Ball.

What Are The Odds?

I just made a pun and you don't even realize it yet.

I might've learned something "useful" in a class this week. Well, it was in a book, actually: Against the Gods, The Incredible Story of Risk. It's slightly more interesting than it sounds. Slightly.

This week's lesson is about odds. Specifically, odds on horse (or dog, rabbit, turtle, or other raceable animals) racing. Let's say my horse, Brice Lord's Testicle, has odds of 1-to-1 (1:1), and your two horses, Crippleplex and Wendy's Testicle, have odds of 3:1 and 6:1, respectively. Since there's only 3 horses allowed on the track at Brice Lord Memorial Downs at anytime, then my horse has a 50% chance of winning, and yours have 33.3% and 16.7% chances. For example, with 3:1 odds there's a 1/4 chance Crippleplex will win, and with 6:1 odds there's a 1/7 chance that Wendy's Testicle will win. See the pattern? You've learned something already. Anyway, notice how the three horses' odds add up to 100%; this is because some horse must win the race, unless of course they all break their legs.

Wait, it gets a little bit more interesting. At a track that isn't named after me things work a little differently, because they're interested in making money, whereas I am already so goddamned rich I make money from giving it away. The odds at Charlestown Races & Slots for tomorrow are as follows:

Horse, Odds, Relative Probability
1, 5:1, 16.7%
2, 42:1, 2.3%
3, 3/5:1, 62.5%
4, 3:1, 25%
5, 12:1, 7.7%
6, 7:1, 12.5%
7, 53:1, 1.9%
8, 48:1, 2.0%

Right now you're probably thinking, "Brice comma this is boring as shit semicolon go back to writing about the cola wars period" Exactly! The relative probabilities of all the horses in the race does not add up to 100%, it adds up to 130.6%.

So, what the shit is going on here? How can we be 130.6% certain that a horse is going to win this race? Ever notice how attending races is free? No? Never been to a horse race because it's really boring, simultaneously low- and high-brow, far away, and quite possibly cruel to the animals? Well, it's because that extra 30.6% is the house's take. They skim off the top. It's the bookie fee, the Jew's usury, the Cossack's bargain, the what-have-you.

So next time you rush off to the races to see Cunnilingus 2 run around a dirt path twice in a matter of minutes and then forget where you parked remember that your hard-earned recession-proof cash is lining someone else's lined pockets.

By the way, I don't really know anything about horse racing, so if you do and I'm wrong about any of this, please don't hesitate to immediately explain how you know so much about horse racing.

An Obvious Metaphor

Having lost to William & Mary already, the University of Virginia Cavaliers football team probably didn't need their mascot to literally fall off his horse during his otherwise rousing entrance at the beginning of the game on Saturday. Following the mascot's lead, the Cavs watched Texas Christian University put up 30 unanswered points in the 30-14 at home loss. Maybe for the next game he'll switch out his horse for a bicycle.

Superbowl Monday

Ever since my Junior year (high school) AP Chemistry teacher obstinately gave us a test the day after the Superbowl, I have strongly advocated Superbowl Monday becoming a national holiday. Considering about 1/3 of the entire country watch this game, I think it's only fitting to have a national day of rest following dedicated to the event. If you disagree with me, you're a terrorist.

Does this look like a productive worker to you? No. It's Superbowl Monday.

RIGHTEOUS!

It is an excellent thing when your team has lost its last 4 bowl games (including 3 Rose Bowls) and then wins a big upset. It is an excellent thing when your retiring coach and exceptional senior class wins their last bowl game after an underwhelming season. It is an excellent thing to beat the Heisman winner at a venue that is essentially his home field and breaks everyone's preconceptions about your style of play. And it is always an excellent thing to beat the obnoxious Florida Gators, who before the game were jumping up and down on your team's logo in the endzone. Congrats to the team and coaches, it was an excellent game.

Story.

Pillowfight '07: Michigan vs. Notre Dame

As a devoted Michigan fan, I've naturally been de-testacled this season after successive losses to unranked opponents, one of which shall remain nameless for the rest of my life, to open the season 0-2. This is the first time Michigan opened its season with two straight losses at home since 1959. That's almost 50 years. It's truly a season of historic ignominy for my favorite teams. Michigan sucks as bad as it has for a half-century, the Orioles lost a game by 27 runs, the first time in 110 years, and the Ravens can't seem to beat the perennial cross-town underachievers (Redskins) nor the perennial convicted criminals (Bengals).

Some idiot UM fan made this tshirt before the season started (obviously). Now we all know where to point those fingers.

This weekend Michigan faces one of its archrivals, Notre Dame. Thankfully, Notre Dame is equally awful, having lost their first two games this season as well. Of course, it'll be the first time in history that's ever happened. Lucky me. Watching this game should be like watching blind, retarded sumo wrestlers play checkers in space.

There's a lot of talk this time around about which team is worse rather than the usual "which team is better" madness. For some reason Notre Dame fans think their quarterback's extra 6 quarters of gametime experience over Michigan's freshman QB (our senior got hurt last week) will make the difference somehow. Oh, and thanks to the Big 10 for filling our bye week with an out-of-conference game; that should really give the injured players the respite they need midseason. But, for some reason Michigan fans think that this is a fluke and we'll turn it around all the sudden against the hated Irish. I'd love to believe that, but as far as I can tell this fluke is less the gastrointestinal variety and more the Dune Sandworms variety.

This is not a fluke.

No matter what happens on Saturday, what I am absolutely 100% sure of is that everyone can look forward to watching a 4.5-hour football game, compliments of the ABC network, Doritos, Carmax, and Cialis.

And that's why it's called Pillowfight 2007*. But hey, Go Blue.

* I didn't come up with this.

Mr. Beckham Goes to Washington

I suppose it's been about 3 weeks, but I figured it's about time I post the two crappy pictures I took with my phone during David Beckham's debut MLS game against the DC United on August 9 in Washington. Our seats were officially in the nosebleeds, literally one row back from the top, but us Barra Bravas snuck down to the lower level after the usual halftime mosh pit in the concourse concluded.

DC United fans give Mr. Beckham a very warm welcome during his August 9 MLS debut.

Yeah, Beckham's hurt yet again, and that sucks for the MLS for a variety of reasons, none of which I feel like going on about, but mostly because despite how polarizing his arrival was, soccer's actually made SportsCenter pretty much every single night since he got here. Any publicity's good publicity, right? Well, not if he can't play. Soccer-haters like nothing more than something else underwhelming to complain about.

The recent injury also may threaten the possibility of other post-peak foreign soccer stars from following his lead, like CrazyHead Zidane, which would otherwise help buttress the league's skill level and overall attractability both for players and fans. Naturally, a foreign athlete's first loyalties lie with his home country and, after seeing Beckham disappear from the England team's beleaguered march toward the UEFA Euro Tournament, may not want to risk injury, not to mention enmity, by playing extra matches here in the States.

So does Beckham playing in the MLS really matter for soccer? Naysayers like to think that if Pelé's participation in the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the 1970's couldn't promote soccer beyond nichedom, an injured Beckham sure can't either. That may be true, but it's not the whole case. K-12 participation in formal soccer leagues has grown substantially since then, which carries with it the obvious assumption that interest in the sport has grown commensurately. How many of us had fathers who played soccer when they were a kid? Very few. In fact, the US Youth Soccer League, begun in 1974: the same year Pelé started playing in the NASL, has grown from 100,000 to 3,000,000 registered players; and this doesn't count the 800,000 coaches and volunteers or any bullshit like that. That's a 2,900% rise concomitant with the 41% rise in overall population.

Popularization of soccer in the U.S. has also benefited from the massive influx of Latin Americans, who, like most of the rest of the world, hold soccer as their #1 sport. At one-seventh of the total U.S. population, and a demographic that prefers to settle in urban areas, this should not be trivialized. In fact, DC United's most boisterous ultra firm, La Barra Brava, was founded by South American immigrants.

He's in there somewhere on the left half of the field. Just look for the sexy and you'll find him.

After all is said and done, whether or not Beckham's U.S. tour makes any difference to U.S. soccer will ultimately rely on him actually playing. And if he ends up heading back to England soon rather than later, and thus cutting short his term with the LA Galaxy and the MLS, it will probably prove more detrimental to the league than had he never come at all.

The Baltimore Orioles make history again!

110 years is a long time.

In the past 110 years, the Ottoman Empire and its Muslim Caliphate were dissolved, two World Wars involving over 100 nations in toto were fought and decided, 20 U.S. Presidents have passed through the White House, six of whom were shot and two of whom were killed (the West Wing was not built until ~1909), the first production automobiles were sold (590 million now exist globally), powered flight and the escalator were invented, man harnessed the atom, narcotics were stigmatized internationally, world population increased four-fold, and humankind stepped foot on an astronomical body 240,000 miles away---the Moon---six times.

Nope, it's not a typo.

Perhaps it's somewhat less consequential, but do you know what else happened 110 years ago? A Major League Baseball team, for the first time in history, scored more than 30 runs in a single game. This rapacious feat was performed by the Chicago Colts against the hapless Louisville Colonels in 1897, with a final score of 36-7. Notice how you've never heard of either of these teams. So, how many teams since have scored 30 or more runs in a single game? Well, as of Wednesday, August 22, 2007, one.

That team would be the Texas Rangers, a team 15 games below .500 and with the 4th worst win percentage in the entire League, when they came back from a three-run deficit to beat my hometown team, the Baltimore Orioles, with a final score of 30-3 in Camden Yards, the O's home field. Loooong sigh. If I had known in advance, by divination or by Biff's anachronistic sports almanac, that an unknown baseball team would lose a game that night by 27 runs, I most certainly would have put my money on that team being my fucking Orioles. For a team that's spent nearly half a billion dollars on player salaries (actual > $400M) in the past decade, this shit will not pass.

It's only natural that the enfeebled, incapable Orioles were on the losing end of such a record. We always manage to outdo our own mediocrity somehow. Like it's not enough to have an entire decade of consecutive losing seasons. Like it's not enough to have an autocratic tyrant for an owner. Like it's not enough for the team to not have even reached the World Series in 24 years. Like it's not enough for the Orioles to hold the record for the most consecutive losses at the beginning of a season (1988). Like it's not enough for the Orioles to have had 6 different managers in the last decade. Sure, if it was opposite year the Orioles would be in great fucking shape. But we don't live in opposite town, and opposite year was 1989 ("Why Not?!"). How could all these comedies of error not be the end of Lord Mephistopheles' (pictured below) artful machinations? How could schadenfreude knows such infinite depths? After this game, I am utterly convinced that the Orioles are damned to persist indefinitely in underachievement or, perhaps by some grace, will finally achieve obsolescence and demise. Truly, for Orioles fans, the end is extremely fucking nigh.

One of Mephistopheles' fiendish doppelganger minions. And he hates steamed crabs.

In case I haven't yet been able to fully evoke the magnitude, rarity, and historic relevance of this defeat, allow me to try to put it in context:

• The Orioles could have scored 27 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, only to tie the game and go into extra innings.


• The last time a baseball team scored this many runs, the Civil War was a more recent event than the Vietnam War is now.


• The first American League no-hitter was pitched in 1902, 5 years later, by the Chicago White Stockings. 234 no-hitters have been pitched in all, and 17 of those were perfect games.


• In 1897, the Cy Young Award would not be awarded for another 59 years.


• 22 years after the Chicago Colts' victory, Jackie Robinson is born in Cairo, Georgia.


• At the time of the 36-run game, the Louisville Colonels had a budding young shortstop on the roster named Hognus Wagner.


• The knuckleball would not debut in the MLB for another 11 years.


• And lastly... the first subatomic particle, the electron, was discovered that same year. It would be 35 years before the neutron was discovered and high school students would need to start worrying about p's, e's, and n's outside of the alphabet.

Sadly, this unfortunately-historic game was the first in a double-header on Wednesday night. If the 30-3 loss wasn't enough---and "loss" doesn't quite convey the true absurdity of the event---the Orioles also lost the second game that night 9-7, meaning that the Rangers put up 39 runs to the Orioles' 10 in a single night. When put in that perspective, the Rangers may as well have beaten the record for all I care.

Kevin Millar has never seen a ball hit that far that many times in so short a time. No one else alive today has either.

So how does this stack up against other baseball records? Well, it's quite difficult to compare these, right? How do you compare batting average with ERA records, or career no-hitters with career RBIs? Well, it seems there is one easy way to do so, and that is rarity. The less likely something is, the more of a feat it becomes. Sure, specific circumstances determine some records, like unassisted triple plays. But not this one. This game represents not only the unmitigated implosion of one team, but also the sudden impulse and collective synergy of the opposing team in response. Indeed, that is a rare thing. And 110 years is a long time.

Sen. Redenbacher (D-WV) castigates Michael Vick for "barbarism"

REUTERS, July 20, 2007, Washington, D.C.:

The posthumously revived corpse of beloved popcorn-spokesman Senator Orville Redenbacher took to the Senate floor for over 25 minutes Thursday to decry the indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for allegations that he led a dogfighting ring out of one of his homes in Virginia. After much legal scrutiny, Reuters has confirmed that dogfighting is indeed illegal in all 50 U.S. states and its territories, in addition to every developed and most developing countries around the world. The indictment would appear to hold up in a court of law.

Sen. Redenbacher took the moral lead in this fight against the inhumane treatment of other creatures, even as many of his fellow legislators recently celebrated Vick's revival of the ancient pastime of dogfighting. "It's barbaric! Barbaric! Barbaric! It's barbaric! ......................... Barbaric! ...... Barbaric!!! It's barbaric! ................ BARBARIC!!!" Redenbacher strongly repeated 8 times while madly pumping his fist at a handful of bewildered tourists and a sleeping C-SPAN 2 cameraman in the cavernous Senate chamber Thursday [5:20 - 6:40 in the clip].

Clearly finding his wheelhouse, Sen. Redenbacher again vituperated the indictment by vicariously handing down God's own judgment on the matter by stating that "I am confident that the hottest places in hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God's creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt." Some critics have wondered whether Redenbacher's 12-year hiatus in the tomb has affected his recollection of having been a leading member of the Klu Klux Klan's Exalted Cyclops chapter for 5 years in the 1940's before winning his first seat in Congress, where he has led for over 55 years. In the past, Redenbacher has indeed made several vague allusions to his views on racial integration:

"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."

It appeared that Redenbacher worked himself into a froth enough to have even caused a brief, mild stroke, evidenced by the long pause in his oratory [located at 6:10 in the clip]. An aide of the reanimated Sen. Redenbacher was seen shooting a concerned glance at the Senator just as he began to regain consciousness and his soul returned to his body.

Following this long-winded, meaningful diatribe, Sen. Redenbacher retired from the Senate chamber and stiffly plodded toward the nearest cemetery.

Sources say he forgot to validate his parking.


---Brice Lord, reporting

The only news you'll hear from the Tour de France this year

Trivia Question: When will the Tour de France be held this year?

Answer: It's been going on for nearly 2 weeks.


Despite the extreme condition of physical fitness required of individuals to compete in this 22-day marathon on wheels, nobody really cares about it; that is, unless Lance Armstrong plans to win again with the gross audacity not seen since Babe Ruth pointed to the center field wall in 1933.

Is the Tour even on television anymore? Or is it on something crappy like ESPN The Ocho, reserved for niche events like Japanese Shame and Pain Tournament and Hot Dog Eating competitions? Sometimes you'll meet someone that is like really into the Tour de France and just needs to tell you that he enjoys it because he doesn't miss the forest for the trees like everyone else. These are a similar breed of asshole to those who dig the America's Cup sailboat race. I bet the application to the America's Cup looks something like this:


Registration for America's Cup (Sailboat Race)
Complete the following information, filling in the circles when necessary.

Name: _Brice Lord___________
Address: __1549 Awesome Lane______
Race: o White o Other
Annual Income: o $19,000,000-$20,000,000 o >$20,000,000
Domeciles: o 2 o 3 o 4 o more than my neighbor
Wife's Modeling Agency: o Ford o IMG o Elite o DNA
Boat type: __sail-thingy with big pole in the middle for the wind__


Notice how the America's Cup administration department hasn't even figured out how to use the "forms" function in MS Word.

You know, the America's Cup would be a SHITLOAD cooler if each boat was given a mounted Howitzer and a couple of sea mines. The commentators then might stop talking about a teams' tacking ability and focus on something more interesting, like casualty rates.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Tour de France.

So a dog got hit by a bicyclist the other day and it's downright hilarious. Fucking dog. It just walks across the road, on which a hundred bicyclists are streaking past every minute---at probably around 30mph---and thinks that's a fine idea. It gets hit and sends the bicyclist flying. The dog walks away from the wreck sheepishly eyeing the camera like a child who just poured milk onto his little sister's head. And when I saw this last night, predictably, Erica Hill, Anderson Cooper's own Ed McMahon, says, "Well I hope the dog is alright." Fuck you Erica! If I drove my Moroccan boyfriend's yellow Miata against traffic on I-495 causing a wreck that ejected a family of four from their Chevy Tahoe would you hope aloud that I came out of it okay without regard to the family? No, you wouldn't because any reasonable organism wouldn't do that. Just because it's a dog doesn't mean it's allowed to be fucking retarded. You're still pretty hot though, Erica.

Anyway, here's the video of the dog getting hit by the bicyclist:

It must be July ...

Now, I'm not a huge sports fan, but I enjoy watching my share of football (college and pro), March Madness, NBA playoffs, and the odd Orioles game and soccer match now and then. But, come summer, we're all hung out to dry in the sere desert of mid-season MLB baseball. The problem here is that by the all-star break there is absolutely nothing happening in any sport except baseball. The NBA and NHL playoffs are over, both drafts (NFL and NBA) are finished, and even golf is lukewarm. There's Wimbledon, but the matches are played in the middle of the day and I'm not exactly going to take 2 weeks off of work to watch British people clap supportively every time the chair judge repeats that flash photography isn't permitted because tennis players wear all white and there's a chance the extra light rays might stain their clothes. This would all be fine and dandy if the MLB were gearing up for the quadruple-fortnight World Series, but at this point it may as well be another 8 years away.

The unique majesty of baseball's World Series is only 5 short months away.

Mid-season baseball is boring. By now we all know who's good and who sucks. The Red Sox are good. The Yankees suck. The Mets are good. The Cubs suck. The Nationals suck. The Orioles suck [of course, we're never really given an opportunity to wonder if the Orioles will suck or not because they have been thoroughly consistent in this aspect for the past decade, largely thanks to an opprobriously egomaniacal owner]. And we're only at the fucking All-Star break for god's sakes, of which its Home Run Derby is as big a joke at the NBA's dunk contest---not to mention that Barry Bonds opted not to enter the homerun derby, which is bewildering on 10^5 levels (sorry, I've been taking a GRE test prep class). By the way, to call this period a "break" is hilarious to me. The only people on a baseball field at any time that ever actually do anything are the pitchers and the ball boys/girls, so having a "break" is pretty unnecessary. Well, maybe we should count the fans who occassionally interfere. Even the baseball commentators are obviously bored right now. There could be a game-winning inside-the-park grandslam hit by a wheelchair-bound, terminally ill 10-year old girl in the bottom of the 9th inning and the announcers would still be talking about how they're continually amazed at the number of bugs there are buzzing around the stadium lights.

Kevin Garnett remains seriously concerned about what everyone is telling him that he's thinking.

So except for baseball dragging us along, what are we left with to entertain us while hiding inside from the brutal summer heat? Well, as far as sports news goes right now, there's three huge, earthshaking stories I absolutely need to follow closely right now. First, we can all vapidly gossip about whether or not Bud Selig will end up sitting down in a baseball stadium when a chemically enhanced titan hits another ball over a wall. Second, that little Asian hotdog eater got beaten by a three-hotdog margin by an American named after a yuletide nut. And finally we can continue to follow the neverending carnival of rumors about Kevin Garnett being traded to the Boston Celtics (June 19), Phoenix Suns (June 25), LA Lakers (June 26), Charlotte Bobcats (June 28), Chicago Bulls (June 30), Dallas Mavericks (July 5), Golden State Warriors (July 9), and the Miami Sound Machine (July 10).

An acute visual representation of my wasted time.

Smartly, the hosts on the only sports show I enjoy, Pardon The Interruption, have taken vacations for what feels like a month, and so I'm left with listening to the possibly unintentionally self-deprecating humor of Dan Le Betard and the pacifist verbage of J.A. Adonde, whose dialogue together leaves me feeling like I just ate a pound of feathers without knowing it.

Fortunately, it's just under 2 months until college football kicks off and I can begin worrying about Michigan coming back in the fourth quarter of every game rather than worrying about the Orioles struggling to tread above a .450 win record.

Sir Charles

This is what it would look like if somebody had a stroke in the middle of their golf swing. It's actually Charles Barkley's.

oh me, oh my

I hate writing about real stuff that happens to me in reality because who really cares what's going on in my little corner of the world? I mean, I just completed Gran Turismo on the hardest setting (reference anyone?), but why should you care? Actually that would be pretty spectacular from my point of view.

Anyway, I spent about 4 hours at Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday getting two sets of X-rays and visiting the orthopedist twice as well. Though I did gain the ability to see through walls from the seven x-rays I had done, that wasn't the point of my visit to the ole' HMO joint.

(ABOVE) My non-adamantium skeleton and its unintelligent design

You see, I went skiing in Vail back in February during which I fell...over and over and over again. The biggest fall was also pretty much my last, and the one that I think landed me in the situation I'm in now. I chose the words "fall" and "landed" very carefully, because during the Minturn Mile run I hit the third of a set of three man-sized moguls a bit crooked and ended up sailing through the air into the side of a hill, landing on my right shoulder.

I'd be lying if I said that a spill I took during my first run at Whitetail a week earlier in Pennsylvania wasn't the instigator of all of this shoulder trouble, but that'd be a pretty fucking pathetic story to tell at bars...as I found out the other night.

I still blame my inadvertent hang-time out in the backcountry in Vail for wildly exacerbating the injury, though. My friend Eric was there, he'd back me up on that spill. In fact, I can still remember him laughing hysterically when it happened, followed by the compensatory "uhh...are you alright dude?" Of course, as a guy, having "dude" and "you alright?" in the same sentence mandates a response of "fuck you dude, I'm fine."

According to those ability-enhancing x-rays, however, my shoulder doesn't think so. I've either got a fractured glenoid (the cup that holds the ball of the humerus) or a slightly torn rotator cuff (the thing that helps my curve ball hang instead of drop). If it's a fracture there's a chance that there's a few bits of bone hilariously floating around in my shoulder causing me pain, in which case I'd need arthroscopic surgery to reunite them with my savings account. No matter what it is, I need an MRI, which is cool but not cheap. With an MRI I'd also get to enjoy a "magnetic shit" injection, as I call it, directly into my shoulder. Since I love needles so much, I may as well plan on hyperventilating and passing out that day, in addition to driving to fucking Fairfax. Maybe I'll take advantage of the situation and pick up some delicious suburbs-only fare like Noodles & Company while I'm at it.

The really fun part is that I got to wait 2.5 weeks before I could see the orthopedist, and I get to wait another 4 weeks to see her again (assuming I can fit in and afford an MRI in the meantime).

Now, I'm not ragging on MRIs, they're pretty cool shit. From what I've read on CNN.com's tech section, they can see into the future to predict how shitty your life is about to get. They also excel at making you feel like you're stuck in a really expensive trashcan for an extended period of time. Pretty amazing stuff.

Anyway, no matter what happens, I'm on pins and needles about finally being able to join in on conversations when people talk about broken bones, because I never have before (KNOCK ON WOOD !!! /.... LOL!!!LLOL!!1LO!O/!!7O11!L!L). I can also join those supermacho conversations about sports injuries, which in most cases, are probably more underpinned by acute office-related atrophy than Dan Cortese-esque extreme sports accidents.

Whatever happens, I wish god had given me an adamantium skeleton instead of this intelligently-designed bullshit.

Still not sure why I care, but...

It's like almost midnight, and the stupid Warriors/Jazz game is only at half-time. This comment is weird for two reasons.

1. I don't really like basketball, especially the NBA.
2. I've never even been to Oakland/SanFran nor Utah (or "ni...ni..." for you Spanish-speakers)

So why should I care so much about whether or not a team from a town I've never been to that I've admittedly never heard of until the playoffs wins or not? That's a horrendous sentence, I'm sorry. But not as sorry as you were when you clicked on that Hammer Bros. link in the Pop Quiz #2 post, sweet jesus.

I'm exhausted from working a 12-hour day, so I'll conclude by saying that the world should all work in the same time zone even though it would mean those wacky arabs and asians working in perpetual darkness just so that I could catch the end of this game instead of finding out tomorrow morning that the Warriors blew the game with their a) missed free throws b) sloppy ball-handling or c) awesome haircuts. That is, of course, if my computer is able to load ESPN.com's usual video and advertisement orgasm. I blame the lingering ghost of Kenny Mayne's smugness for that, by the way.

Anyway...uhh...Go Warriors!

UPDATE: GOD DAMNIT!.

PLAYOFFS !?!

I rarely write anything about sports...in fact I never do...nor do I ever really think about sports, especially when it comes to the million-dollar baby league known as the NBA. But, I found 8-seed Golden State's 4-2 series upset over the 1-seed Mavericks, a first in NBA history, compelling enough to root for the Warriors and watch about three quarters and half of overtime during last night's game, even though it means not seeing any Mark Cuban highlights for the next 9 months.

Maybe I like Golden State because they don't have any big names and therefore no expectations nor outrageous egos, or maybe I just like rooting for the underdog. I saw Baron Davis do the Five Good Minutes segment on PTI last week and he convinced me that they're the team to root for. Also, every time I hear Stephen Jackson's name uttered by the announcers I giggle because that Ball State sportscaster somehow managed to say "Stephen Jackson's Stephen" during his historically awful segment.

Watching them play last night was actually entertaining. They have the energy of a Final Four college team and their ability to pass the ball (entertainingly) has clearly made a difference in the playoffs. I'm not too knowledgeable about basketball strategies, but on offence their penetration near the board was lacking, and they were often spread way to far across the court with random picks thrown here and there, which probably resulted in the poor penetration. I think the wild passing may have confused the Jazz but not enough obviously.

The real letdown came when Mickael Pietrus missed two free throws with like 20 seconds left that would've won the game for the Warriors. After that the Jazz took over and won in OT convincingly. Oh well.

And for my own entertainment, here's Jim Mora yelling about the "PLAYOFFS!?!"