Wednesday, June 27, 2007

NBA DRAFT

So, the NBA draft is a ridiculous mix of hype and anticipation. It's a world where Michael Jordan can be drafted after Sam Bowie (who? exactly.), and people like Michael Olowokandi and Kwame Brown go #1. But we all know it's impossible to know how 20-year olds are going to perform three years from know (most 20-year olds don't know what they're doing next week)
But ESPN.com's John Hollinger has figured out a fairly reliable system for predicting NBA success. Note that this system can only evaluate college players. So, it's hard to say exactly how good this is since three straight NBA rookies of the year (02-04) didn't go to college in the US. However, Chris Paul was 06 ROY, picked fourth but ranked first. (05 was the other way around, as Okafor was ROY, picked first, ranked fourth) and this year's ROY was ranked third, but picked fifth.
In any case, though not perfect, this sytem is pretty damn good. In a lot of those rankings, you'll see players that weren't drafted very high, but have made an impact. Anyway, I was thrilled to see that Kyle Visser was ranked #15. Yes! Also notice 6 of the top 15 and 10 of the top 30 are ACC players (compared to 4 of the top 30 from the SEC, 4 from the Big 12, 4 from the Big 10, 2 from the Pac 10, etc) We rock.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Straight to DVD



I've never seen a movie like this before. It's like they took all the bad aspects of every crossover rap artist movie and combined it with the acting talents of Andy Milonakis and that angry principal dude from Ferris Buehler. On the other hand it did enlighten me to the whole underground luxury cart business.

Peace.

Top 5 Thoughts of the Day

1. Where did Celebrity Deathmatch go? And for that matter what about MTV? Nobody watches it anymore. The only thing that held it together was Road Rules and Real World and now they're in season 200 or something to that degree. Everyone knows you can only have 5 sequels to a TV show/movie. Probably why Rocky VII is just ludicrous and would never happen.
2. What happened to Sisqó? You can't hold it against the guy just because he breaks the laws of the morphology of the English language (Sisqó sounds cool, but Sisquo just sounds latin). Anddddd he was doing great until he branched out from doing songs about thongs (Cause any other subject, admit it, you just wouldn't listen to him would you?). Trivia: He was born in Baltimore. Who knew? I don't know about you, but I'm proud to have him as a neighbor.
3. Got to hand it to Google Images. Although this picture intrigues me, it makes me wonder how he discovered his talent.
4. Stay with me on this one. On TV, when they're interviewing a celebrity who was originally famous for one thing (e.g. singing) but recently branched into another talent (e.g. acting) they always have to identify them by both professions. You should definitely have to earn that title first. I wouldn't call Paris Hilton a singer/actress even though she had an Emmy-winning performance in The Hillz. Or Kelly Clarkson similarly even though she was in From Justin to Kelly. You're not an actor if your movie is among the worst ever made. Actually scratch that. I'd love to see an interview where they describe Paris as a "singer/actress/felon". Works for me.
5. Kanye West is going to star in a half-hour sitcom. No lie. Now I'm a Kanye fan but this has to be the dumbest idea ever. Stick to rapping or causing controversy, whatever it is that you do well.
Totally-Irrelevant-to-this-Post-Tiger-Woods-Picture-of-the-Day

Bet he's regretting that drunken 3 am trip to the Hair Cuttery right about now.

Ciao.

Friday, June 22, 2007

A Thought (or a few) on Blog Titles

It took me a while to think of the title for this blog, an hour or so on urban dictionary looking for some neat phrase, butttttt in the end a homage to Mitch Hedberg seemed suitable. He does have the best one-liners. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look it up here). So now that I'm an expert on blog titles I thought I'd set down some guidelines for you folk:

1. It shouldn't be an emo lyric
This one is not debatable. But let's be nice, I mean some people like emo, right? How else can you express all those emotions you have like sadness and despair and teen angst. It just gets confusing.
2. Refrain from including your name
Keep the names to your name tags. No one wants to read "Matt's Blog of Nothing Much" or "Pedro's Blog on Spicy Peppers" (don't forget to Vote for Pedro). This is the Internet and that means a screen name. That means you should capitalize every other letter. That means you should include a lot of x's. And don't forgot your favorite musician. Oh and misspell shit while you're at it. "XxXJuAnEsLuVrXxX's Blog of nm!" I'd read that. And you should too.
3...Actuallllllllyyyyyyy
We'll save the rest for later...to be continued.

Random thoughts of the day.

First, many thanks to Noah for researching my question from yesterday. Here is the answer, courtesy of Yahoo! Answers. The only objection I have is the first response which says that "a wild rabbit attacked a United States president via swimming on one occasion." I think "attacked" might be a bit of an exaggeration, though it is funny to picture the Secret Service being like "AH! A RABBIT!" and blowing it out of the water. Heh.
Second, as for my observation about IPOs, Blackstone (BX) would have been a bad choice. It was offered for 31, and opened trading around 36, and it closed at 35.06.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Baltimore Sports

1. Seriously, raise your hand if you're surprised Joe Girardi turned down the O's. OK, anyone with their hand in the air is a MORON. Let's see, he can either continue to announce for the Yankees, OR he can be paid a few dollars more to manage an underachieving team with a meddling owner.
2. To Noah: As much as I would love to see a Baltimore team do something great, until the Ravens stop underachieving in the playoffs, ESPN will continue to ignore them. And everyone knows the Browns will dominate the AFC North this year.
3. Has anyone seen that Traveler's Insurance commercial where they reattach the rabbits' feet? Notice about 20 seconds in when they show the rabbit swimming? Do rabbits swim? Obviously, I see the rabbit swimming in the commercial, but wouldn't you be at least a little surprised if you saw a rabbit swimming in a pond?
(Upon Wikipedia research, this is unresolved however I did find out that: 1) If you declaw a rabbit, it will be unable to stand, (2) Female rabbits are always ready for breeding [they do not go into heat like dogs and cats], hence the term "breeding like rabbits" (3) Rabbits are incapable of vomiting)

What everybody ought to know about the Ravens

So the Ravens are probably the most underrated team in the AFC and possibly the NFL. They are mentioned maybe once or twice on SportsCenter per month. The Ravens defense is by far the most dominating one out there. Those who think that the lose of Adalius Thomas will make a huge impact in the effectiveness of our defense are sadly mistaken. Those critics of our offense can talk all they want, but with the addition of Willis McGahee and some new offensive linemen, we will definitely be in the race for winning the AFC again. Screw the Steelers and you can jump on the Patriots bandwagon all you want, but when we destroy them this season we will see who the best team really is.......

EDIT: At time of publication, author had a significant sum of money on a 7-4 straight bet for the Ravens to win the AFC North. Just saying...
Alex

Lebron's Father is Who?

With the NBA draft coming up and Lebron's recent flub in NBA Finals, it got me to thinking: They sure do look a lot alike. Brothers or cousins or something. Anyway, I compiled a list of very relevant look-alikes, relatives, and kind of think they're relatives for your enjoyment.


Lebron James Greg James
I'm betting one Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy that these two are related. Same smirk, same mid-range jumper (read: no mid-range jumper), same dominating style.



Ewing Ewing, Jr.

Ok, so this is verified. But if you didn't read the back of their jerseys, maybe their penchant for being injured tipped you off.



Rick Barry Brent Barry

Getting more serious now. Classic father-son. About as classic as you're gonna get. On a side note, I didn't know that Rick "H-o-r-s-e" Barry was an underhand free throw shooter. On another more pertinent note, Brent looks like that kid in high school who smoked too much, but you liked anyway because they were too fried to be any real nuisance.


Vlade Divac T hat Guy Who's in the Da Vinci Code

Ah, yes. The Divac Brothers. Vlade....and Ibrahim? Ibrahim shunned his brother to pursue a more noble career.

And last one:


Zydrunas. I'm actually lacking a picture for this one, but the Z-man suspiciously looks like that IT guy from the Geek Squad that came to fix your computer last week. Wait, why did the Cavs lose? He's their center? Really? Him? Nahhhhhhhhhh, no way. Maybe he should have stuck to IT.

And to cap it all off with the Totally-Irrelevant-to-this-Post-Phil-Mickelson-Picture-of-the-Day:

Source: Deadspin

Peace.

Hyped IPOs - A Get Rich Quick Scheme?

I was thinking that perhaps a good idea for those looking to make a quick buck is to buy a hyped IPO right when it comes out and then then sell it soon thereafter. It's risky, but I figure a few bucks on a flier never hurts, and it makes investing a lot more fun.

-Google (GOOG) was offered at $100 on 8/19/04. It was at $130 by the end of September, and hit 200 on November 3.
-Under Armour (UA) was offered at 31 on 11/3/05, but fell to 25 by the end of the day. It took until December 23 to make it back to 31, but by 12/29, it was at 39.36. For those of your scoring at home, that's a 27% gain in about 6 weeks. However, it's been kind of average since, closing at 46.17 today (17% increase in 18 months.)
-If you go here, you'll see how many IPOs have doubled in the first day of trading. However, take careful note that a great many of these came at the peak of the tech bubble. On the other hand, a lot of those companies are still good companies today (LA Gear, Fuddrucker's, QVC, Home Shopping Network, eBay, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Chipotle, etc).
-Then there's Palm Inc (PALM), whose IPO went for 145 on 3/2/00, rose to 165, closed at 95.06 the same day, and was below 30 by the end of April. Whoops!

Anyway, with Blackstone (maybe) coming out Monday, June 25, this all might be something to consider.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Who goes on YouTube?

So why are the videos on Youtube's most watched always horrible? You would think the biggest video site out there could find some reasonably watchable clips. I feel like I'm watching some top ten playlist of a ten year old anime fan....who watches C-span...and wrestling.

Take a look:

Slammiversary anyone?

or how about the Clinton Sopranos parody?

Probably the best thing on there The Parrot Sopranos parody

Or if you like things that make you cringe and say "Uhhhhh."
idiot
same idiot. different video.