strong as a can

last nite i saw what i have to believe to be the longest "bottom line" in the history of espn. those nba trades just kept coming up, with big name after big name (plus zendon hamilton got traded for something other than a bag of weed and an SAT prep book). after taking it all in, i realized that if anyone still cared about the eastern conference (or the nba at all for that matter), it was an exciting day. but i also realized that many of the trades involved a surly, former all-star who wore out their welcome at yet another stop. look at some of the guys traded yesterday: antoine walker (back to the celts???), big dawg robinson, jamal mashburn, vin baker, keith van wilder. when you decide you want to trade for one of these guys, are you really thinking these guys are what your team is missing? also, how are the 6ers gonna find PT for mashburn, webber, AND rodney rodgers?

now over in spring training, now that the canseco hoopla has died down (at least a little) one of the biggest stories is the back and forth between multiple red sox and a-rod. really, i just don't understand this. he's been labeled by the likes of schilling, trot, and millar (the last two of which i respect) as "not a yankee" and "a dead beat dad" (arod's only child is still an infant). now all of this can't be related to arod's comments over the winter saying he was proud of his offseason regiment, can it? why are the red sox so chippy all of a sudden? success gone to their head? behind the scenes arod drama? i don't have the answer, but really i guess i don't care. it's sparking the rivalry up again, and setting the tone for the big unit to dominate schilling in the opener and for arod to hit roughly 104 homers this year. so red sox, my message for you is clear: keep talking. please.

oh yeah. and sammy sosa looks retarded in that orange o's uni.

answer:
winnie cooper.

question:
(a) who should be an addition to next season's surreal life?
(b) who defined the "girl next door" image for all males now in their mid-20's?
(c) who "was the only undergraduate invited to speak at Rutgers University's biannual Statistical Mechanics conference a few years back"?
(d) all of the above

correct answer: (d).
check it out: winnie cooper's a math whiz. click on the mathematics section and enjoy yourself. through math. pervert. (NOTE: this link is safe for work for all but math geeks like myself. who may or may not have to walk around the office with a textbook in front of our crotches)

not including today, i have 12 work days left. fuck. yeah.

anyway, nina went up to chicago last weekend to celebrate her thesis defense being over. i'm sure the windy city is a good time regardless, but throw in 2 cups of LG and a dash of ahren and you are guaranteed a great time.

we stayed at the (mama) cass hotel, which was pretty much one of those places people get hacked into tiny pieces. but it was cheap and cleaner than SAE (the cass hotel did NOT have a pair of boxer shorts shoved into the hole where a toilet should be) so we didn't give a hoot, especially after the last 5 miles of the trip took an hour.

friday was pretty uneventful, since after 3 beers (read: instant sleeping pill) and dinner we went back to the hotel to wait for LG's delayed flight. somehow we convinced ourselves that taking a nap until she arrived was a reasonable idea. shockingly, we didn't go out that nite.

at least we were energized for the rest of the weekend. nina and i haven't really spent any time in a city since july '03 in new york (dayton and cinncinnati can hardly be considered more than towns) and we were craving some urban-ness. highlights include:

culture
we passed on the aquarium and it's 2 hour wait (what was on display this weekend, the jaguar shark?), briefly stopped at the museum of natural history, and then met up with the lemmer and his friend becca at the art museum. one of my favorite things to do at an art museum is make up captions for the people in the paintings. and it always helps if the word "crotch" is somehow included in the caption. ahhhh, high society.

drinking
saturday we went to the hancock building which has a bar on the 96th floor. i think (and really really hope) it was called "top of the cock". it was definitely great and definitely cost ~$200 for 15 drinks. we followed that up with some bar hopping. at said bars i got to:
(1) drink a lot and thus have one of those "how many times did i go to an atm yesterday?!" and "oh shit, how much is left in my wallet?!" sunday mornings
(2) see the nash-stoudamire head alley oop (cool),
(3) dominate the juke box (really cool),
(4) walk from the last bar we were at to get a hot pastrami sandwich and then walk back (takes cool to a whole 'nother level, sort of like having a wallet that says "bad ass muthafucker" on it). you just can't do these things where we live.

conversation
there's the good conversation we had (like me pushing LG to quit her job in order to blog more), and then there's great conversation. example:
girl: hi i'm asdlkfjas (actually: becky)
me: hi i'm ethan. so you're LG's friend's cousin?
girl: yeah. wait what was your name again?
me: ethan.
girl: do you know my name?
me: nope. maybe it starts with an a.
girl: close. try again.
me: allison?
girl: close. try again.
me: really - i have no fucking idea.
girl: cmon. try again.
me: (looking around for some help) um, i'll be at the juke box.

shopping
sunday's theme: "i have a nice little [sunday] planned. you know, bed, bath and beyond, maybe home depot. i - i don't know if there'll be time!" since we have to almost entirely furnish the house we move in to next month, we visited the ikea (which was exquisite) and bought a shitload of stuff. we were there for roughly 4 hours and i hit my limit in the checkout line. at least this allowed me to have a vivid daydream about smashing some older lady's kneecap with a bracketless kitchen shelf.

cuisine
i ate eel and dim sum (both firsts). plus there were swedish meatballs at ikea and the aforementioned pastrami. and if that's not enough, well, eat a dick.

random task, at it again. seriously, a shoe has to be one of the best objects to throw at a public speaker. i'd say the list looks something like this:

(1) a small child
(2) a bag of poop
(3) a flaming bag of poop
(4) a shoe
(5) a tomato (preferrably rotting)

i just saw the following headline on cnn:

"u.s. sends stern message to syria"

lord knows i'm not a big fan of capitalizing things, but how much more awesome (read: awesomer) would this make it:

"u.s. sends Stern message to syria"

then you'd click on the link and read something like:
today the u.s. ambassador to syria asked the nation's diplomat to "turn around and show me that ass." the ambassador continued, "wow, you've got a great ass. come over here. let me touch that ass." the ambassador's aides were seen, slovenly dressed, guffawing in the corner. a syrian reporter covering the event was quoted as saying the aides were "really ugly. and fat." later, a guest of the u.s. ambassador, known simply as Drunk Midget, was seen urinating on and slapping the behind of the syrian diplomat, who later admitted to being disgusted but also secretly flattered by the Stern message.

look! comments over to the left in the reading/listening section! sure, i can't make them be underlined or in orange, but cut me some slack. it's about baby steps around here. and i'm sailing! i sail! i'm sailing!

ok sports fans. i know it's been a while, so i'm a little rusty.

the jose canseco book. this thing doesn't exactly have pulitzer written all over it (or within a 62 mile radius) but cmon. it's going to be an instant classic. i've read comparisons to ball four, which is a favorite of mine, and we all know comparing bouton to canseco is like comparing "the family guy" to "two and a half men". but an expose is an expose, and i don't care that i have to sift through to find the "truth." i don't think canseco is smart enough to completely fabricate anything, so while there might be some inaccurracies i (will) take them simply as exaggerations. and you just know the unintentional humor will be off the charts. i'm looking forward to at least 3 "and this one time, in spring training, me and carney lansford took these 8 strippers to red lobster" stories. man, i can't wait to read this thing. unfortunately, since our the last new release our local library stocked was robinson crusoe, i think i'm going to have to fork over the $25 at our local fox books. F-O-X.

the weird thing about this is how tony larussa is defending big mac. there's a reason big mac left when he did, and an even bigger reason why he all but disappeared off the map. mac saw the writing on the wall and knew a shit storm was a-brewin'. sure i remember that mcgwire is a nice guy. but i sure as heck-fire remember that he began his career as a strong but trim man (much like giambi and bonds) and ballooned to atlas size in the twilight of his career, and that his body began to break down a bit prematurely. science is not in your corner mark. so i have no idea why a smart guy like larussa is trying to defend him when all signs point to "user".

over on the basketball front, college hoops is entering it's best 6 week period of the year. like 5 nights a week espn is showing ranked teams duke it out, with back to back games no less. it's awesome. this is exactly why i like college more than the pros. upsets are a daily occurrence and the arenas are super charged, with thousands of fans ready to pour onto the court at the final buzzer (yes, im opposed to fnas on the court, but you have to admit it does make for a good atmosphere). last nite's texas tech-kansas game was just amazing and it should be no suprise that it took bobby knight just a few seasons to turn that program around. and you damn well know their graduation rate has improved. bobby knight rules.

in general i really like their announcers: dicky v, jay bilas, billy packer, etc. but do they really feel like a team of digger phelps and mike "he rape me" jarvis make for a good on screen duo? i can deal with phelps. and while i think jarvis is a good coach, he is just not a good public speaker and often forgets stats or players names (which seems like a rather important factor in being a tv analyst). why is rick majerus not up in there? it'd be awesome - when they pan the camera to him he can have pieces of salami stuck to his sweater and be surrounded by empty red bulls.

one more thing: pitchers and catchers, baby. pitchers and catchers.

on saturday nite we had drinks at the local irish pub for our friend john's birthday. it's a great place with a bit of an older crowd. sometimes this is weird, like when the 50 year old in the cheverlet budweiser jacket starts screaming "yeah! girls gone wild!" every minute or so. but sometimes this is awesome, like when this 80 year old named bill starts dancing, clapping, or bouncing from table to table spending time with all the patrons. i'd imagine bill's motto is something along the lines of "i eat bacon for breakfast, bacon for lunch, i drink my dinner, and i've out lived em all!" the guy's a fucking stallion.

there's always live music on the weekends, usually an irish band. i don't know what their name was, but the band this week (much like the nba used to be) was faaannntastic. the singer looked like a cooler version of ryan seacrest, and he let some guy from the crowd come up to sing. more importantly, though, they had a fiddler (yes, that's right, a fiddler), who sported a mullet, goatee AND a huge hoop earring. he was like the 1983 version of a pirate, plus he jumped around a lot while simultaneously smoking and rocking out on that fiddle. he had bill starting chants and dancing as much as the old timer could possibly handle. good times.

so for the second weekend in a row we saw excellent live music. unfortunately, also for the second weekend in a row, i had restroom issues. the place was completely crowded so heading to the pisser was a bit of a challenge. you pretty much had to use swim moves, spin moves, bull rushes - anything in your arsenal - to get to the john. on one trip i saw about 6 inches of space a few feet in front of me and went for it. but no sooner had i made a break for it than i heard a rather large man on my left say to his friend "watch this!". across the gap on my right was a rather large woman facing the bar, and evidently the big guy thought it would be white hot to back up and rub his ass on her ass. "fuck!" i thought, as i saw the wheels of this bump-rumping start to turn. i tried to put the kabash on my move, but i had already hit the A button and my bullrush couldn't be stopped. i quickly realized i had 3 options:
(a) jump up and do one of those martial arts double kicks, one for each ass,
(b) blow my trusty whistle, or
(c) mumble "bonzai" as i imagine doing (1), but simply brace for impact, grimace, and protect my beverage.

since i forgot my whistle and i'm not the guy in the transporter, i had to go with option c. and while i didn't spill any whiskey, it still took a while to get over being an innoncent victim in a drive-by bump-rumping (especially since the dude didn't seem to care/realize that he was wiggling his bottom into my hip and not some broad's ass).

so let that be a lesson to you: eat bacon as much as possible, learn to play the fiddle, don't wear cheverlet beer jackets, and always carry a whistle.

an onside kick with just under 2 minutes left, 2 timeouts left, and just down by 3?

what are the odds of succeeding with an onside kick? 1 in 5? so andy reid basically told his defense "i think there's less than a 1/5th chance that you can stop 3 corey dillon runs into the line in the most important defensive series of your life." that, folks, is not how you win championships. how can you possibly show such a complete lack of confidence in your defense, especially when it is so good? that was just astounding, and on top of that there were people at the party we were at defending the onside kick. i just about ate my plastic cup.

i love that the eagles d stopped the pats after the kick, pretty much a complete smack in the face to reid's god-awful decision. at least philly had honorary guest herm edwards in charge of clock management for that last series.

but overall i was satisfied. it was a good game. a tip of the cap goes to the pats and (gulp) t.o. yeah, i'm am owens hater, but what he did was at least 3 times more impressive than the whole schilling thing. granted, his cortisone/morphine/horse painkiller shots probably still haven't worn off, but cmon. he was unbelievable, and if he didn't play the eagles would've gotten torched.

aside from the game, i'm sure the FCC is happy that FOX aired the most tame half-time show possible (at least bloodsport was on TNT during that 30 minutes) and that all the commercials were repeats by the second quarter. the commercials were pretty weak, with the exception of the monkeys and the "don't judge too quickly" bits. at least there was the token "i'll laugh at every commercial" guy at the party, which made all the crappy ads a little bit better (remind me againt why quizno's decided to replace the kick ass, insane, "we have a pepper bar!" singing rodents with that talking baby?).

and now, let the deluge of articles comparing the current pats and the '96-'00 yanks begin.

oh, what's that? the super bowl is this weekend?

yeah, i couldn't give two shits. i want to, i really do. but just like i said it would, that fucking two week break ruined any excitement i had. all the networks struggle to stretch out coverage so by this point they're arguing about the potential effect of the backup long snapper's hangnail. plus reading the sports guy's accounts from jacksonville make it sound horrible down there, and the networks are so scared of the FCC that any commercial that includes both a beer and a female will most likely be censored.

anyway, i predict 27-17 pats. i just want it to be a close game, but more than that i want t.o. to score a td just when the eagles are seeming to take the game over, and then, while putting on a belicheck-esque headband and sweatshirt for a rehearsed celebration, get george teague-d by the entire pats defensive line, re-spraining that ankle and knocking him out of the game. this completely shifts the momentum to the pats and t.o. has to hear "if only you didn't do that dance, you would have won the super bowl!" comments for years to come.

i also predict one led zeppelin song and one moby song to be featured in commercials.

i don't know what you all got to do last nite, but i really hope you were watching espn2 from 9-11pm.

for the first time ever, espn aired a live division III basketball game during primetime. and it's not like it was the D3 finals or anything. nope, the acclaimed sports network was showing grinell college vs. beloit. and i had more fun watching that game than i did seeing the duke-wake game on wednesday.

see, grinell plays a little differently than everybody else. they've averaged over 100 points a game every season for the last 11 years. they make over 200 substitutions a game and take over 100 shots. their motto is "controlled chaos". at least that's what i think the announcer said, but i couldn't hear over my own hooting and hollering. at one point nina came in the bedroom and said "you may have had too many beers. i can hear you talking to yourself from downstairs."

i couldn't help it. seeing a team run just a completely unorthodox system was like watching curb your enthusiasm for the first time. it instantly becomes one of your favorites. let me detail some other facts of their system:
-the coach sends 5 subs in at a time, every 35 seconds. the average line shift lasts about 55 seconds.
-they run a full court press the entire game.
-they routinely give up wide open layups, and often pass up layups to kick out for a three (their goal is to take over 50 3's a game).
-they want to shoot withing 12 seconds of getting the ball.
-they want 2/3's of their rebounds to be on the offensive glass.
-they aim to force 30 more turnovers than they commit.
-by playing such a fast paced game and using like 15-20 players (their bench looked like a line at the DMV), they simply wear down their opponents. beloit was only using like 7-8 guys and having to deal with a fast break and/or press the entire game.

apparently when they reach all of these goals, their record is 79-3. sadly, after last nite, it's now 79-4. this is because they shot like 25% from the floor, or something pathetic like that. still, after missing roughly 3/4's of their shots they lost by only 1 to a team that had "better"/more typical players. it was quite a spectacle.

the only slightly disappointing thing in this game was that grinell didn't seem to have any good shooters, and i don't say that because they shot horribly during the one game i saw. i say that because (a) almost every grinell player that stepped to the FT line was shooting in the 60% range, which is terrible, (b) most had weird form on their shot, and (c) none of them seemd to have a very quick release (i.e. they passed up a lot of 3's where they had a little room but pump faked and passed instead). probably (c) was the most surprising for a team whose goal is to shoot within 12 seconds, but i could see the kids being pretty friggin nervous about playing on national tv and not wanted to get rejected.

sure the system couldn't work at a higher level of play, but that's the point: it works for them so why should they change (i think they're 18-7 this year)? the same could be said about the princeton offense (that it couldn't work in the nba) but it works at the level it's being utilized in so why not use it?

anyway, i thought it was awesome. and even if you didn't, well, at least you got to see skinny, short white kids chest bump each other.

and if you're interested, the coach wrote a book about it. i'm definitely adding that to my queue.

so i haven't been posting very much of late, and the reason for this is work. i don't mean this as a complaint - in fact, i mean it as the opposite. for the past 6 weeks or so i have been working on a project with (1) a fixed upcoming deadline, and (2) practical application. i mention this because it is the first project i've worked on in my entire 20 months here that fits this criteria. also, the work is interesting and i have a good amount of responsibility. i'd go as far as saying this is as close to "enjoying" work as i have since joining this company. my days at the office go pretty fast and i get to work (mostly) with people that are at least somewhat fun to work with (i.e are competent, like quoting super troopers and cursing wildly, etc). this project will be ending just about the time we are moving so i feel pretty lucky to be leaving with a good taste in my mouth, like something along the lines of hostess apple spice cupcakes (surprisingly good - check out your local vending machine. then again, our machine hasn't been re-stocked since 1993 so the "spice" may have just been the cream fermenting).

the end of this job leads to the inevitable start of another. since we're obviously not out in NM yet, i have been applying to various companies out there via their national resume databases aka the "We'll Keep Your Resume on File for 2 Years, But There's No Chance Anyone Will Be Looking At It" databases. seriously, i have been applying for jobs this way for 3-4 years and not once have i been contacted. sure, i wasn't perfectly qualified for all the positions i applied for (like Himalayan Sherpa, or Welder on American Chopper) but still. i'm convinced i'm just "sending" my resume to some black hole where my application to job #41235788 will never be seen by human eyes.

and in the past week i have received 2 indications that my theory holds water (or at least scotch and soda). turns out nina and i indirectly know people at two of the companies i have been repeatedly applying to. within 24 hours of passing my resume off to these direct contacts, i had 2 interviews set up. same resume, same companies. the whole thing seems very incestuous if you ask me. whatever. long live [insert that word that means you hire friends/family. you know, like andrew jackson's kitchen cabinet. or omar minaya's mets.].