Thursday, May 26, 2005

An addendum to Ryan's post dated May 26, 2005 regarding not liking LA sports teams and LA sportscasters. He talked about baseball. And now I will proceed with basketball.

My three points of grievance:
1) Laker sportscasters. At the beginning of the year, there was all this talk about the Kobe Bryant/Shaq split and guessing as to whether the Lakers would be able to go far in the playoffs without Shaq. How far will they go in the playoffs? Will they be able to win a championship? Blah blah blah. Another case of sportscasters not knowing what they're talking about.

2) Laker fans. Or rather, as they now like to called, Shaq fans. Apparently, all those Laker fans from years previous were never really Laker fans at all. If you ask most former Laker fans how they feel about the Lakers they'll just say something along the lines of "Well, I'm really a Shaq fan. I never really liked Kobe. And well, you know with everything that happened with Kobe..." Blah blah blah. Just a few years prior when the Lakers won the whole thing, the Laker fans were extolling the wonderful virtues of Kobe's game and how much potential he has to become the next coming of Michael Jordan. And of course it's purely coincidental that the Heat, Shaq's new employer is in the conference championship. And what are the Shaq fans doing? Well, cheering the Heat on of course.

3) The Laker flags. During the years of glory, there were these stupid little car flags that would clip onto a car window. These things were everywhere. Flapping here and there. Creating possible blind spots. And just flat out annoying to this Warrior fan who hasn't seeing anything resembling "glory years" since the Run TMC years. And even then, they didn't make it deep into the playoffs. Lack of defense probably had something to do with it. Now? I don't think I've seen a single flag flying in my entire time here in LA. The bandwagon is looking mighty lonely right now.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

The Disabled List

My Fuller fantasy baseball team, after a few very good weeks, is starting to fall apart. The injury bug somehow has hit my team in full force. 5 guys officially on the Yahoo! disabled list: Scott Rolen, Francisco Rodriguez, Mike Hampton, Brandon Lyon, and Kerry Wood. 1 guy who is not yet registered as being disabled according to Yahoo!: Odalis Perez. And two guys who are listed as day to day: Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones. That's 8 out of my 21 roster spots.

Oh yeah, and I'm a tad disabled right now. I think I might have caught a cold when I came up to NorCal for Andy's bachelor's party. Got pelted with paintballs, put down a lot of cash, and caught a cold. I feel like the kid who gets beaten up for his lunch money. Congratulations Andy.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Jesus complex

Here's one guy who literally has a Jesus complex. He may be the first guy I've heard of whose "respect and love for Jesus Christ" made him change his name to Jesus Christ. Nevermind the fact that Jesus' last name wasn't Christ, but "of Nazareth" or possibly "son of Mary" or "son of Joseph." Of course, the use of his title "Christ" does have a certain ring to it when combined with his first name. Jesus Christ sounds so much smoother than Jesus D'Nazareth, Jesus Maryson, or Jesus Josephson. Actually, that last one, Jesus Josephson sounds like it could be the name for a competitor on the World's Strongest Man competition. I can hear it now. "On the leader board is Olaf Olafsson, followed by Oleg Olegsson, and in third is Jesus Josephson."

Thursday, May 05, 2005

The off-season

I realize that I've left the BCS rankings up at the same week for months on end now. Truth be told, I haven't been reading people's blogs. I'm a horrible horrible blog ranker. I suppose I could further extrapolate and say that I'm a horrible horrible friend as well. I guess I don't care enough about other people's lives. Well except for Cal and Danny because I find their blogs informative, witty, and fun to read... and Alinna, well, do I really need to explain myself here?

The regular season
Baseball season is back and so is fantasy baseball. I'm currently fielding two teams and once again, I'm finding that I feel like I'm rooting for everybody. The great thing about having only one fantasy team is that you know who to root for. You don't own that many players and so, very rarely is there a situation where there is a conflict of interest. Do you want the strikeout for your pitcher? Or do you want the home run for your batter? Usually you settle for some scenario that's a win-win but incredibly unlikely. Example: Have the batter before your man get on base on an error so that your man can hit a double, get an RBI, but not have it charged to your pitcher's ERA. I love baseball.

The playoffs
I haven't been following the basketball playoffs as closely as I would like. But last night's Bulls-Wizards game was awesome. What was even more awesome was watching the highlights of it on SportsCenter while tipping back on some $7-for-an-18-pack-cheaper-than-water San Lucas with Ben. Gotta love El Salvador. As an aside, it's quite refreshing to drive around town without seeing every other car with a stupid Lakers flag flapping around. Guess most of the "die-hard Laker fans" just aren't as die-hard when they don't make it into the playoffs. Welcome to Warrior-land.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

CBEST

I just got an email from the CBEST people with the subject header "Your CBEST unofficial scores." To get you all up to date, I took the CBEST back in early April so that I have the option of subbing from time to time for money. I didn't bother studying for the test because I had heard from multiple people including my mom that it's ridiculously easy. So much for high standards for our educators. As she put it, "The CBEST was way easier than than the TOEFL."

And now they've sent me my unofficial scores... whatever that means. Actually, that's not completely true. About a week ago, the CBEST people sent me an email by the same heading. In the earlier email, they sent me my scores for my "Reading section" and "Math section" and promptly told me that "A total CBEST score of 123 is required for passing status." I quickly scroll back up to see my scores for reading and math and add them up only to find that I scored 121. After a few minutes of self-pity and telling myself that I was stupid not only for underestimating the difficulty of the test but also for failing a test that was widely touted as being "ridiculously easy," I decided that I was going to take the secret of my failing the CBEST to my grave.

That is, until I got my second "Your CBEST unofficial scores" email. Apparently, I had forgotten that there are three sections to the test. Reading, math, and writing. The second email had my writing score as well. Have no fear, I didn't score a 1 on my writing section. Yes, my friends, I have conquered the CBEST. Against insurmountable odds, I passed. Now I'm only stupid for forgetting that there was a writing section. As my team will attest, my short term memory is horrendous.