this is for dusty

the other day dusty told me that he checks this website everyday looking for some kind of post about the iverson trade since i'm always talking about how iverson is the best basketball player ever. so here it is:

two days before the iverson trade i had a dream where i was playing poker at clif's parents house with aaron, clif, dusty, gavin and chad. after the poker game we played mario cart. then i ended up in kansas city because everybody ditched me. while in kansas city i snuck into a chiefs/broncos game and watched part of the game on the sideline near one of the endzones with both dick vermeil and mike shanahan. i didn't care about the game and i didn't want to talk to either of those idiots so i spent my time trying to figure out how long it would take me to drive to denver because i know how long it would take me to get from denver to my home. why is this dream important? if i was daniel and could decipher dreams i would have known that he was going to be traded to denver. it's obvious, right? everyone i played poker with in my dream sort of likes sports. the broncos and mike shanahan, who are from denver, where in my dream. and i could only think of getting to denver. two days later i heard iverson was headed to denver.

here's why i like the trade: iverson is closer to me than ever before. also, they show all the nuggets games on the altitude channel.

Foreigners

Gregary wrote me an IM yesterday that LOL'd me completely. Andrei Kirilenko has recently come to like dill, he wrote. And then the hotlink, http://www.kirilenko.ru/?lang=eng.
The best Siberian basketball player on the Utah Jazz has his own blog!!! It's pretty good too. Check out the section "Masha". Funny.

So I searched for the best Turkish Jazzman Mehmet Okur. He has a blog also!!! http://www.memo13.com/index.asp His wife is a babe as well. They all have pretty hot wives, actually, as you can see if you click on the "birthday party for Jarron" link.

Blogs are so funny. Thanks Greg. (Greg thinks Andrei is actually Dolf Lundgren. Whatever.)

potpourri:is that a smell or a collection of things or maybe a collection of things but sometimes it's a category on the nintendo version jeopardy

bob costas is pleased to be back on the medium he started out on: radio. at least that's what radio told me. and when i say radio told me i mean a commercial on the radio narrated by bob costas told me. after explaining how pleased he was to be back on the radio (and i wonder what exactly he meant by pleased--pleased as in it gives him pleasure, pleased that he'll make a shitload of money for talking about nothing or pleased that he doesn't have to comb his hair for work?), bob costas said how an unnamed we pondered over what to call his new radio show. before i drop the name (which, in this instance, is different from name-dropping), i want to ponder over who this unnamed we could include and wonder why bob costas would say this unnamed we pondered. bob costas is probably a part of this we, but who else? his producer? his barber? dan marino? espn radio? and what weren't just thinking about a name but pondering. maybe ponder is a loaded word for me. i guess joseph smith pondered and that's the main reason i was born in utah and possibly the main reason i was born at all. that's something i should ponder about. i seriously doubt they (bob costas and whoever) pondered. the name they came up with? bob costas on the radio. is that a joke?

here's the best goal i've seen this year:

don't forget that chelsea was down 2-1 in extra time when he scored this goal. drogba scored the first goal.

speaking of drogba, there's this guy on youtube who posts like every drogba goal. sometimes he compiles drogba highlights into a kind of drogba mixtape. that's cool. but what's cooler? the music he chooses for this drogba mixtape:

because pusher and malice are twins, i can never tell their verses apart. but they're awesome. and don't sleep on pharrell.

should the rubber band game count as a sport?

i think it should. it involves physical endurance, finesse, strength, quickness and strategy. plus it's fun.

everybody who is anybody loves ping pong

table tennis, or what is onomatopoetically called ping pong, is like the best sport ever. well, technically soccer is the best sport, but it's so hard to find enough people to play and when you find enough people to play you still have to find a ball, a place to play and shorts to play in and then it's either too hot or too cold and even though you have so much fun playing--way funner than any ecstasy party i've been to and the ones i've been to are totally fun, you know, with like dancing and ouija boards and the rubber-band game and vest-jackets and banana chair surfing--you're so sore the next day. so soccer is the best sport (especially 2 on 2 indoor soccer played on a racquetball court) but sometimes ping pong is even better.

but you don't have to take my word for it:

(ok. i want to explain how i found these photos first. i thought the line was funny enough--you know, because we all watched reading rainbow growing up and pretend to like it now because we weren't so depressed when we were kids but childhood wasn't so great and neither was reading rainbow. maybe i was trying to be ironic, but that's not any better. i mean, do i think i'm better because i don't pretend to like reading rainbow? no. i'm still trying to define myself in terms of which products i consume[d] and which i didn't. so scrap the reference.)

(but why wouldn't i just erase the reference rather than writing about how i'm embarrassed i used it? i have a few ideas, but i don't want to spend another paragraph over-analyzing everything i write. it's not funny.)

(but if i did it enough times would it become funny?)

the internet is great. while watching parts of the patriots/colts game sunday night during commercials of prehistoric park i wondered if peyton manning is married. thanks to the internet i found the answer in less than ten minutes (or, more correctly, in less than or equal to ten minutes). he's married, but i couldn't find any pictures of the two of them. so i started looking for pictures of steve nash and his family. instead i found proof of how awesome ping pong is. (rebecca, feel free to use these pictures or even this entire post [or portions of it] on your blog because ping pong is always awesome.)

i may not have found pictures of nash and his girlfiend and/or kid(s), but i found this:


















but he's not the only awesome athlete who loves ping pong. there's ronnie brown, who looks like a killer doubles partner:
















sharapova plays in a dress which isn't that weird considering that she plays tennis in a dress:



































andy roddick plays




























against mandy moore





























i think i could take mandy moore
but it's not just bad actors who play. there's humphrey bogart


















audrey hepburn














and keanu reeves (who plays left-handed)















i would love to play any of those people. i think i could take mandy moore, bogart, and keanu if we were both stoned when we played. but if i had access to a time/space machine, i'd travel back to cuba shortly after the revolution to play castro.
















stoned or not, castro would beat me for sure. but it would be awesome.

if there's anyone i wouldn't want to play against, it would probably be mr. ed
















that horse's forehand looks like it could kill someone.

i used to think aaron rooted for the underdog, but now i don't know what to think

i spend part of most saturday afternoons watching college football with gavin. every week we flip through random games looking for upsets (unless florida is playing, then we watch that game hoping that urban meyers plays tim tebow, but meyers is an idiot and he barely uses tebow). a month or so ago we saw michigan destroy notre dame. then the next week we were heartbroken as notre dame came back to win against michigan state. then there were a bunch of weeks with out any real threat of upsets--at least in the games we partially watched.

today we were watching florida and georgia. but, like every week except one, meyers hardly even used tebow. so we switched over the the second-half of the usc/oregon state game. it was awesome. oregon state got up by 20 some odd points. then usc worked its way back into the game. with seven seconds left, usc scored a touchdown. they needed a two-point conversion to tie. gavin and i watched in fear. it's so sad to see such an underdog play so well only to lose the game at the last second. but oregon state totally stopped the conversion.

my first thought was to call aaron. i figured he likes and upset as much as me. plus, he goes to oregon state and, even though he doesn't care about the sports program there, i thought he'd feel a little sentimental about his school knocking off an team like usc.

so i called him. except he didn't care at all. not only that, but he thought it was dumb that i thought he'd care.

maybe that's why he hardly posts on this thing anymore.

History of the Underdog

Greetings, it's my first post on "this person know what i'm talking about."

I don't actually know the history of the underdog but I'd like to make some general statements about it that sound reasonable. The attractiveness of an underdog victory is obvious for a sports fan. My first assumption is that sports are a substitute for war. Now of course we still have wars, but with all technical advances these days they're so hard to follow, all the covert ops and whatnot. Who would watch the superbowl if it wasn't scheduled, and one team would sneak up on the other whenever they found them, play a down, and then retreat for days?

So the days of spectatorship for war are gone. I guess that started with the first Olympic games. Sports of whatever kind now provide a forum for the virtues of the warrior to be displayed, even though we've come a long way from archery and wrestling and now have bowling. (Bowling still requires its own physical virtues of strength and finesse and pinpoint accuracy, it just doesn't require the all-around fitness that the decathlon strives to display.) A competition is the chance to see the skills and attributes of the warriors of the respective sports to be tested and admired by the spectators.

Implied in this situation is that the spectators do not possess the virtues in the degree that the warriors do (or they would be the warriors). This allows the spectator to participate by proxy, aligning themselves with one side or the other and experiencing the battle emotional if not physically. We all know those people, usually moms, who walk in during a televised sporting event and make some comment about how they just want a fair game and the best side to win, with no regard for the fact that some of us have devoted months or years to the particular team and don't appreciate comments about "good plays" by the enemies. But we also know those people, who are usually moms, wouldn't be in war anyway and that's why they have no appreciation for the beauty of the battlefield. Would they want the best army to win if it meant their husband never came home again? Pick a side!

Anyway, in picking sides it is more often than not the underdog that most people side with when they have not been devoting their lives to one of the particular sides. And I assume that this is owing to the fact that it makes a more fulfilling proxy experience because the vast majority of people assume they are the underdog in life. It's certainly the case if they have delusions of grandeur, but it's the position of all of us in relation to entropy. That makes it natural to side with the underdog in sports, and demand happy endings to movies. It provides hope for each spectator that despite the fact they weren't endowed in abundance with the virtues of _______, if they show enough heart, the virtue that can be self-produced, they can achieve victory.

I often cheer for the underdog. I will admit I'm no Yankees fan. But I don't advocate it as automatic as it too often is. There is pleasure to be found in rooting for the leviathan, and it is the appreciation of beautiful and skillful execution. This path is more difficult because the proxy connection is often lost if we consider ourselves inept, but it may reap greater spoils. I use the Chicago Bulls led by Michael Jordan as an example. They were my team while they were good, and only then. It was bandwagoning at its best, I didn't even like them much until after the first title, but the next five titles were a pleasure. I even loved it when they brought in Dennis Rodman and only lost ten regular season games. Rodman was an easy target for devoted underdog rooters but he didn't give them what they wanted. I got what I wanted. I watched the greatest team of basketball players in the world win and win and win, specifically Michael Jordan. The grace and skill with which he was able to dominate was awe-inspiring, and ennobling to me. Underdoggers missed all that, consumed by his supposed arrogance, sidetracked by his gambling, private life, or sought to qualify it with the story of him not making the high school team and therefore making even his dominance an underdog story. I would have none of it. Fortune favored Michael Jordan and all anyone else can do is watch in awe.

The spoils of cheering for the favored are confidence and an appreciation for excellence. There is a danger of becoming haughty, but nothing the occasional underdog can't remedy. The benefits of siding with the strong have bled over into my own life. I have a healthy confidence that I can accomplish what I want. I don't fear for my survival and completely enjoy my life. With an underdog disposition I could believe it possible but the odds would always be against me. This way they are in my favor. It's an easier way to live. And so I will continue to root for the favored and admire the virtues of the warrior.

looks like i'm not the only ike diogu fan out there

a tribute video to the future best-player ever. watch to the end to see the cute illustration they made of x-men's "beast" but with ike's boyish face. i wish i made this video.

in soccer, a pitch is what they call the field

i saw this movie called fever pitch. clif told me he read the book the movie is based on. the book is a memoir about being an arsenal fan. clif said the book is good and bears no resemblance to the movie. the movie was terrible. so terrible it was actually pretty funny. hopefully no one saw it, so i'll fill you in on the details. jimmy fallon is a die hard red sox fan. his uncle used to take him to games at fenway park. then his uncle died and jimmy inherited season tickets. so his life is all about the red sox and these kids he teaches at school. then he falls in love in the off-season. you see where this is going. jimmy's love of the red sox interferes with his love of this girl. they kind of break-up and jimmy decides to sell his season tickets to some asshole. but drew barrymore (his ex-girlfriend) can't let that happen so she scalps some tickets and runs onto the field at fenway to stop him. the night she runs onto the field? the fourth game of the alcs where the red sox come back against the yankees and eventually win the series. the point? jimmy and drew's love is the reason the red sox win the series.

i seriously doubted the point of the movie. how do our baseball-related actions have any effect on the outcome of baseball games? but then i realized which two teams are playing in the world series.

at the beginning of last summer i needed a new baseball cap. i was at target and noticed they had all these mlb caps that were the style i like--simple, adjustable and fits the shape of your head. and they were only like ten dollars. so i bought a detroit tigers hat. not because i like the tigers, but because their hat is blue and not the yankees or red sox. aaron really liked my hat, so he went to target to buy one. he chose the cardinals because their hat was blue and not the yankees or red sox. and what two teams are in the world series? the detriot tigers and the st. louis cardinals.

Go Blue!

for those of you (or more realistically the [maybe] one person) who have read my previous posts, you might remember that I was born in ann arbor, MI and grew up singing the u. of michigan fight song. so i just have to give praises to the great year this has been for my former state. the detroit tigers swept the american league championship and are in the world series for the first time since i was just a little lass of 6. i know some of you think baseball is totally boring, but i love it (then again, i can get into pretty much any sport when watching it). so anyway, in other MI news, the wolverines are currently 8-0 and ranked number two. yay them.

the end.