvush” Finkel is at the top of his game as lawyer Douglas Wambaugh and even Lauren Holly does a great job acting. You also have Tom Skeritt, Kathy Baker, Holly Marie Combs and Don Cheadle. That's a hell of a cast right there.

I would have been fine with that. Extending to the Monday after just bothers me.

Depends by what you mean by memorable. Actually, either way I don't see it. Winning the Masters by 12 in 1997 or winning the Open by 15 in 2000 will be more memorable in restropect due to the complete domination. The 2005 Masters duel with Chris Dimarco was more memorable as a competitive tourney. And the 2000 PGA was fantastic as well. I really hate the whole round playoff for the Open. Especially having a job and missing it.

X Files and Always Sunny going eliminates what was left of the top of my board.

Okay, glad a lot of people weren't around for that attempted pick. Now, I'm going to go with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Definitely the third option for late night tv, but still generally funny, plus it's really a value pick. Going on 17 years of nightly programming, musical guests and basically a way to remember what was going on all those years when I'm bored and lonely on the island. Leno was no where near as funny as Carson, but he's my generation. Carson just never felt that relevant to me.

Edit. I'm an idiot. My pick went in round two. Let me think about this one.

Really, why Pierce should get the MVP is that he's playing the best defense of his life at the biggest moment. Guy fucking d'ed up Kobe last night. Hard. Also, I couldn't believe anyone was saying Kobe was as good as Jordan before this series began, but if anyone is still saying it now they really need to come to grips with reality.

I have never seen nor heard of the Venture Brothers.

There are more that I haven't seen than I expected there to be, but I have seen the majority of them.

Got REM w/ The National and Modest Mouse next week. Probably going to scatter in my annual 3 or 4 Gov't Mule shows and a couple Allman Brothers if Greg doesn't die. Most excited about seeing Ben Folds with a full orchestra in September.

Where did you find the software for that? I have the 80GB Ipod and want to load a bunch of DVDs on it for a trip, but can't figure out how.

Really, I think that I most agree with what seems to be Simmons' take on the whole thing. I don't think that there was ever communication to officials, but I think that the NBA does find a way to get their worst officials calling the biggest games where there is a desired outcome. The bad officials are most likely to get caught up in the game, which then tends to benefit the home team in particular (and to a lesser extent, the better story/more exciting team).

I had to think about this pick. In the end I decide that I wanted some more laughs on the island, and really this is an underrated comedy. It's been around for 12 seasons so far, and really is still consistently good. For an animated series, one thing I've always liked about it is it doesn't ever get too over the top cartoony. It seems that the writers have always wanted to write a sitcom, but have done so in animated form. Plus, the episode where Bobby goes to women's self defense classes and starts kicking everyone in the balls is one I could watch forever. "Bobby Hill, as you can see, I have no testicles." "She's bluffing, finish her off!"

He shouldn't be taken at his word for this, but there's enough other things that have gone on (see the WCF game 6 of 2002) that it seems worth looking into.

It wouldn't have.

The one thing Van Gundy said last night that I really agree with is that there needs to be a lot more transparency in the whole thing. If you got a complaint about Yao, watched the tapes and decided, yeah he's fouling people, you damn well better tell the other coach that too. The NBA refs are amazingly bad. I know basketball is a tough sport to officiate, but the NBA refs are in general terrible at their jobs. Stern's "I'm better than all of you and it's my league" attitude is not going to help this situation out, IMO. Having Crawford ref the Spurs most important playoff game was one of many examples of Stern not using common sense and just pretending that anyone who argues with his judgment is wrong. I still don't see how he could have let that happen. He's lucky there wasn't a worse blown call in that one to further the NBA conspiracy theories.

Yeah, apparently it's much harder to win two straight than to win one of two. Yeah, I meant that it wasn't hard to figure out what series was being referred to.