YouTube Fri...Umm I Mean Thursday: Celebrities Taking Part In Their Own Twitter Abuse On Jimmy Kimmel Live

It’s “government Friday” again, which means that I’m far too lazy to come up with a semi-original thought today. What that usually leads to is me re-posting something from somewhere else that I found to be awesome…it’s kind of like stealing, but it’s also a free plug for whatever I’m posting, so I guess it kind of cancels out in the end.

Both of today's videos are courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live, where Jimmy gets famous people to read not-so-nice tweets from random anonymous Internet trolls (he says from his blog). The 1st clip is from the 1st time Kimmel worked this bit into his monologue back in May, and the 2nd clip is last night's rendition.

Nats-Mets: Making Something Out Of Nothing

It’s been so long since I’ve rooted for a legitimate 1st place baseball team (the O’s teams that have been atop the AL East in April and May only to finish 20 games under 0.500 the past several years don’t count) that it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be. Baseball is a quirky sport, where the better team doesn’t always win day in and day out. In fact, a crappy team has a pretty good shot at beating a great team on any given night, and the best teams in the majors usually win only about 60% of their games (that would be considered slightly better than mediocre in basketball and football).

But the better baseball teams still usually prove themselves out by the end of the season, which might require the ability to dig themselves out of some of the games that are mentioned above. Take this year’s Washington Nationals and their game last night in New York…the Nats had 2 runs on only 4 hits through 9 innings last night. In the 1st inning, Steve Lombardozzi reached on an infield single, and Bryce Harper brought him home with a 2-run blast to center. Those were the 1st 2 batters of the game...Danny Espinosa had a 2 out single later that inning, which means the Mets held Washington to 1 hit over the course of the next 8 innings. Yikes…

The top of the 10th started almost as inauspiciously. Roger Bernadina led off with a single, but it looked like it would be wasted by an ugly at bat by catcher Sandy Leon. Trying to move the runner to 2nd, Leon pitifully bunted 2 pitches foul, then weakly grounded the ball back to the pitcher. Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada bobbled the exchange at 2nd though, and everyone was safe. It still looked like the Nats would try to spoil their own good fortune with another s***ty bunt attempt, this time by Mark DeRosa, who’s bunt went straight back to the pitcher allowing for a force play at 3rd.

However, the normally light hitting Lombardozzi singled again to load the bases…and the kid followed him to deliver the go-ahead RBI single. Then, after not being able to hit their way out of a paper bag for most of the night, the flood gates suddenly opened. Ryan Zimmerman rocketed a bases-clearing double, and Michael Morse brought Zimmerman home with a beer league softball-esque missile beyond the centerfield wall.

It was a fun inning to watch given the previous 8. The Nats looked inept, got a stroke of good luck, looked as if they would squander their luck with more ineptitude, and then had their 3 biggest bats wake up all of the sudden. It was like they were finally able to get out of their own way long enough to let their talent take over…but then again, that’s what happens with a 1st place team I suppose.

Taking A Trip Down Dawson's Creek

Ahhh, summertime…when us sports fans shift our attention to NBA free agency, fantasy football pre-draft analysis, and (if all else fails) baseball. Similar to the sports front, primetime TV can be slim pickings when it comes to the dog days of summer. There are some hidden gems out there, but for the most part the summer months are none too kind to the ol’ DVR queue. Your best option is probably to turn to Netflix in this case, which can be dangerous in its own right…if you’re not careful, your wife will make you sit through old episodes of Dawson’s Creek.

If you guys only knew then what you know now.

Having made the mistake of telling Krissy that I never really watched it during its run on the WB (now the CW), she thought it would be a good idea to binge-watch our way through all 6 seasons. In all actuality, this has its pluses and minuses. On the 1 hand, if you don’t like the particular show (even if you do, really), binge-watching is like repeatedly bludgeoning yourself in the head with a hammer. On the other hand, you can burn through several seasons in the span of only a couple weeks, allowing you to forget the experience almost as quickly as it came into your life in the 1st place.

Additionally, having followed the show religiously during its initial run, Krissy had no need or desire to watch every show in its entirety. We watched just about all of seasons 1 and 2, mostly due to my “anal-ness,” I will admit. Around the beginning of season 3, I stopped caring so much, and let Krissy pick and choose the episodes of her liking. These usually involved some aspect of the Joey-Pacey love angle, which was by far her favorite aspect of Dawson’s Creek. While I wasn’t loving the show, I had still found myself somewhat invested though, and our skipping around left me asking, “Why are they doing that?” or, “What are they talking about?” multiple times per episode. Common sense usually overruled my anal-ness though, and I was able to let it go. By season 4, I didn’t care at all anymore, and I think we watched all of 3 episodes combined from seasons 5 and 6. For that reason alone, it was a relatively painless couple of weeks.

No Joey-Pacey love scenes were skipped over in the making of this blog.

Watching Dawson’s Creek now I couldn’t help but think how dated the show seems. It’s been less than a decade since it went off the air, but to say it didn’t age well is an understatement. Most, if not all, of the cockamamie schemes the teens from Capeside, MA, get into would be solved with cell phones now, and the amount of dudes wearing the plaid button-down/cargo shorts/Airwalks combo is remarkable. The other offputting thing about the show is that all the characters are a little too wordy and verbose for their own good…although I should probably steer clear of that argument given my ability to turn a 2 sentence blurb into an epic rant. Even amongst teen melodramas though, Dawson’s Creek makes you wonder how it stayed on the air for 6 years…but then you realize that the niche audience that is adolescent girls can keep a show alive for a long time…just look at One Tree Hill (9 seasons) as exhibit A.

The Rain

I can’t stand the rain against my window…

It’s only a 5 minute drive from our apartment to my office, but on this drizzly morning it was enough time for Missy Elliott’s “The Rain” to pop into my head. Even with the rain connotation, it’s such a random song to enter my consciousness…and it wasn’t the 1st time that’s happened either. The rhythm, melody, and lyrics are just so goofy though: beep, beep, who got the keys to my jeep? Vroom…

For nostalgia’s sake, the 1st thing I did this morning when I got to my desk was look up the music video on YouTube. It was a reminder of just how much I miss Misdemeanor…not so much for her music, which for my taste was just a’ight.

Her music videos were pretty legendary though in my opinion. They were creative, offbeat, and weirdly entertaining. More than that, they were completely different than anything else from that time period (or ever really). The images forever burned onto my brain for the video for “The Rain” are the scenes where she’s wearing something that looks to be part sumo suit, part inflated garbage bag while dancing in front of a funhouse camera lens…looking like 1 of those goofy inflatable mascots that every sports team has now.

Awwwww, those guys are so hype!

For s***s and giggles, I also looked up the album that I 1st heard “The Rain” on: a mix album called Party Over Here 98. To say it wasn’t something you would find in most people’s music catalogue is a huge understatement. If I recall correctly, it was the 2nd or 3rd CD I ever bought as a kid. At 1st glance, it seems like a dubious choice, but I think when skimming through the CD collection at Best Buy it was the only hip-hop album I could find that didn’t have a “parental advisory” label on it…a big plus for a 13 year old kid who’s Mom was waiting for him in the checkout line.

The s***.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a terrible choice…yes, all the songs were clean (which for some reason was always a bummer…like hearing all the “f***s” and “s***s somehow made it better), but the track list included Missy’s “The Rain,” Mark Morrison’s “Return Of The Mack,” Blackstreet’s all-time great “No Diggity,” and Busta Rhyme’s “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.” (Everyone has a favorite rapper from when they were growing up...Busta was who I latched onto as my guy.)

So while I miss Missy, I have to say I disagree with her sentiment about the rain…it’s not so bad after all.

A Mixed Bag Of Sorts: Hopsin 5 And Streetballers

Just a couple of quick-hitters today…came across an interesting song the other day…well, a music video actually. I think the song’s called “Ill Mind of Hopsin 5.” (I know, big reach considering that’s the title of the video.) The video itself is a little ehhh, I don’t love the guy’s voice, he is a little too preachy for me, and for some reason Hopsin looks like the hip-hop version of the black dude from “Community.” Those sound like a lot of reasons not to watch the clip, but I found the lyrics smart and interesting none of the less. Give it a shot.

Fun bad movie to watch of the week: Streetballers. Why is it that all of these “good” bad movies that I bring up are sports movies? I guess it’s pretty easy to build a story with sports as a backdrop…anyway, there were actually parts of the movie that were not terrible. The storyline is better than you’d expect, the movie is shot in an interesting (almost music video-ish) sort of way, and the actual basketball scenes are decent (for a s***ty movie at least). The acting is just so bad though…so, so bad. It’s not hard to figure out why. After scrolling through the list of cast members, you’ll see few (if any) other credits from any other film work. One thing that killed the movie for me was the continual use of this ghost neighborhood kid, and our 1st lead, John, constantly speaking to him like a crazy person. It would have been ok if he showed up like twice, but after the eighth ghost kid scene you wish John would get outed by his girlfriend and admitted to a mental hospital…end of movie. Also, there are 2 sex scenes and 1 other semi-sex scene that are so porno-ish and out of place that it’s comical.

Here we go again.

The 1 other interesting tidbit is that the other lead character, Jacob, is played by a dude that actual played ball at Missouri and got some run playing professionally overseas (according to his Wikipedia page at least)…so at least there’s that. Anyway, if you find yourself scrolling through Netflix, and you can’t seem to locate anything decent to watch that you haven’t already seen, give Streetballers a look…you will at least get a couple of laughs out of the sex scene dialogue if nothing else.

McKinney would probably get a lot of s*** from his German teammates if they ever saw this movie...good thing they probably don't even know it exists.

ESPN Cliffnotes, 7/18/2012

I can’t think of a clever name for what I’m about to do, but I’m basically going to go through all the stories I read on ESPN.com this morning that I had some kind of reaction to. Think of it as my ESPN cliffnotes or something. Here…we…go!

I had a 7 game winning streak going in Streak for Cash up until yesterday. Whenever I build a streak past 5 in a row, I always talk myself into somehow having a shot at winning that month’s prize…and then for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try to pick some UEFA Champions League qualifying match between 2 teams that I had never heard of before. As the kids say, f*** my life.

Mike Miller is apparently leaning towards rehabbing his back and returning to the Miami Heat next year instead of having surgery and retiring. Miller, Shane Battier, and James Jones will all likely not be expected to carry the respective loads that they had last year with the additions of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, but since they didn’t acquire a big man of any consequence it looks like the Heat are fully intent on employing the strategy of spreading the floor with shooters so LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh have more room to do their thing.

The Washington Wizards completed the trifecta of cleaning out their knucklehead closet yesterday in amnestying Andray Blatche. (The Wiz were able to rid themselves of Nick Young and Javale McGee through trades earlier this year.) When you consider Washington unloaded Gilbert Arenas and Rashard Lewis in the recent past as well, it makes you wonder how GM Ernie Grunfeld still can hold a job when he made so many terrible personnel decisions to begin with.

In a little beltway baseball recap, the seasons of the Nationals and the Orioles continue to go in opposite directions. Washington beat the Mets in walk-off fashion last night to improve their NL East lead to 3.5 games, as they continue to have the best record in the National League. The O’s on the other hand continued their annual slide, losing again to the Twins. Baltimore has lost 5 of 6 since the All-Star break, which finally allowed Tampa Bay to overtake them for 2nd place in the division.

In the last bit of DC sports news (as if there was any doubt that he would eventually sign), RG3 inked his rookie deal with the Washington Redskins today. Now, can we get our $36 mil in cap space that you cheated us out of back sometime, Mr. Goodell?

I don’t know who could have possibly foreseen this (*cough*), but the LA Lakers have positioned themselves back into the trade picture for Dwight Howard. Like the potential deal(s) with the Nets, it seems like the logistics of this trade are going to be a lot more complicated than simply moving Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum. Because of that, third party teams are going to most likely have to be brought in to make any deal work, and that makes any move tougher to complete, but LA seemed like the most logical D-12 destination from the start…even if a trade doesn’t get done, that still seems like the most likely landing spot for Howard once the dust settles.

No Sleep Till Brooklyn: The Problem With The Nets

Interesting read on Grantland today arguing that the Brooklyn Nets have utterly failed in building their roster for the upcoming season. Even though I classified the Nets’ offseason as a success in a post last week, I am inclined to agree with that sentiment. This may seem asinine on every level, but hear my out for a second…on paper, Brooklyn did everything right short of landing Dwight Howard. This might seem like a rather substantial caveat, but once it was clear that the Howard deal was dead (for now) you could argue the Nets made all the right decisions, retaining both Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries. To get D-12, the Nets would likely have had to part with both Lopez and Humphries as well as young talent MarShon Brooks, a truckload of draft picks, and likely a few other players to boot. On paper (there’s that pesky phrase once again), the Nets appear to have at least 7 legitimate NBA players in those 3 guys, Gerald Wallace, CJ Watson, Deron Williams, and Joe Johnson. How those pieces will actually mesh on the court is another question entirely.

Without Howard, the Nets are now basically a team full of "assets."

1 of the things the Grantland column did a great job of pointing out is that teams who are attempting to rebuild always talk about acquiring assets, but over the past few years Brooklyn maybe did this more literally than any basketball team in NBA history. Their roster has been made up of perfectly fine players who no doubt would make another team better by fulfilling a specific need through a trade. This was partially how they got Williams and how they planned on getting Howard. (Johnson was more of a case of another team trying to shed salary to start their own rebuilding era, and the Nets being a willing partner.)

Without Howard, the Nets should be a deeper team in theory. That’s even considering the facts that Wallace is overpaid and Lopez seems to be injury-prone. In terms of actual basketball (even if their skills of some are declining), Brooklyn’s role players should all be serviceable though. The real questions lie in the superstars themselves.

“Superstar,” much like “asset,” is probably a word that gets thrown around too often these days. There’s a generation of ultra-talented players carrying around the superstar tag who have basically done nothing in their careers up to this point. Even prior to this past season Dwyane Wade had been the best player on a team that won a championship, and LeBron James had won 2 MVP’s, been to 2 NBA Finals, and 2 other Conference Finals series. What exactly have any of the players on this list done: Williams, Johnson, Howard, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony? The correct answer is “nothing.”

Williams may have a world of talent, but his teams don't have much to show for it as of right now.

Williams and Paul are numbers 1 and 2 in some order on everyone’s list of the best point guards in the league, but by my count they have only 2 Conference Finals appearances between them. D-Will put up great numbers in 2011-2012, and yet he couldn’t keep them from losing 2 out of every 3 of their games. Does that sound like a superstar to you? And by now most savvy basketball people know that Johnson’s hype is mainly a function of his playing in Phoenix’s run-and-shoot system alongside Steve Nash during his formative years.

I wonder if Johnson would ever admit that he made a mistake leaving the Suns for the money and the chance to be the lead dog.

The most interesting case is Howard, who is capable of putting up monster numbers (23 points, 14 boards, and nearly 2.5 blocks a game 2 seasons ago) despite not really knowing how to score or shoot a free throw. A few years ago, he was only a couple games from an NBA title, but that still seems fishy to me…yes, he was their best player, but I could argue that Orlando’s system and ability to shoot 3’s was an even greater factor in their success…and yet you can’t play that style to begin with without Howard manning the paint.

With Howard, the Nets would have been the ultimate video game team next year. I can envision playing NBA 2K13 slashing and creating with Williams while Johnson is spotting up behind the 3 point line knocking down wide open jumpers, and Howard cleaning up all the misses and protecting the rim at the other end. Even without Howard, Brooklyn still has a lot of “assets,” and all this speculation might turn out looking foolish…either that, or the Nets will merely be the best fantasy basketball team of all time.

The Value Of A Dollar

I actually had a bunch of blog post ideas for today. A beltway baseball breakdown of the Nats and O’s…a discussion about whether Dwight Howard should be hit in the back of the head with a snow shovel or not…the ever-changing roster of the New York Knickerbockers. But I think I’ll stick with the topic that occupied most of Krissy and my Sunday afternoon: house hunting.

I don’t think I have mentioned our housing search on here much yet aside from a couple blurbs regarding how both saving money and being an adult stink. Most of everything I’m about to say will sound ridiculous to anyone over the age of 35, but for a home-buying newbie like myself it’s a little overwhelming.

The financial implications of buying a house can be pretty daunting. Buying a house isn’t like buying a loaf of bread at Shoprite. The 2 biggest purchases I’ve ever made were Krissy’s engagement ring and my pickup. Those required some paperwork and a quick credit check, but really not more than that. A house can be 1 or 2 or 3 orders of magnitude greater in cost than either of those, so it only stands to reason that the act of purchasing 1 should be that much more complicated. I guess at a certain point of wealthiness, this doesn’t matter all that much…if I am a wealthy oil tycoon, I walk up to the proverbial cash register and say, “I want this house with this much land in this kind of neighborhood with this kind of school system,” and bam, it’s done. If only it were that simple for the rest of us.

Along those same lines, I was always taught to put away as much money as you can so you can put a sizable down payment down for your house. The whole 20% down payment is something that was always hammered into my brain, but what I never really realized is that unless you have a crazy amount of bank stashed away it’s more about your month-to-month payments than anything else (cut to all homeowners rolling their eyes and calling me an idiot under their breath). If you have $150,000 in your savings account, good for you…please see the last few sentences in the previous paragraph. Otherwise, your down payment isn’t as important as you might have thought. In fact, putting 20% down on house is great, but it’s not the end all, be all either.

Let’s use a handy-dandy mortgage calculating website to test this out. Just for example, let’s use some nice round numbers and say we buy a house for $300K and put 20% ($60K) down. Assuming I have good credit, am guaranteed an interest rate of 3.75%, and property taxes are 1.25%, that comes out to about $1,425/month. Now, let’s say a few months go by, and we pocket $10K in savings. If we waited and used that towards the down payment with all the same parameters, our mortgage ends up being about $1,375 month. It probably seemed like a lot of work to save an extra 10 G’s, and all it did was chop 50 bucks off the monthly bill…every little bit helps, but f*** that!

Ok, great…now that we understand all that, we can actually go out and look for a house. Wait, we haven’t even done that yet? We were just figuring out what we can and can’t afford? So, does this mean we can’t get that half a million dollar home with the beautiful lawn and the swimming pool in the back just yet? S***…where’s a rich oil tycoon when you need him?

Pre-Weekend Update: Nike Hyperdunks And Blake Griffin

So, remember that post from a couple of weeks ago where I whined about the criminally expensive pricetag on the new Nike Hyperdunks? Yea well, as of this weekend I am the proud owner of my own pair...not the ones equipped with the "Nike +" technology, no. But yes, I have a pair of thanks to a certain shoe fairy that will remain nameless. They didn't have the black and blue ones from the TV ad without the "+" included, so I opted for the Michigan Wolverine/Good Counsel Falcon/Vernon Viking color combo.

As Daniel Tosh would say, "Some sick kicks for the ladies."

Also, Yahoo is reporting that Blake Griffin is leaving USA Basketball camp to go back to LA because of an apparent left knee injury that he sustained during a scrimmage. It doesn't appear to be some kind of catastrophic injury, but it was apparently significant enough to fly BG out of Las Vegas, where the Olympic team presumably has their own doctors there anyway. This was the same knee that Griffin tweaked during the playoffs (and I think the same knee he had surgery on before he played a single game in his NBA career)...cripes. It was just this Tuesday that I did a post exclusively of Griffin dunk videos because I had nothing good to write about. Now, it looks like the Clipper curse (and the curse of people that I get jerseys of) continues. Did I mention that Griffin just signed a mega contract extension of 5 years and $95 mil yesterday? F***!

Winners And Losers Of The NBA Offseason

I don’t ever mean for this to be an NBA blog, but here in the dog days of summer there’s really not a whole lot going on. Baseball? Too early to immerse myself in it yet. Football? The draft and free agency are basically over, so there’s not much to get excited about. Tennis? Volleyball? Not hating on either, but it’s going to take a lot for me to write about ‘em. So, let’s stick with the NBA, which for my money is the most fun “hot stove league” around anyway. With the draft complete and most of the marquee free agency destinations determined, let’s pick out this offseason’s winners and losers.

Winners

Brooklyn Nets…Whether they land Dwight Howard or not, the Nets offseason has to already be classified as a success. They retained Deron Williams, the prize of this year’s free agent class, and traded for the so-overrated-he’s-suddenly-become-underrated Joe Johnson. Jerry Stackhouse’s 1 year deal doesn’t exactly sweeten the pot, and I’m not sold that a theoretical big 3 of Williams-Johnson-Howard would put them in Miami’s class anyway, but Brooklyn suddenly has 1 of the best offensive backcourts in the league. They should be a playoff team next season at the very least.

Indiana Pacers…This might seem odd because Indiana hasn’t done anything particularly flashy, and they used a 1st round draft pick on Miles Plumlee for f***’s sake, but as an up-and-coming team they seem willing to keep their young core intact, inking George Hill to a deal and matching Portland’s offer sheet to Roy Hibbert.

Atlanta Hawks…Even though I don’t see Joe Johnson as the complete dog that a lot of people do (see above), shedding Marvin Williams and Johnson’s onerous contracts has to be considered a plus. Let’s face it, in Johnson, Al Horford, and Josh Smith, the Hawks had a lot of talent, but their ceiling seemed to be a 2nd round playoff team. They needed to start over and rebuild through the draft or free agency…although hometown boy Dwight Howard seems to have no interest in coming to the ATL for whatever reason.

Miami Heat…To the victor goes the spoils. I’m not sure what Rashard Lewis has left in the tank (it’s hard to judge when an old vet gets plopped onto a stinky team like the Wizards), but the addition of Ray Allen would make this a good offseason for the Heat if they did nothing else. Miami lost out on their other big need (a rim protector) when Marcus Camby decided on the Knicks, but don’t be surprised if they make another sneaky signing or trade…either that or they are committed to the small-ball lineup they used for most of the playoffs with LeBron James at the 4.

Ok, that's pretty weird looking.

LA Lakers…Speaking of “sneaky”…I didn’t see the Steve Nash sign-and-trade to the Lakers coming at all. They are still old and slow, but I’m not sleeping on LA swooping in on Dwight Howard just yet. Howard has repeatedly said the only place he wants to be traded to is Brooklyn, but those talks seem to be breaking down, and the Lakers are always up to stuff.

New Orleans Hornets…It looks more and more like Eric Gordon is going to peace-out of New Orleans, and I already documented my skepticism of both Anthony Davis and Austin Rivers turning into stars as pros, but it’s hard to argue against any of the Hornets’ moves on paper. I could be wrong, and their 2 rooks could be the cornerstones of the franchise for the next decade. Combining Davis with Ryan Anderson could make for an interesting frontcourt mix as well. And let’s not forget all the money they got off the books by trading away Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza and by buying out Rashard Lewis.

Losers

Boston Celtics…Yes, they will at least have Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Rajon Rondo. Yes, Jason Terry (and possibly Courtney Lee) will cushion the blow of losing Allen. Yes, Jared Sullinger could very well end up being the steal of this year’s draft, and they presumably have Avery Bradley and Jeff Green returning to action next season as well…but they will still all be a year older, and the psychological blow of losing Allen to their hated rival might just be too much to overcome.

New York Knicks…I’m not ever quite sure what the Knicks are trying to accomplish. They trade for an ancient Jason Kidd, lose their best healthy (sorry, Iman Shumpert) perimeter defender in Landry Fields, piss off Jerermy Lin, and then pick up Marcus Camby…which is smart in 1 way because it blocked Miami from getting him, but it adds 1 more big guy to the mix, which pretty much eliminates your best lineup (pulling a Miami and playing Carmelo Anthony at the 4).

Chicago Bulls…Is it possible that the Bulls’, who had the East’s best record the last 2 seasons and the youngest MVP in Derrick Rose in league history 2 years ago, window is closing? Chicago brought back Kirk Hinrich, but lost 3 key bench guys in Ronnie Brewer, CJ Watson, and Omer Asik. I’m not saying they are going to take a huge dip next season, but what have they done to improve?

Houston Rockets…All that maneuvering, and the Rockets look like the same kind of middling team they have been for the last several seasons. If they can’t get Dwight, maybe they should try to go after Pau Gasol again.

Dallas Mavericks…An entirely separate post could be dedicated to the Mavs’ losing offseason. Instead of trying to repeat last year, Mark Cuban basically went all-in on trying to bring both D-12 and D-Will to the Big D this summer. Since then, Tyson Chandler, DeShawn Stevenson, JJ Barea, Jason Kidd, and Jason Terry have all departed. Other than Dirk Nowitzki and Shawn Marion, the cupboard is completely bare. (And let’s all try to forget that whole Lamar Odom debacle.)

At least he got the 1 ring, right?

Blake Griffin USA Basketball Olympic Team Practice Dunks...That Is All

Haven't posted in a week, and I am light on thought-provoking topics, so here's 2 Blake Griffin dunk clips from USA Basketball practices over the last couple of days. No, they don't compare to the dude who cartwheeled into a through-the-legs windmill in some dunk contest a few weeks ago, and, yes, as I paraphrase Michael Wilbon, "Blake Griffin could do these dunks waking up and walking out of bed." So, they are probably even ho-hum dunks by his standards, but I love me some Blake, and it's been a slow few days. Enjoy...

Taken 2: Giving The People What They Want

I can be a bit slow on the upkeep at times, so it’s no surprise that I was confused as to why the Liam Neeson beat-‘em-up movie Taken was on air somewhere every time I turned on the TV this weekend. Duh…I found out this morning that the trailer for Taken 2 was released a week or so ago.

My reaction was basically the same as this guy’s from AskMen.com. So, if you want a smarter sounding version of what I’m about to say, click that. If you want someone to clumsily parrot his thoughts, you’ve come to the right place.

The sequel looks like the same movie as the 1st one except this time Neeson is the hunted instead of the hunter. All of those evil, sex-trafficker, thug types that Neeson’s character 86-ed in the original? Well, let’s just say it looks like their families didn’t find that outcome satisfactory. Other than that, the premise of the movie looks basically the same as Taken. It appears that Neeson’s wife, who will be known from here on as Jean Grey from X-Men, is the kidnapping victim this time instead of the annoying girl from Lost. Don’t worry…annoying Lost chick is still there, although somewhere in between the end of the 1st movie where she was practicing to be a pop star and the sequel she apparently learned how to leap across buildings. The trailer for Taken 2 even shows a phone convo between the head Albanian boss dude and Neeson that is almost a carbon copy of the scene from Taken number 1, but not nearly as good: “This is not a game. I will finish this thing. You will just have to die.” What the f*** is that?!?

Still, it looks like Taken 2 will be much more satisfying than most sequels. Often times, writers and directors will get too cutesy in episode 2 and stray too far away from what we liked about the 1st installment to begin with. Even though I was skeptical of Neeson playing some kind of Jason Bourne role when Taken came out, it oddly worked the 1st time around. And if they give us the same exact formula of Neeson beating up baddies left and right for another movie or 2, I will be entertained. Plus, what’s not to like about the Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world” guy playing the big evil bossman!?!

Yes, that is an original meme by yours truly. Yes, you will see why it doesn't actually work in about 2 seconds...

Ok, so that’s not actually him. It’s actually this guy, who might as well be a dead ringer…stay thirsty, my friends. I will see the movie anyway, but if it was the Dos Equis guy I would have paid to see Taken 2 for that reason alone. Either way, it’s already been shown that the formula works…even if it means having to deal with more screen time for Jean Grey and the girl everyone hated from Lost. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.

The New Nike Hyperdunk+: Fresh Kicks, But At What Cost?

I’ve been a sneaker whore ever since I can remember, but over the last 5 years or so my high-top obsession has faded considerably. Maybe it’s just me, but rarely does a shoe ever come out that’s worth getting excited over anymore. When a new Eastbay catalog would hit my mailbox, I used to go crazy. I would pour over the basketball shoe section for hours, taking a magic marker and circling all the fresh kicks on my wish-list. I would research each shoe like I was preparing for a graduate thesis, but it was all worth it to chop down that list of “do wants” to the pair I would actually buy with my not-so-never-ending cash-flow.

Lately though, most new arrivals in the shoe section don’t really do it for me. Either they’re too blah or too outlandish for me most of the time. Usually, the shoes that appeal to me are the throwbacks like the Jordan 11’s or the Reebok Pumps. This probably speaks to a couple of things. 1st, they’re shoes…much like the dunk contest, at some point everything that’s possible has already been done. 2nd, (and this is probably equally true) now I’m basically like an old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn when it comes to this kind of thing. Nike and Adidas aren’t marketing their products to people my age anymore than Wiz Khalifa and David Guetta are in the music industry…with all that being said, behold the new Nike Hyperdunk+.

Yes, I know, I know…there’s LeBron front and center in another 1 of my posts, but I swear this isn’t a LeBron post. (Although it is interesting that Nike is using LeBron as the front man for a product that isn’t specifically part of the LeBron brand i.e. his Nike Air Max LeBron 9’s.) The shoe is the latest in Nike’s line of “Nike+” products, which allow users to track their performance on their smartphones or computers. It was introduced a few years ago, and to get it to work you had to buy not only a specific running show but also an insert that you had to purchase separately and put in the shoe yourself. It was basically a glorified step-counter, but in recent months Nike has made a new push with a series of “Fuelbands”, improved Nike+ technology, and now this.

To start off with, the shoe looks dope. When the above ad aired on TV during the NBA playoffs for the 1st time a few weeks ago, that was my singular thought. I didn’t even notice the “+” part of the commercial. LeBron’s and D-Rose’s shoes the past few years have been nice, but they didn’t catch my eye like this. When our most recent Eastbay catalog came over the weekend, I came to find out that the shoe had the Nike+ sensors already built into it. (Honestly, this may have been done in previous Nike+ shoes for all I know, but it was the 1st I ever heard about it.) In addition to tracking your mileage, these supped-up Hyperdunks have the capability to track your vertical leap, you quickness in steps per second, and what Nike calls “NikeFuel,” which is some made-up metric for how much you hustle apparently.

"Do you guys know how to post your vertical to Facebook?"

While that’s all well and good, it’s not something that I’m necessarily interested in. It’s a hot shoe, but at what cost? How’s $250 for the shoe with the Nike+ sport pack already included sound? If you want to personalize your Hyperdunks at NikeiD.com, that will run you $290…yowzers. I would rather run up Route 40 to the Nike outlet store buy 3 or 4 or 7 pairs of shoes for the same price. Fortunately, you can buy the Hyperdunks without the fancy-shmancy Nike+ package too. That will still cause you to pony-up a criminally expensive (yet more normal) 140 bones, but even that is more than I’ve ever spent on a shoe in my entire life…and that includes the NikeiD shoes that Krissy and I have treated ourselves to the last 2 years. Nike may be the cleverest company in the world in terms of marketing, but even they’re not smart enough to get that much money from me for 1 pair of sneakers. Still, I am curious as to how popular these Hyperdunk+’s will be. I’m sure I will see some rich kid wearing them walking through the mall or something in the next 2 weeks…tracking his hustle while he slurps a Cinnabon, no doubt.