The Ragin' Asian

The Ragin' Asian has MOVED!

2007-06-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

this blog has moved to:

http://raginasian.bobngo.com.

take a minute to update your bookmarks. don't worry about the updating the feeds, i've already taken care of that.

blogger, we had a good run, but i've outgrown you. it was real, but wordpress just has bigger boobs than you.

superlatives

2007-06-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

the worst idea of the year so far.

and the geekiest.

pardon the dust

2007-06-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

i'm having trouble with my old template in terms of the rss feed, and i think it is because of the fact that i'm still using the old blogger templates. the template that you see now is temporary as i try to fix the old one. but even so, it's only a matter of time before i switch over to wordpress cuz i'm getting tired of blogspot's bs. anyways, i'll let you know when to update your bookmarks and update your feed. thanks for understanding.

the management.

that's racist, yo! gary sheffield edition

2007-06-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

according to an article in GQ, tigers outfielder and hellacious hitter, gary sheffield has a theory on why the percentage of african americans (8.5%) in the league is at its lowest level since they started counting in the mid eighties. he says

I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them.

Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man.

These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys.

i don't even know where to start. so is he saying that black people have no self control? that they have thin skin and that they perceive being told to open up your stance a little a form of disrespect? it's one thing to be racist towards another group, but you really take it up to another level, a level that i'm going to call, the "black entertainment television level," when you end up being racist towards your own racial group.

in sociology, this is an example of the ecological fallacy, which is extrapolating the actions of one unit of analysis, to a larger unit of analysis which the smaller unit of analysis is a member of. i.e. because gary sheffield is a malcontent hothead, all black people must be. see what i mean? you know it's weird, a lot of times whenever athletes say something about race, they are actually usually dead on and they just get criticized for "playing the race card." but in this case, gary sheffield is just...wait for it...wait for it...coming out of left field. you've been a great audience...don't forget to tip your waitresses...good night!

public restroom philosophy

2007-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

i found this bit of restroom graffitti in one of the bathrooms here at UCSB. i think it's amusing on many levels. ahhh, the joys of the higher education system.

rules of celebrity

2007-05-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

great picture taken from the confessional poet

looks like a-rod just found himself a whole new way to be publicly maligned. according to the story, a-rod's wife, cynthia, is leaving him because he was recently caught cruising around new york with some stripper. scandalous stuff. i could say some stuff about a-rod and how up to this point, his saving grace was that he was a saint off the field, but instead, i'm going to take this opportunity to share with all of you my rules of celebrity. these are rules that i think all celebrities stick to if they want to stay out of the tabloids. two of them apply to celebrities in general, but the other two are directed at athletes more general. and i'm telling you people, these rules are foolproof. if celebrities listened to me, the enquirer would go out of business. anyways, without further ado:

remember what happened to this guy when he stayed out too late? it's only worse for celebrities.

rule #1 - never stay out past midnight. you could also state this another way, nothing good ever happens after midnight. you never hear about a celebrity saving someone's life at 1AM, or a celebrity gets a big part in a movie at 3:30AM, or a celebrity has really good interaction with press/public at 2AM. it's always, so and so throws someone through a plate glass window, or so and so gets popped for possession of meth, or so and so get's arrested at girlfriend's apartment. i understand the need to party, and most normal people are able to stay out past midnight and have no problems, but if you're a celebrity why take that chance. especially when you can just have the party come to you. wanna hang out with strippers late at night? just pay them to come to the house. wanna get really wasted, just throw a big party at your house. rent a big hotel room. whatever. staying off the streets past midnight reduces your likelihood of getting trouble by about 4000%.

the celebrity's best friend

rule #2 - never drive a car. pay someone else to drive you around. a driver is really not that expensive and cabs and limos are a good investment. there's the obvious stuff, like drunk driving, or killing someone on the 405. but even if you're not doing that, if there's one thing that the cops can always pull you over for, it is traffic violations - busted tail lights, failure to use turn signal, whatever. the traffic violation is usually never a big deal. it's what happens after you get pulled over, cops find gun/drugs/kiddie porn. and if you're smart, you pay your driver enough where he or she knows to take the fall for you. you all saw traffic. think terrence howard's character wishes that he had hired a driver for that night?

the next two rules do apply to all celebrities but are especially directed towards professional athletes.

have you ever seen a more effed up kid than t.j. kidd (he's the one with the moustache)

rule #3 - do not get married. look, i understand that people fall in love and that sometimes, having a life partner is cool. however, i also understand that celebrity means special circumstances often put extra pressure on something that is already difficult to maintain. the divorce rate for the regular population is already at 50%. what do you think it is for celebrities? and you can sign all the prenups in the world, but the bottom line is, if something goes wrong with your marriage, which is always does, then you're on the hook for a lot of your money, not to mention the drama and the bad press you get during a divorce. you always hear that any good lawyer can get you out of a prenup. it's even worse here in california where the law dictates the other person always gets half.

speaking of effed up kids...

corollary A to rule #3 - if you're a dude, get a vasectomy. baby momma drama is never good. just ask tom brady or matt leinart. look, you can always adopt, freeze your sperm, or in some cases, get the procedure reversed. what you can't do is force someone to have an abortion, get out of paying hush money, or having your offspring from growing up to be a psycho and then writing a tell all book about how you are a terrible father. also, don't forget if you're young, how much trouble and time it takes to be a father. your bachelor lifestyle is substantially curtailed with the presence of a little one.

you betta watch yo ass pacman jones, cuz we be comin' for you!

rule #4 - do not under any circumstances, buy, own, or carry a gun. again, i'll use the logic that i used in rule #1. how often have you heard of a celebrity fending off would-be evil doers with their gun? how many bank robberies have been stopped by paris hilton pulling her gat out of her purse? now, if you want, you can still have someone in your posse carry a gun. i know, everyone is thinking, "what about pacman jones? he wasn't carrying a gun and look how much trouble he's in." well just think how much trouble he would be in if he were carrying a gun. besides, he was violating rule #1, so it's a wash. the point is, guns plus celebrity has never ever resulted in a good outcome.

anyways, i am sure that if celebrities followed these rules, the world would be a much safer place. it may seem like i'm only talking about the celebutards like paris and lindsay, but click on over to the smoking gun's celebrity mugshot archive, and you tell me how many of these pictures would never have been taken if these people followed these rules. mel gibson? broke rule #1 and #2. phil spector? rule #4. britney? rule #3 would have saved us all from k-fed. the cinncinatti bengals? multiple infractions, all rules.

so there's my good deed for the day. if there are any readers out there connected to celebrities, please direct them to this blog and tell them i said, "you're welcome".

and I'm not talking about rosie o' donnell in a cop costume

2007-05-26T23:01:00.001-07:00

since once upon a time, i posted about a giant catfish, i present to you:

that is one big effin' hog. that'll do pig...that'll do.

what i've been working on

2007-05-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

there's really no good excuse for my lack of blogging. i had some grand ideas way back about starting a podcast, but right now, i just don't think it is going to work. however, for those of you who might be interested, i am now working full time on the dissertation project. i've set up a website that has the basics of the project outlined. but probably of more interest to you blog reader, is that i have set up a blog that i'm going to use to keep track of my research. right now, it looks like ass and it's not very interesting, but as i start to collect data and make headway on writing it should be more interesting in a nerdy kind of way. so those of you who are interested in the Sabermetric movement in baseball and the emergence of statistics as a source of legitimate knowledge, go ahead and click on over.

i have to tell you, that probably a majority of my blogging efforts are going to be directed towards the new blog, but i'm going to try and make some time to post here more often. i can't promise anything, but i can promise to make a better effort.

tricia rose on hip hop

2007-05-21T15:06:00.001-07:00

apologies for not posting - i've been busy dissertating. one day, i'm going to get a schedule running and i'll just force myself to blog at least once a week. anyways, last wednesday i went to see tricia rose give a talk entitled "is hip-hop dead?" it was an interesting talk and i thought that i'd share the highlights and some of my own thoughts. for those of you who don't know, tricia rose is a fairly well known scholar in the field of black studies. her book, black noise, is one of the first real academic studies on hip hop, and seems to be one of the standard texts that people engage in whenever they need to talk about hip-hop from an academic point of view. currently, she's a professor at brown university.

as shown by the don imus incident, people still seem to view hip hop and the hip hop culture as one that is morally bankrupt and one of the causes of the deterioration of the moral fiber of society. i know, i know, it sounds like an outlandish statement to most people, but when someone like don imus blames his racists statements on hip hop and then oprah feels compelled to have a town hall meeting on the subject, it can't be a good thing in most people's eyes. anyways, for rose, the problem is not the genre itself, which she acknowledges has lots of problems. rather, the problem is with the conversation on hip-hop. because of the assumptions and omissions of the conversation on hip-hop, we can't get to a place where we can really figure out what is going on.

basically, she said that you can't talk about hip-hop without being either labeled a hater or a defender of the thug lifestyle. if you criticize hip hop for being misogynist or destructive, then you are a hater. if you accuse critics of hip-hop of being racist, then you are blind to the effects of culture on people. in some ways, it is a straw man argument, that opposing sides are situated on extremes of a continuum and the right place to be is somewhere in the middle. but i think that in this case, it's not that far off. on the one hand, i do understand the problems with the types of hip-hop that are most prevalent in today's popular culture. on the other hand, i loves me some snoop-dizzle. and my experience of how most people view the hip-hop issue is in terms of black and white, no pun intended.

anyways, rose says the the one of the biggest problems in this conversation is the failure of either side of the debate to acknowledge capitalism's role in determining the development of hip-hop. that is, hip-hop, at least popular hip-hop, has developed the way it has because of the role of these media multi-national corporations, who are run by mostly white people, have had in determining what people will hear.

in other words, a lot of the stuff out there is very problematic. but there's a lot of stuff that isn't so problematic but never gets played. she used the example of lupe fiasco. here's an artist that the critics love, has the backing of major players in the hip-hop game (kanye west and jay-z), and is able to rap about relevant topics about the african american experience without resorting to the usual tired tropes of thug or gangsta. yet, we never ever hear him on mainstream radio.

i suppose that none of this is really new, that capitalism screws up everything, especially art. and as a sociologists, it is almost impossible for me to not consider the effects of capitalism on anything. however, at the same time, it does strike me that the discussion of capitalism are absent in most work done on hip-hop, because as rose says, it makes that discussion seem "inauthentic". while i'm not sure if that is true of the academic community, it is most certainly true of most cultural critics. when it comes to this particular cultural form, for most people it seems that most of the issues are not rooted in the economic machinations if the medium, but rather the racial machinations. hip-hop is seen as a "black" thing, therefore, the problems that it causes, are caused by blacks. now i doubt you would find someone who would say this outright, but if you read carefully how hip-hop is usually talked by cultural critics, that is most definitely the implication.

she also spoke about masculinity and the fact that the only kind of hip-hop that those who are in charge of producing and disseminating popular music is one that is marked by hyper-masculinity. as you can imagine, this struck a chord with me, as it seems that sports works in much the same way. with all of this in mind, it should not surprise anyone that sports, particularly basketball and hip-hop are intimately intertwined. the NBA culture is often described as a hip-hop culture, which means it is a hyper-masculine culture which conforms to the current hierarchy, both in terms of race and gender. and in my opinion, this is generally not a good thing.

what does this all mean? as usual, i have no real good answers. but what i do think that this demonstrates is that people still aren't comfortable talking about race in a meaningful way.
any comments on the topic are welcome.

god bless black people

2007-05-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

i'm very hesistant to post anything about the waste of time that is paris hilton going to jail, but this was too good not to post. enjoy.

link via best week ever.

rocket is on the sauce

2007-05-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

for those of you who don't get the reference in the title, click here.

anyways, as i'm sure most of you have heard by now, roger clemens is unretiring, or whatever you call it, for the thirteenth time to play for the yankees again. not that i care one way or the other, but it did get me thinking. pretty much every major sports columnists has written at least one column about barry bonds breaking hank aaron's record with the help of steroids. and yet as obviously as clemens is juicing, i feel that the press is essentially giving him a free pass on this topic. obviously, there are a lot of things going on here, bonds' general a-hole-ishness, the fact that he is about to break essentially the most hallowed baseball record, the whole perjury thing, his rocky relationship with the press, did i mention he was an a-hole? of course, i'm here to ask, what role does race play in all of this, because i contend that if clemens were about to break say, the all-time strikeouts record or the wins record, that he would not be held up to the same scrutiny as bonds. luckily, most of the other sports blogs that are written by non-mainstream sports media, have picked up on this and have made it abundantly clear that we think the rocket is roided out.

much has been made about a recent poll that indicated that 37% of baseball fans want bonds to break aaron's record, vs. 52% that don't want him too. i found these findings very curious because the press would have you believe that everyone except giants fans think that bonds is a travesty to the game. i would imagine if you polled all of the major sports columnists that there would be a much greater disparity between those who want bonds to break the record and those who don't. anyways, my point is, the media, in this case, in the form of the sports columnists and baseball writers, are not at all representative of the view of the general public, who seems to be at least moderately conflicted on this issue. even more instructive is the racial breakdown of the people rooting for barry and the people rooting against. 74% of black people want him to break the record vs. 28% of whites. my point is, for those people who insist that race has nothing to do with how bonds is treated by the press is simply out of touch with the general public. not to say that the fact that he's an a-hole doesn't mean anything cuz it obviously does. but just these simple statistics, if accurate, shows that race plays a large role in how the press and baseball fans view bonds.

clemens in 1986:

clemens in 2006:
you make the call.

p.s. in regards to the lack of posting: i'm working on something...something big, that is going to change this blog as you know it. stay tuned for details.

a joke for computer geeks

2007-05-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

how many angry digg users does it take to change a light bulb?

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

sorry, just jumping on top of the dogpile.

the nba is racist, yo

2007-05-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

according to the new york times, nba officials have a racial bias! i use an exclamation mark because if this research by a penn professor, justin wolfers is correct, this is an extraordinary development. according to the article, white officials are more likely to call fouls on black players, and black officials are more likely to call fouls on white players. the difference is admittedly small (around 2-4% more fouls depending on your race), but in the bigger picture, what it means is that the outcome of a game can be determined by the racial makeup of the officiating crew and the racial makeup of a team.

i wish there was a link to the research so i can make a more definitive assessment of the methodology, but it seems that the LA times had the report examined by three independent stats experts and they all seem to agree that the research is legit.

what i find amusing is the league's response. according to the league, they've done their own research and that their research shows no bias with officials. while this response is predictable, it is made more remarkable when you take into account the the differences between the two research studies. the wolfers' research used data from 13 NBA seasons (1991-2004). the NBA's research used two years worth. the wolfers' research took into account, player position, and veteran status. the NBA's did not. the wolfers' research is done by an academic whose career is consumed by exploring these issues in a scientific manner. the NBA's research is done by an actuarial consulting firm, whose careers is consumed with getting paid by the NBA. the wolfers' research has made their data to anyone who wants to check it out for themselves ensuring accuracy and peer review. the NBA's research is supposedly "proprietary" for confidentiality reasons.

it seems pretty clear to me, who is probably closer to being right. i have to disclose that the NBA does have the advantage of having data on individual data, which it appears that wolfers' research does not. and this i find strange since i don't think it would have been that difficult for wolfers to have included this in his models. anyways, like any good business venture, the NBA is burying its head in regards to the social issues that surround its product.

my reaction of course is predictable and mirrors ian ayres, a professor at yale who reviewed the research for the la times, when he says

I would be more surprised if it (bias) didn’t exist. There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.

for more on this theory, click here to watch a dateline report on some very interesting research being done by those crazy cats at berkeley about subconscious racial bias.

basketball is the perfect setting for this by the way. more than any sport, race is crucially woven into the very fabric of the game. in football, it's hard to see race with a helmet on. in baseball, there really aren't enough black people. but no where is race more evidently embodied in players than in basketball. it makes perfect sense to me that race would influence the outcome of a contest.

anyways, from a regular fan standpoint, i've always been wary of the idea of league conspiracies enacted through poor officiating. however, after watching game 5 of the mavs/warriors series, where some very iffy officiating may have resulted in a win for the good guys, and coupling that with this video that popped up recently, i may have to rethink my position. either that or officials seem to think that dwayne wade is white.

one ragin' asian analyzes another ragin' asian

2007-04-26T11:19:00.001-07:00

i can't tell if that title is in bad taste....anyways, you know, i always find it better to wait for a couple of weeks before commenting on any issues. this gives you time to see how people react and in my mind, that's where the real good stuff for analysis comes from. so while this may seem untimely, i assure you, my opinion is better informed than any of those that came out the day after the virginia tech massacre.

before i give you my two cents on the virginia tech thing, i'd like to share a little bit about a presentation that i attended yesterday at school. this is gonna take a while, but it will make sense once i get into my point about the shootings.

troy duster, a well known sociologist came to ucsb and gave a talk on his research on the relationship between science and race. it was really good. no i mean it was really really good. he started off by talking about race-based strategies for dealing with some diseases. for example, it is common knowledge that african americans are at higher risk for a number of diseases such as sickle cell, diabetes, and heart disease. in 2005, the FDA approved the first race-targeted drug, bidil, a drug that has been shown to reduce heart disease in african americans. he said that this is indicative of an orientation towards the cause of the problem being inside the body. that is, there is something about the genetic makeup of african-americans that supposedly makes them for susceptible to heart disease, therefore, the answer is to correct what is inside. to him this sounded suspiciously like other rationales for racism, the idea that there is something inherently different about people of different races that causes them to act the way they do. so he did some digging, and found that drug companies are pouring a lot of money is being poured into research for a race specific drug for diabetes. he then found that of all the industrial nations, that germany has the highest incidence rate of diabetes and nigeria has the lowest rate. as duster nicely summed up, "i rest my case."

for those of you who are slow, he was basically saying that race-based orientation towards curing some diseases is a bunch of hooey. if race was the key factor in the incidence of this disease, then germany, which has one of the most ethnically homogeneous populations in the world would have no diabetes, and nigeria, where there are tons of people with much similar genetic makeup to african americans, would be teeming with diabetics. he went on to show how another study showed that within individual countries, the rural or traditional areas had almost no incidence of diabetes while urban areas always had rates of at least ten percent. yet science ignores all of this evidence and proceeds merrily along its more profitable way.

his overall point, was, why, when basically all evidence we have point to external factors in the rates of almost any disease, do we sink so much money into internal cures? specifically ones that target race, when any good scientist would say that the genetic makeup of different races has not been demonstrated to affect probability of getting a disease. think of all the money we have sunk into medical research with almost no real tangible results. heart disease, cancer, diabetes, AIDS...we're no closer to curing them then we were twenty years ago. meanwhile, we have pinpointed all of the social factors that go into causing these diseases. and still very little money goes into ameliorating the environmental and social causes of these disease. what makes this even goofier is that we actually have much more control over things like the environment and social conditions, yet we still look to a decidedly unobjective and decidedly more expensive science to solve our problems (for an especially good account of these issues play out in the world of cancer research, i will refer you to an article by barbara ehrenriech about her research on and experiences with breast cancer treatment). of course, this all is due to the fact that the internal research is more closely to what we define as "science", and the external is not. which obviously means that reliance on science to cure social problems and medical problems is a risky proposition, even by science's own standards.

anyways, there's been a lot of interesting takes on the fact that the shooter at virginia tech was korean. i.e. pop licks has keyed on to the fact that the press seemed keep calling cho a "korean national" despite the fact that he was basically raised an american. however, what i've sen the most of is pieces written by asians or koreans worrying about the coming backlash towards them. i.e. this editorial in the LA times by Ed Chang, professor of ethnic studies at UC-Riverside. i've also received several email forwards on the subject. but what really put it all together for me was reading an article in the crappy UCSB student newspaper, the daily nexus. again, it was a story on the fear of backlash towards the asian student population, and a quote from this story actually sums up all of these types of responses well:

The reactions Asians are having toward the shootings is that Cho was mentally ill, but non-Asians might bring into account Cho’s nationality.

and another quote

Altough Cho had a long history of mental illness when he commited his crime, members of the Asian-American community fear that the focus on his nationality - rather then his mental illness - will cause a public backlash against Asian Americans.

so after all that buildup, here is my point. i think that it is ok to spend a good amount of discussion about how his race and ethnicity played into cho's decision to kill these people. i liken the attempt by some asian groups to shift the focus to mental illness to the overall focus on solving medical problems on internal causes. was cho probably a little chemically imbalanced? of course he was, but there are plenty of chemically unbalanced kids in colleges and none of them went apeshit with guns. where i see race coming into play is cho's extreme sense of alienation. and from my own experience and the experience of many other asian males, and many other asian females, and many other people of color, i can say with great confidence that race plays a big factor in this alienation. and with that in mind, my question is why has it taken this long for something like this to happen?

so the external conditions, him being an alienated asian kid, combined with an internal condition, he being cuckoo, along with a host of other factors, i.e. he had a gun, he had a video camera, etc. all resulted in the single worst shooting spree in US history. which brings up another point that duster brought up. even within science, research for complex interactions are not well funded. what people want out of science are simple answers. this even carries over into my own training as a quantitative social scientist. in statistics, the goal is always the most parsimonious model (the model with the fewest variables). granted, the mainstream news media and their type of dumbed down/made to fit between commercials type of analysis only exacerbates the problem. but it seems clear to me at least, that the virginia tech massacre is the result of an extremely complex interaction between social, biological, and historical factors.

obviously, i agree with most of the asian critics who say we should not attribute this to race. to say that he did this because koreans are crazy is abundantly racist and stupid. and i understand that the threat of backlash towards the korean and the asian community is a real one.

however, to call for people not to talk about race, as if talking about race only involves racist talk, is the color blind discourse, which as i've gone over before, is racist itself. we can talk about race, and how racism may have contributed to cho's sense of isolation, can't we? to pretend that he wasn't korean, and that his experience as a korean american did not somehow play a role, is to bury one's head in the sand. i, and many others believe that in this country race plays a profound role in both determining and generating who you are. so i don't think it is at all inappropriate to bring up the question of race. while i understand where most of these asians that i have been reading are coming, i think that they are overreacting to say that people should not focus on race. because most likely, race probably played an important role.

quick hits grab bag

2007-04-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

howdy kids, sorry about that last post. i was in a pissy mood and i hate that i don't have more time to devote to this here blog. anyways, i've got more to post about the virginia tech thing, but i thought that i'd try to cleanse the palette with something i should try to do more regularly, let's everybody grab a spoon and let's dig into a big steaming bowl of quick hits!

1) the ncaa bans text messaging in recruiting. it's nice to see that the folks with the NCAA are keeping up with the times. i'm glad they they closed this loophole as i'm sure all of the coaches were exploiting this loophole. i just wish someone would ask a coach about violating the spirit of the recruiting rules. cuz like i said, if they were all doing it, which they were, then all of the coaches are a bunch of big douchebags. next up for the NCAA, cracking down on coaches passing notes to recruits in class.

2) more jurisprudence! the supreme court, after turning back the clock on women's reproductive rights, is now taking time to review a case where a private school sent letters to prospective grade schoolers. the local high school athletic association ruled this as illegal recruiting and fined and sanctioned the school. the school argued that their freedom of speech was being violated. what a bunch of, say it with me folks, douchebags. on a strange note, the court seems to be leaning towards ruling against the private school, with the support of the white house. so it's ok to force women to have babies but it's not ok for private schools to poach public school football talent. i don't understand.

3) our long national nightmare has ended. farewell ethnic/gender ambiguous indian songstress. good luck with your drag queen career. actually the funny thing is that the joke is on us, because as soon as all this is done, sanjaya is going to be riiii-ech biiii-etch!

4) this just in, the supreme court can't stop, it won't stop. it has recently ruled on when the state of michigan will hold it's girls' volleyball season. the genesis of the case was that the michigan high school sports association changed the girls' volleyball season to winter to match up with other states. their rationale was it would assist with athletes who are being recruited into college. some schools sued under title IX saying that moving the season would result in fewer girls playing volleyball since many other women's sports were being played at the same time. i have nothing to say except this is one of those rare cases where local interests and the true spirit of sports won out over college and financial interests. i tell you, ever since sandy o' connor retired, i just don't know what to expect from that wacky supreme court.

5) bono and the edge to write music for spiderman the musical?! ummm...let's just say that i'm not real happy about this.

am i buggin' you?

Ok campers, that's all i got for now. i'm headed to vegas this weekend. when i get back, i promise, we're gonna break down the virginia tech thing in great great detail. that is, if i don't win the wheel of fortune jackpot in vegas, in which case, see you a-holes in hell!

not going anywhere

2007-04-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

i got to be honest with you guys...i got pretty close to shutting this thing down. i just get tired of feeling guilty for not having the time to comment on every relevant sports or pop culture thing. to be honest, a lot of what i write is much better written by other popular mainstream blogs, but this whole viriginia tech thing may buy you o faithful blog reader just a little more time with me.

so i'm watching cnn today, and like everyone else, i'm trying to figure out what the FUCK is going on in blacksburg. they bring on some experts to provide some commentary and context to what is going on and one of the experts is a gun control advocate. now just to be clear, i'm all for reducing the number of guns to people. if that takes laws, then i say pass em, and let's put gun companies out of business. anyways, the anchor asks the gun control guy this question: "would stricter gun laws saved lives today?" are you effin kidding me? how is this question helpful in understanding what happened today. i am instantly infuriated. but then the gun control guy, without hesitation says, "i think it's clear that is the case." i now want to unload an uzi into the anchor and gun control guy.

call me crazy, but i think that gun control is not the problem here. shouldn't the question be, how did we as a modernized civil society, allow one guy to get to the point where he thought his only option was to go in and kill as many people as he could as fast as he could. again, i'm not saying that guns didn't have anything to do with anything, but the whole logic behind saying that a different gun law would have prevented this seems so obtuse to me.

i don't know how well i'm communicating my point, but what i'm trying to say is that we watch the news and when something like this happens, it should give us all pause and make us really reflect about where the hell did we go wrong and how do we make it so that we can get better. but all i see is pointing fingers and things getting worse. and worst of all, i see the reaction and the measures taken to be the exact opposite of fruitful dialog or action.

take don imus for example. isn't it transparent that don imus' firing had nothing to do with showing people that such racist attitudes won't be tolerated and more with networks not wanting to lose advertising dollars? i mean shouldn't we still be boycotting these outlets for letting imus say much worse up to this point. what about howard stern, who uses the n-word all the time...where are the calls for boycotts against xm or sirius? why don't these people go after rush limbaugh or bill o'reilly who have also said much worse. and why didn't these people work with imus, who in my opinion seemed genuinely contrite and went so far as to go and talk to the rutgers women's basketball team and apologize in person. again, i happy that imus got fired, he needed to, but saying that finally getting him off the air is a sign of progress is ignorant. it is the opposite. the fact that he got fired a week after he made the comments means that no one really cares what anyone thinks, as long as money is still rolling in.

it just seems to me that reaction to the media events or horrible things like the tragedy in blacksburg has nothing to do with really trying to change things. i know this sounds like a rant, but i think it's been a bad few weeks for the media and for the country. i was already in a bad mood about how the imus situation was playing out in both real life and in the media, and then i saw that cnn clip today and i felt like i had to write something. stuff like the tragedy at virginia tech should shock us and make us feel bad about the world, and want to work to change it. but that is not what i see. i see people pretending to be shocked and pretending to feel bad, but in reality, all they are really doing over and over again are asking, "what about me?" and as long as people ask that question, this blog will be here to call these d-bags out on it.

sanjaya roundup

2007-04-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

hello blog denizens. i apolgize for the lack of posts recently, between the end of another academic quarter, spring break, and the beginning of another academic quarter, i've been a little busy. and of course, lazy. i've finally advanced to candidacy in my PhD program, so don't forget to vote for me, now that i'm a candidate. that's such a bad joke, but i've been shoe-horning it in whenever i can. i also had a birthday, so thanks to all who participated in the festivities, which is basically no one. anyways, i contemplated ending this blog madness once and for all by taking an indefinite hiatus. not that anyone really reads this blog, but sometimes i get tired of feeling guilty for not commenting on the interesting sports and pop culture news from a sociological perspective. but there's a certain off-tune south-asian crazily-coiffed subject out there that needs commenting on.

by now, it is basically impossible to read any thing pop culture related without reading about how sanjaya malakar, the worst american idol finalist in years, has taken the country by storm. and much has been written trying to explain sanjaya-mania in terms of a broader cultural zeitgeist. how does someone sooooooo very bad at singing become a pop culture phenomenon? i'll summarize other people's arguments and then present another viewpoint.

1) alex blagg at best week ever ponders the revolutionary power of sanjaya:

...we sincerely HATE Idol, and thus want to see it fail. Sanjaya winning the competition - an unlikely scenario that inches closer and closer towards probability by the minute - would be the arrow through Idol’s Achilles Heel, destroying the legitimacy and relevance of the competition - the lynchpins on which the whole show is held together - by exploiting its democratic nature to expose it’s inherent fraudulence. If Sanjaya can win (even though he doesn’t deserve to), just because a bunch of people who don’t sincerely care about the outcome of the competition think it would be funny if he did, why should anyone bother caring about who else has won, or will win in the future?

this echoes a sentiment that my former pop life (most popular pop culture talk radio show in santa barbara area in the early aughts) co-host JP related last weekend. basically, american idol has been a complete pop culture juggernaut for the last six years. it has laid waste to two mediums, television and music, destroying anything in its path. and this is the slingshot that can bring it down. if sanjaya wins, the show becomes meaningless as an arbiter of american tastes. and while i'm hopeful that this is the case, i'm not sure i'm entirely convinced that america will come to its senses and stop watching idol. let's not forget, sometimes idol can be really entertaining television. i've never bought an album by one of the american idol contestants (and lord knows that there are enough of them out there), but i still watch cuz 1) it's fun to watch people fail and 2) who doesn't like to hear really good singers sing...and there have been plenty of legitimately talented singers on the show.

2) oliver wang at pop licks, not surprisingly, explores the race angle, and what it means to asians and the perception of asians in pop culture:

When Paul Kim became a finalist on this season's American Idol, it set off a light bulb for a NY Times writer to probe the question of why Asian Americans are missing from the pop music field. That story became "Trying to Crack the Hot 100" which appeared at the beginning of March (you can read it here). Several days later, WYNC's Soundcheck followed up with their own take on the story: "When East Doesn't Meet West". Once again, Paul Kim was the "hook."

What is striking about both stories is that by the time they ran/aired, Paul Kim was already voted off Idol and this actually served to "prove" the point of both stories - Asian Americans can't get a break. Without debating that claim - it's true enough - what I found striking...and a little perturbing...is that neither made mention of the fact that even though Kim was gone, there were still two other Asian Americans amongst the finalists: AJ (who is mixed Filipino/Chinese/etc.) and of course...the South Asian wunderkind Sanjaya...for whom "flexibility" would be an understatement in the many ways his racial "passing" allows him to occupy multiple social spaces at once.

again, while i agree with the overall gist that people simplify race and it affects the kind of pop culture that is produced, i don't necessarily think that you can classify sanjaya as asian. while i know that as a person of indian descent, that technically makes him an asian, i don't think that when most people hear the word "asian" they think of someone who looks like sanjaya. they think of someone who looks like me, or like jackie chan. perhaps it is a failing using a continental label like "asian", but i find it curious that i should find some solidarity with sanjaya when his ethnic experience is not nearly the same as a vietnamese person as it would be with a korean or chinese person. after all, it's not like canadians and mexicans all identify under the label "north-american".

3) ann powers in the la times considers sanjaya's popularity in terms of his similarities to other teen idols, particularly in how sanjaya is actually a gigantic wuss.

Tween and teen stars appeal to girls just beginning to explore their sexuality; their fantasies gravitate toward the familiar. Familiar is female. Sanjaya's awkward stance and undaunted prettiness are sweetly girlish; where the other male contestants lamely swagger, he poses and smiles.

as much as i have professed to hating ann powers, i find that in my old age, i like her writing more and more, and i think she has a point here. little girls prefer non-threatening males. it is only later on in life that they seem to be attracted to macho a-holes. however, to equate sanjaya to andy gibb and pete wentz seems like a stretch. to say that his ethnicity doesn't affect how people perceive him is something that predictably, i don't think is possible.

4) zach braff weighs in on sanjaya, in a way that only gigantic d-bags like zach braff can. it makes me not want to have anything to do with sanjaya.

i wanted to propose one more viewpoint that is endorsed by my roommate and fellow blogger, erik love. he thinks that all this talk about sanjaya's social significance is completely contrived by the producers of american idol. he thinks that the producers realize how polarizing someone like sanjaya can be, and that the controversy can only increase attention to the show, which has taken a slight dip in ratings. sanjaya is the train wreck that we can't take our eyes off of, but in the big picture, there's no way that they'll let sanjaya win. even if he gets more votes, when it comes down to determining who will go on to represent american idol in record contracts and future shows, the better singer will advance so that the producers can say, "see, american idol does work and the more talented person beat the sideshow". this makes a certain amount of sense as well. after all, there have been many reports in seasons past of voting irregularities. and like all game shows or reality-type shows, we know that everything we see is very produced. while we know that people actually do solve puzzles and win money, you know that someone controls the wheel on wheel of fortune and when someone wins too much money, they just happen to spin "bankrupt". same goes for idol.

as much as i want to believe that something like idol will implode upon itself, i have to admit that erik's scenario makes the most sense. which scenario is more likely? scenario 1 - the producers of idol are manipulating the public and generating ratings for their show via the spectacle of sanjaya. or scenario 2 - ironic hipsters who hate idol will get off of their collective apathetic asses and vote for sanjaya en masse and cause the normal idol watching demographic to question the authenticity of pop culture institutions like american idol. yeah, if i were in vegas, i'd definitely bet on scenario 1.

angelina and i are related now

2007-03-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

in case you didn't hear, angelina continued here world wide kid shopping spree and adopted a vietnamese kid, which in my mind makes angelina my 3rd or 4th aunt. is it wrong to want to see your 3rd or 4th aunt naked? anyways, per the story:

Vietnamese press claim that that the boy is named Pham Quang Sang and will be renamed Pax Thien Jolie. Pax means "peace" in Latin and Thien is "sky" in Vietnamese.

now i don't know if the press is reporting the translation of the name, or if that is what vietnamese officials have told the press, or if angelina picked out the name, but i can tell you with some degree of accuracy, that "thien" does not translate into "sky". now granted my own vietnamese skills are rather poor, i recall the vietnamese equivalent of sky to be "trời". after conferring with my sainted mother, whose vietnamese skills are much better than mine or angelina's, she confirmed this. according to my mom, "thien" refers to spiritual sense of sky, as in heaven. it can also be used to mean god, as in the judeo christian god. but most people use trời in everyday conversation. furthermore, i believe that thien is a common name for dudes as i seem to recall some of my mom's friends being named this. and if my mom isn't a good enough authority for you, perhaps this website will be. anyways, i just wanted to set the record straight.

also, the renaming of the kid strikes me as curious. he's three years old and presumably has been answering to sang quang (remember, in east asia, the last name comes first), but apparently that wasn't good enough for vietnamese officials or angelina, so they had to give him a freakin lame name like pax. what was so wrong with the name that he already had? they may as well name the kid Whitey McIamnotvietnamese.

you know, i think that generally angelina gets a hard time for being a humanitarian. from what i can tell, she actually does take the time to go to places and see first hand for herself what is going on. and i guess that awareness is being raised. so i think that she doesn't get lauded enough for her efforts. however, not getting something as simple as the translation of the kid's name correct doesn't help the perception that she's just baby crazy like that deputy trudy weigel (fast forward to 1:46 to see what i'm talking about).

britney back to being harmless crazy woman

2007-03-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

i was pretty suspicious of the news source, but it turns out that britney didn't do all of that crazy shit. which is good, cuz now she's back to just annoyingly crazy and i can now continue to objectify her and hope that she poses naked some day. but it sure was fun to waste time with photoshop!

the britney spears story enters natasha lyonne territory

2007-03-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

i don't know how reliable this news source is, but apparently, britney spears is possessed by the devil. either that or she's gone completely batshit. per the story

Britney Spears has flipped her lid in rehab, trying to hang herself with a bedsheet after screaming "I am the anti-christ" to frightened staff.

She made the demonic cry after scrawling the devil's number "666" across her head.

ummmm.....wowsers. this story has taken a dark turn. i think a lot of us were having fun with this story just thinking that britney's shenanigans were maybe just the result of youthful indiscretions, but it could be that we're looking at a serious mental disease here. ughh.

p.s. if you don't get the natasha lyonne reference, do yourself a favor take a few minutes to read michael rappaport's (yes, that michael rappaport) article in Jane magazine about her (page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4). i promise, it's worth it.

ragin' asian fun fact

2007-02-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

guess who has a bigger head?

according to this, i do. in the latest edition of game of shadows, the book on barry bonds and the steroid era of baseball, the authors include an afterword that give us this:

the authors detail in their afterword the freakish growth of Bonds' body parts in his years with the Giants: from size 42 to a size 52 jersey; from size 10 1/2 to size 13 cleats; and from a size 7 1/8 to size 7 1/4 cap, even though he had taken to shaving his head.

my cap size? 7 1/2. like bonds, my head has actually grown since college, when i wore a 7 3/8. but unlike bonds, i haven't hit 700+ homers while injecting horse sperm into my bloodstream...that and i'm not a douchebag.

anyways, also keep in mind that barry is 6' 2", and i'm a full eight inches shorter. this post is not so much about barry and his obvious steroid use, as it is about my own freakishly big noggin. i always knew that my head was kinda big, but with this discovery, i'm bordering on circus freak. what the hell is wrong with me!?

i'm very troubled by the fact that my head is bigger than barry's. i think i probably need to go see a doctor about this. god, no wonder my knees hurt when i work out, it's all the extra stress of having to carry this pumpkin around all day.

point/counterpoint - NBA allstar weekend in Las Vegas

2007-02-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

in honor, (or rather dishonor) of the oscars, i present to you two columns for your consideration.

first, jason whitlock's column

The Black Ku Klux Klan shows up in full force and does its best to ruin our good time. Instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white Ts and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members.

Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us.

Our fear makes them stronger. Our silence empowers them. Our lack of courage lets them define who we are. Our excuse-making for their behavior increases their influence and enables them to recruit more freely.

We sing their racist songs, gleefully call ourselves the N-word, hype their celebrity and get upset when white people whisper concerns about our sanity.

problematic, to say the least.

but dave zinn counters

Jason: it's time for you and your sports writing brethren, all hot and bothered over All Star Weekend, to take a long overdue reality check. You rail against the violence of NBA "posses" yet turn your back to the fact that this is one of the most violent nations on earth. This is a country that imprisons 2 million of its citizens. This is a nation that spends 1.7 billion dollars a day on the military. This is the country that started an unnecessary war in Iraq that's killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,000 troops. Surely a fan of Rosa Parks like yourself is familiar with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."

As you heroically churn out columns in between trips to the local gentleman's club, a very real world beats with injustice. Black unemployment is three times that of whites. Unemployment today for young Black men aged sixteen to nineteen tops out at more than 30 percent, double that of young whites. And the latest Bush budget will mean all of this will get worse.

By devoting your column to the amplification of the worst racial stereotypes, you actually divert attention from the real issues Black America faces. In this post-Katrina world, it should be all too clear that the problem is institutionalized racism and poverty, not a kid in baggy jeans.

well put i say, but is Jason completely wrong? sure the thug element is the result of decades of systematic oppression, and whitlock's black KKK analogy seems a bit disingenious, but does that excuse the behavior of those in las vegas this weekend? seriously, that weekend, people got shot.

anyways, just two points of view for us to ponder. feel free to leave comments.

the ragin' asian reviews the 2007 oscars

2007-02-25T22:38:00.001-08:00

worst. oscars. ever.

the NFL enters foucault territory

2007-02-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

not content to dominate the sports cultural and economic landscape in the US, the NFL is now attempting to dominate language. as i mentioned earlier, the NFL has trademarked the word "Super Bowl" and aggressively protects that trademark by doing things like sending cease and desist letters to churches who are having super bowl parties. however, they've taken the next step and are attempting to trademark the phrase "the big game".

of course, on the surface, this as dumb as donald trump trademarking the phrase "you're fired". i argued for trump, and i'll argue now that it just makes no sense to me to allow people or entities to trademark phrases that are already a part of the vernacular. also, from a business point, it seems to be a slap in the face of fans. i can at least kind of understand the trademarking of super bowl, since bars and such can make money off of the intellectual property of the NFL by advertising a "super bowl party"....which sounds a lot more fun than "a final game of the NFL post season party". which is what bars end up doing anyway.

but from a meta-perspective, this is a bit of evil genius by the NFL. think about it, if they are able to control the phrase "the big game" and make it only apply to football, it essentializes "the big game" to only apply to football. game 7 of world series or the NBA final can no longer be referred to "the big game". what this does is marginalize the other sports, while reinforcing the idea that football is the only sport that matters. as foucault will tell you, language matters, and clearly the NFL understands this point and is doing their damndest to apply this concept in their attempt to take over the world.

link via deadspin

p.s. yes i know i'm a douchebag for bringing in foucault into this.

sports quick hits

2007-02-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

these actually aren't so quick and i should probably just do a separate post on hardaway and kobe, but whatevs....you should be thankful that i'm even writing anything.

1) women are now going to receive the same prize money as men at wimbledon this year. this is most definitely a sign of progress, as the idea that men's tennis is as popular or entertaining as women's tennis has been obsolete for about ten years now. however, it should be noted that wimbledon is the last major to equalize pay for men and women, and so while we should feel good about this development, we should also say condescendingly to wimbledon officials, "it's about freakin' time".

2) scoop jackson has an in depth interview with tim hardaway concerning him hating gay people. it is interesting and taken at face value, it does seem that timmy is at least a little bit contrite. however, there are several things about this piece that make me skeptical. first, scoop even lays it out himself in the first paragraph

See, Timmy Hardaway and I grew up together, been tight for over 30 years, family linked through blood and love. So when the fallout unfolded after he said on Dan Le Batard's radio show that he hates gay people, I felt the right thing to do would be toss the man a life preserver.

to be fair, the interview is not a puff piece and jackson does well not to lob only softballs at hardaway. however, at the same time, jackson's intent, as stated above, was to give hardaway a chance to redeem himself. which leads us to hardaway's responses in this interview which is best summed up by this quote

Right now, learning. Learning that gay people are really no different than a lot of other people. Learning that they work hard, they do things in the community, they are responsible for building parks, rec centers, providing safe environments for kids, just things I had never associated with them before. [This last week] has opened up my eyes to the gay population and what they do. I'm getting a lot of knowledge about them that I didn't have. Which is going to make me a better person.

call me a cynical bastard, but this is publicist speak. and if you ever say hardaway when he was an analyst on ESPN, you know that the notion that tim came up with this statement himself is far fetched. but even if he did come up with that statement by himself, in the same interview this little exchange occured

But still you have issues with gays?
I still don't accept their lifestyle. No.
And you stand on that?
Yes. You know, we were brought up to not even condone or associate yourself with a gay person. If you knew of a gay person, disassociate yourself with them.
But Tim, you've been in Miami for years now and there is a strong and public gay community there. How have you still held on to that same mentality while living in Miami all of these years?
I just get away from it. I just walk away. I see it, I just go the other way, cross the street.
So at no point did you ever try to understand their lifestyle or way of life?
No. Never did. Never wanted to.
Do you want to now?
No. I don't want to … try to find some type of understanding of why they live the way they live or why they are the way they are. Maybe I could go to therapy, maybe someone can help me out with understanding [them], the sensitivity of the issue. But as a person, my beliefs are my beliefs. I don't have to condone it and I don't have to be around it. But I don't have to hate it either.

yeahhhhhh.....sorry to break the news timmy, but you still hate gay people. i've seen at least two major basketball writers (dammit, i can't find the other one), say that we should back off because he sounds really sorry about the whole flap, but i'm going to be one of those people who call BS on timmy. again, i'll use the black thing, if someone said they hated black people, and then later apologized, but said that they still stand by their assertion that black people suck, it wouldn't stand. the same should apply for the GLBT community.

3) a great essay on kobe, and his somewhat ambivalent place in a hip-hop driven NBA. the comments are even good

It was Iverson. He introduced and authentic and marketable new archetype that made MJ's blueprint of incessant smiles and Republican pandering obsolete. Kobe didnt find that out until it was too late. Great read. Back to the drawing board.

nice stuff...

4) this isn't sports related per se, but interesting nonetheless. a study says that playing video games results in better surgeons. i guess on the surface it makes sense, since playing video games develops hand eye coordination and concentration skills.

5) i don't know why i find this so funny. actually, i do. i'm going straight to hell.

p.s. almost forgot, what what in the butt

major announcement, re: britney playboy prediction

2007-02-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

i've been conspicuously quiet on all of this britney spears nonsense. i guess i feel that this is really not that different from any of her other bizarre behavior over the years. really, is shaving your head really that different from getting married to no talent ass clowns or flashing your vajayjay all over the place. you know, obviously these things are really bad ideas, but nothing that you can't fix with lawyers, wigs, or panties.

i did want to comment a little on the media coverage of britney's latest round of meltdowns. you're probably like me, you know that there are much more important things that britney shaving her head, but you just can't get enough of the stories. but really, is there a need to talk to the lady who owned the hair salon where she decided to go uncle fester on us?

anyways, my roommate k was commenting that she thought that much of the coverage was a bit unfair in that everything was couched in terms of how britney's behavior is inappropriate for a mother. as if mother's were supposed to stop going out and stop consuming alcohol after they give birth. it reinforces a patriarchal idea that motherhood = losing your identity as a sexual being. which of course all feeds in to the idea that it is ok for men to discard their wives after they give birth to kids and run off with some bimbo half their age. which is totally unfair. this notion is nothing new, but it is most definitely reinforced with everything going on with britney.

now don't get me wrong...i'm one of those people who very strongly believe that once you do have kids, that you do have to in fact, give up some things that someone without kids doesn't have to. britney doesn't have to party every night without underwear. and in fact, i don't think she should. however, the reification of britney has made us forget, that she is only 25 years old, and i know plenty of 25 year old who were just as screwed up, if not more so than britney. and it just seems real harsh to label a 25 year old the worst mother ever. curiously enough, all the talk about federline being a bad father and such has seemed to disappear. i know, she is much more famous and he's been out of the limelight for a while, but it does seem a bit unfair. seriously, you think justin timberlake doesn't knock out as much tail as possible...he hooks up with scarlett johannsen and jessica biel and nobody calls him a man-whore.

anyways, like other people, it seems that she is seeking help (again). and like any other person, i wish her the best in her rehab. maybe it's me, but it seems like no one is rooting for her to get through this. i know, rehab seems to be the generic public relations move and who knows how serious she is about cleaning herself up. but britney if you're reading this, get better, clean yourself up. the sooner you do that, the sooner you can get yourself into playboy.

the last time i brought this up, i said that she'd be in playboy by the end of 2008. like trying to figure out the cowboys chances of getting back to the super bowl, there is just too much turmoil right now to make any kind of good prediction. it seems that there are plenty of signs that favor my prediction, but at the same time, i never would have predicted that she'd go apeshit and shave her head for no reason. that said, i'm going to have to take the 2008 prediction off the board until i get further information about her cleaning herself up. it's like the whole ice caps melting and putting los angeles and new york under water. you know it is inevitable, and everything that we are doing in terms of climate control indicate that the situation is not getting any better. but we just have no idea when it is going to happen.

lastly, i'd like to offer an optimistic take on the shaved head. often times, we as humans feel the need to mark inner transformation with a physical transformation. i know that i've shaved my head plenty of times to mark transition periods. so maybe this britney felt that she would mark her independence from drugs, alcohol, bad men, or whatever it is she is going to rehab for, by shearing her locks. sure it's far fetched, but we've seen weirder things.

p.s. teaching yourself photoshop is a great way to procrastinate.

sports quick hits

2007-02-18T23:05:00.000-08:00

1) ESPN downsizes number eighty-eight. the rumor was that ESPN thought cocaine mike irvin was a bad public relations meltdown waiting to happen. on the one hand, i can't blame them, after all, this is the playmaker that we're talking about, on the other hand...well, there is no other hand because he was becoming unbearable as a football analyst.

2) the NBA all star festivities were this weekend, and a couple of things to note. first, i've said this before, and i'll say it again, how can anyone not like shaq.

deadspin put it the best, "who's gonna do this stuff after shaq retires?" also, i'd like to remind people that it shouldn't surprise that shaq can dance. after all, after hakeem, he is the most agile big man we've ever seen (and don't forget that shaq is toting 100 more pounds than the dream).

3) the dunk contest was actually lots of fun. of course, everyone is buzzing about dwight howard's sticker dunk. if you don't know what i'm talking about, press play below:

12 and a half freakin' feet. not to get all fanboy on you, but that's just sick. granted, he's a seven footer to start with, but man alive. what i really like is how creative the whole think was. think about it, he had to take the cheesy picture, get someone to photoshop it onto the sticker, go out and buy the sticker paper, print up the picture, and have someone get a tape measure for jameer nelson to emphasize the shtick. that my friends is good planning for a good comic bit. he really got jobbed on the scoring as he didn't advance to the final round. the sheer comedy value of the whole thing should have gotten him perfect tens all around. as if the fact that he placed a sticker higher at a height that is greater than two of me stacked on top of each other wasn't enough. however, i think that justice was served because after he put the sticker on the backboard, we were reminded during every subsequent dunk of the ridiculousness of his feat.

it also got me thinking a little bit and it's inspired me to start an official "rules of comedy". these rules are just things that are always funny. rule #1 of course is that monkeys in people's clothes is always funny.

rule number two of course was articulated perfectly on howard's sticker. rule #2....

please feel free to suggest more rules of comedy for my consideration

p.s. ironically, the best place on the web to find pictures of monkeys in people's clothes are animal rights websites that are trying to stop the (hilarious) practice of monkey's wearing people's clothes.

the ragin' asian goes to see Chuck D

2007-02-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

my cell phone camera sucks.

on thursday, i was able to go see the incredible, rhyme animal, the unpinnable...D! that is, chuck d, leader of the seminal political rap group public enemy. and seriously, if you didn't already know that, you should be ashamed of yourself. anyways, the good folks at the ucsb multicultural center brought him in to talk about a bunch of random things. he has a new book out i guess, but pleasantly enough, promotion of the book at the event was minimal. in fact, chuck d didn't even mention the book until the very end of the night.

anyways, i was there for the same reasons that anyone who is interested in popular culture and anyone who came of age in the mid eighties. but more than anything, i wanted to have one question answered. this question revolves around everyone's favorite clock wearing, viking helmeted hype man, flavor flav. you see everytime i saw flavor of love on VH1, i felt sad. i mean here was the man who taught me that 911 is a joke, and here he is, reduced to reality's own minstrel show. and i always, wondered, "man, i wonder what chuck d thinks of all of this?" well, he addressed the issue and i have to tell you the answer was somewhat surprising. i was expecting chuck to be disappointed and all of that stuff, but it turns out, my own disappointment with flav's behavior was somewhat misguided.

chuck's opinion basically boiled down to one of public enemy's greatest songs: don't believe the hype. according to chuck, what we saw was flav being flav, and the entity that we should direct our ire against is not flav, but VH1. and now that i think about this, it makes total sense. we all know that despite the moniker, reality tv is all but reality. it is heavily edited and while flav may seems wheels off, it is the way that the show is edited that makes it seem like flav perpetuates every bad stereotype of black people. in fact, chuck said that all of this was flav's own private joke on the television industry. for example, did you know that flavor flav has a girlfriend? her name is liz, and she apparently isn't happy about some of the stuff that went on during the show, but liz and chuck are still an item. in fact, chuck said that flav is mocking all of those stereotypes by even exaggerating his behavior. i'm a little bit skeptical of the whole meta-satire angle, but since chuck d probably knows flavor flav than i do, i've come to the conclusion that i have no reason not to believe him.

anyways, i'm satisfied with this answer and i can now restore flavor flav to hip-hop visionary and revolutionary.

one more flavor related item that was discussed was his appearance on strange love, the brigitte nielsen/flavor flav show. the show made it seem that chuck was put off by brigitte, particularly at a PE concert. chuck said that he had no problem with brigitte being on stage, and the only people he was pissed off at was the tv crew who didn't adhere to the guidelines that he and flav set down before the show started. the way he talked about brigitte seemed very genuine. i believe his exact words were "he crazy, she crazy, so they're perfect for each other".

anyways, other than that, it was what you would expect from a talk by chuck d. he talked about politics, the music industry, and racism. one more interesting anecdote that he related was that he grew up in the same neighborhood as eddie and charlie murphy. he was discussing charlie's new found success, and he said that charlie was always the funniest guy in the room, but "the only thing was, he'll rob you too." good stuff.

tim hardaway hates gay people

2007-02-14T23:14:00.000-08:00

no really, he said so himself. his quote on a radio show:

You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.

as i said before just two posts previous to this one, here's an opportunity to confront the issue of sports/homophobia/masculinity head on. imagine if a pro-athlete said that he hated people of color...oh wait, john rocker did and i don't think it turned out good for him. let's see if the same thing happens to hardaway.

again, i'll reiterate my point: sports writers and sports franchises would have you think that sports is ok with gay people in it. this quote shows that some athletes clearly aren't. so let's really write about it and ask athletes why they hate gay people so much. however, i suspect that hardaway will get a pass on this. which is stupid, since it is essentially the same as someone saying that they hate black people.

lastly, i find the last part of hardaway's quote amusing. by definition, if homosexuality shouldn't be in the world, then we can infer from that statement that it shouldn't be in the US. there's no need to tack on the united states part at the end.

three posts in one day, man i must really not want to do any real work.

what's next, short round for commissioner?

2007-02-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

the dallas cowboys just hired dat nguyen to the very confusing title of defensive quality control/linebackers coach. the linebackers coach title i get, but defensive quality control? once upon a time i was a quality control person at a robot factory (don't ask) and all i did was look over circuit boards to make sure that all the right transistors were in the right place. so maybe dat will get to look over defensive players before games to make sure all their junk is in the right place.

but i digress, i'm pretty sure that this makes the first vietnamese person ever hired to be a coach in the NFL. unlike their black colleagues, there is little fanfare accompanying this announcement. i understand that the history of black players in the league is different, but still, an milestone of sorts for the vietnamese community. i guess norm chow was the first person to break the asian color line, but still, come on people! this is a historic moment!

not that i'm mad, cuz i'm really not. but i do think that this is a nice illustration of how asians are perceived as being more assimilated than other racial groups. this is even more of a paradox because of the fact that in general, asians are stereotyped as being decidedly un-athletic. this is a fading stereotype with asians excelling in fringe sports like ice skating or skateboarding, but again my point is, this is an interesting moment in the NFL, but it is not perceived as one because nguyen is part of a racial group that is treated differently from other racial groups.

anyways, as a person of vietnamese descent, i am pretty happy that this has happened. dat nguyen doesn't get his due as a trailblazer for asian-americans, being one of the first to play in a major team sport in the US. so let me be one of the first to hail his contributions to asian-american history.

breaking the silence

2007-02-13T22:46:00.000-08:00

the title of that post is much more dramatic than it needs to be. anyways, as you know i am a terrible blogger these days, i've really missed the window on the superbowl, but i had nothing different to say than anyone else...game sucked, commercials sucked, prince rocked, and rex grossman sucked. but i did want to weigh in on the whole john amaechi coming out of the closet thing. if you don't follow sports, a former NBA player, (and i use the term "player" loosely as he was in the NBA for all of five years averaging a whopping 6.2 points a game) came out of the closet, told everyone he was gay, is going on a book tour, etc. etc. again i have nothing new to add to the usual commentary, but i did want to point out a couple of things about the coverage. mainly, that this all sounds familiar. like other forms of journalism, sports journalism has seen a marked decline in quality and originality, (see anna nicole smith coverage). after amaechi came out, you heard the exact same arguments....that america is ready for a gay pro athlete, that current players would be okay with it, except in the showers (what a ridiculous argument), that so and so would not be okay with it, etc. etc. etc.

my point is, that the way this stuff is covered prevents any kinds of real examination of the issue. why haven't any of the major columnists pointed out that gays in women sports are muc much much more accepted than in male sports. why don't they make the connection that it is because of the hyper masculine discourse that is so important to sports. why don't they talk about the fact that sports has an extremely bad track record with homophobia. why don't they make the connection between the fact that most of the players who most violently oppose gays in the lockerrooms are all christian. why don't they say, that homophobia is rooted deeply in several variations of ridiculous religious laws. why don't they call for the NBA to make a definitive statement that they would welcome any gay players and would sanction any players or teams who discriminated or harrassed gay players?

do you see what i'm getting at? it really does us no good to publish these stories or write about them unless good questions and discussion arise from it. but the mainstream press can't be bothered with this kind of thing. all they can do is cover the sensational moment that comes to pass after the initial announcement, then the columnists spout out the same tired cliches that we heard when that guy in the NFL came out.

i'm kind of whining, i know, but it's become harder for me to take any kind of sports journalism seriously. maybe the lines between entertainment world, the commercial world, and the sports worlds have become so blurred that basically, i feel like following professional sports is like following proctor and gamble. the point is, ESPN.com should let me write a column about this whole thing. but since i'm such a terrible blogger, this will never come to pass. this post was pointless. i'm gonna stop right now.

don't ask, just enjoy

2007-02-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

cats.

link via boingboing

the official ragin' asian super bowl prediction

2007-02-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

every fiber of my football instincts tell me that the line on this game should be at least 10. what we have here is a matchup of people overrated because of the past. the bears have a great defense, but not a historic one. they were much better at the beginning of the year because they had two of their best players not injured, mike brown and tommie harris. of course, they are injured now and that's why we don't see the 60 minute lights out performance that the truly dominant defensive teams give.

the colts offense isn't as good as it used to be. sure, every now and then they'd put up a 38 point game, but there were some games where peyton and company struggled to get over twenty points. now everyone seems to think that the no huddle can do no wrong. these guys aren't even close to teams like the 2000 rams or heck even the broncos the year before.

so what does this all mean, i guess it means we have to take a look at the other phases of the game. the bears offense appears to be putting up points, but thomas jones and cedric benson are decidedly unappealing. the colts defense on the other hand seems to be playing really really well in the playoffs, so the colts have the upper hand in this matchup. special teams, well that's a no brainer since devin hester will force the colts to punt away, giving the bears field position. so it seems to me that we're all tied here and that i should go with my gut.

but then i got an email from an old college buddy who is the single biggest bears fan i've ever known. it reminded me of many a sunday spent nursing a hangover, while watching curtis conway, neal anderson and jim harbaugh play to full stadiums. these teams were no good, but chicago fans' enthusiasm for their team never wavered. y'all remember that saturday night live skit, the superfans, with george wendt, mike meyers, and joe mantegna? well, one morning in chicago, i was flipping through tv stations and i ran across the mike ditka show. now keep in mind, at this point, ditka was no longer the coach. anyways, at the end of the show, they open it up to questions from the audience, and the first guy is this 300 pound polish dude, with a heavy chicago accent. he's wearing a jacket and a hat with about 15,000 bears pins all over them. it turns out, the superfans are real. seriously, there really wasn't much different between what i saw that morning and what you see on saturday night live. what is my point? good question. i guess in a game that has me analytically vexed, that i'm just going to go with my heart. chicago is one of america's greatest city. it blows new york and san francisco out of the water. i know that i'm usually an advocate of pure rational analysis of sports based on numbers...but ahhhh, screw it, the city of big shoulders has always been good to me. bears 34, colts 21.

now we know why tony dungy wants to beat the bears so bad

2007-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

it's because he may be a homophobe! he is apparently scheduled to be honored by an organization called the Indiana Family Institute. progressives probably have had their radar tripped as any group with a name like that is sure to be very anti-gay. lo and behold, they are. in any case, let's wildly speculate....young gay men are much more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the country...tony dungy's young son recently committed suicide...tony dungy hates gay people...i'm not saying that one thing caused the other, but i'm just saying...

anyways, of course, i have no kind of real evidence to say tony dungy's son killed himself because he was gay and his dad hated him for it. i'm sure that there are several other reasons why tony dungy is responsible for his son's death. either way, it is sad to see someone who we thought was a good person, take such a hateful stance by being part of an organization that actively seeks to oppress gay people.

what is kinda disturbing to me, is that this is getting no real play in the press. the only place i've seen this is on the alternative sports blogs, deadspin and with leather. seriously, isn't this a big story? here's a guy who everyone seems to acknowledge is a great guy, and he's taking a very controversial political stand here. why hasn't anyone asked him if his son was gay? ok, that was a non-sequiter, but seriously, why hasn't anyone asked him his stance on gay issues? i suspect that the NFL is putting the kibosh on all of this as not to detract from their premier event, but still, i'll join the alternative sports blogs by saying, if tony dungy is doing this, that makes him an a-hole.

for those of you who don't understand the very very bad pun in the title of this post, click here.

bonus NFL douchebaggery! the NFL just told a church who was going to have a fundraiser by having a super bowl party after the morning mass, that they can't! as i've mentioned before, the NFL aggressively protects its right to print money, and if that means that st. barts church in BFE, indiana can't repave their parking lot, well...someone has to pay for the lunch buffet at the owner's meetings.

fun with lakers' quotes

2007-01-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

kobe on his one game suspension for elbowing manu ginobli in the face:

I haven't seen a precedence for this. There's unintentional elbows that take place in a game all the time.

hey kobe, that because there is no precedence for this...however, i suspect that there is a precedent.

phil jackson' reaction (E, you're going to love this one):

I have been a little disappointed with how Kobe has been treated as a premier player

in other words, phil just acknowledged that his entire career is built upon players getting a ton of calls that they probably shouldn't have.

phil: ok kobe, just make sure that you're standing close enough to your defender so that when he exhales, the carbon dioxide that he expels hits you on the arm, that should be enough to draw the foul. this worked for jordan at least six times a game.
kobe: but phil, i don't want to cause any kind of incidence!

a little something to get you ready for super sunday

2007-01-28T23:52:00.000-08:00

i don't know about you, but i'm pretty excited about this year's halftime entertainment, the artist currently known as prince. aside from being a sexy m-effer, he's got a ton of hits that i know the words to and generally enjoy listening to. and if i have to sit through any kind of bs halftime show, it may as well be of something kinda cool. anyways, one thing that you probably know about prince is that he kicks total ass on the guitar. fredo found this clip of prince playing with tom petty, jeff lyne and dhani harrison, at the rock and roll hall of fame induction ceremony playing "while my guitar gently weeps". it's bizarre enough to see prince on stage with tom petty, but then when starts his solo, prepare to be blown away (fast forward to 3:34 if you just want to hear his purpleness' solo). in musician speak, he unleashes some pretty tasty chops, and pretty much steals the show. anyways, enjoy!

some thoughts on black coaches

2007-01-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

it's been a good couple of days for black coaches. first, not only do we get to see the first black coach in the super bowl, we get to see two first black coaches in the super bowl. further more, mike tomlin, a 31 year old black person, was hired as the coach of the pittsburgh steelers, one of the most prestigious coaching gigs out there.

jemele hill of espn's page 2 wrote an interesting column today about how tomlin's hiring is actually more indicative of progress than the lovie smith and tony dungy coaching in the super bowl. her argument, which i find to be very convincing, is that this is one of the first times that a black coach as gotten a sweet coaching gig, instead of a crappy one that basically set them up for failure (see art shell in oakland, and dennis green in arizona). for years, these upper echelon positions have been reserved only for white coaches, and tomlin should be remembered as the one who broke this barrier. while i'm totally convinced that the steelers are as talented as hill seems to think, and this has actually happened before when tony dungy inherited an extremely good offense in indy, but overall, she's right. good for the steelers, good for tomlin. in any case, it would seem that russ grimm wasn't happy with the decision.

the other thing i wanted to bring up is the way that the general media has been covering the smith/dungy thing. like every should be, everyone is celebrating saying, this is a great moment. i'm in agreement here. what i'm not in agreement is the hook that many of the writers are using when they are saying something to the effect of "this proves that african americans can coach at the highest level in professional football." maybe i'm being too sensitive, but i kinda feel like the implication of this line of thinking is that before, we weren't 100% sure that the reason there hasn't been any good black coaches was due to something other than racism. put another way, the conventional thinking implied is that up to this point, all the talk about african americans being inherently incapable may have had something to it, since no black coach had been to the super bowl before. but now we don't have to consider that anymore. i know, it is a semantic thing, but one that i think is important nonetheless, but to me it would make more sense to go with the angle of "racism starting to crumble in the NFL coaching ranks."

this of course is consistent with the general sports philosophy and race philosphy, as dungy and smith are being protrayed as "hard working" and "really nice" guys, which is code for "they're just like us white people." it is also reflective of the myth of meritocracy as people can now claim "if you just work hard enough, it doesn't matter what color you are."

of course, what i'm really afraid of is the next logical step: people saying, "well we had two black coaches in the super bowl, that must mean we've solved the problem of the lack of african americans in head coaching positions and front office positions.", kinda like how a lot of people think that racism ended after the civil rights movement. there's still plenty of problems with the number of people of color at the top of sports, and basically every social institution.

supplemental reading: here's a column by bomani jones that cites an economics article that shows that black coaches have to be better than white coaches to keep their jobs. good stuff.

some random football thoughts

2007-01-21T23:21:00.000-08:00

1) lovie smith and tony dungy represent the first time black head coaches have faced each other in the super bowl. yes, this certainly qualifies as progress. good for the nfl in this area.

2) a quote from peyton manning after today's game

I don't get into monkeys and vindication. I don't play that card. I know how hard I worked this season, I know how hard I worked this week.

almost every other quarterback in the nfl says, "i know how hard WE worked this season." what a douchebag.

3) as much as i hate to admit it, peyton, like he was for much of the season, kicked complete ass in the second half. seriously, the patriots defense just couldn't keep up with him. it's ironic that he had a kinda down year statistically speaking, cuz this year is the best i've ever seen him play.

4) for the record, i thought that the bears and the pats would win.

5) vegas has penciled in indy as a 7 point favorite. i've gone back and forth on this one. on the one hand, rex grossman is still rex grossman, and peyton manning is peyton manning. very often these close games come down to the qb matchup and the bears are sorely outmanned at this position. but at the same time, the bears did shut down the league's best offense today, and they also were able to beat them despite the best quarterback in the league this year having a decent game. right now i'm leaning towards the bears, who i clearly want to win, but the only thing from making a definitive pick right now is the whole afc vs. nfc thing. the afc is really a superior conference in every way, so i'm not sure the bears have the horses to keep up. what i think it'll come down to is the colts defense. if they put together a decent game, then the colts should win. but like i said, i'm kinda torn right now with that many points. i'll make a pick later, but like i said, i'm leaning towards the bears.

pop culture quick hits

2007-01-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

i'm mulling over whether or not to return to blogging full time, and to be honest, it's not looking good kids, but here are a couple of things that i wanted to bring up.

1) newsweek gets its hand on the much maligned oj book and freaking publishes it! wasn't just a month ago that the world was just hammering judith regan and fox for exploiting the whole situation? i just think it is real hypocritical that no one is is accusing newsweek for exploiting the situation. someone tell me how judith regan publishing the book for money is different than newsweek publishing the chapter to sell magazines?

2) warren beatty got some kind of lifetime achievement award last night at the golden globes. is it just me or is warren beatty one of the great overrrated actors of all time. ok, reds was pretty good, but was heaven can wait really that good? um, no it wasn't. dick tracy? bulworth? bugsy? i mean those were ok, but nothing on the level of a really good movie. sure maybe he did some decent stuff in the 70s, but nothing on the level of an al pacino or a dustin hoffman or a jack nicholson. i don't know how they choose lifetime achievement awards, but i should be put in charge of the process.

3) so virtually every best of 2006 list has tv on the radio at or near the top. i've recently acquired the album and all i can say is that i feel officially out of touch with today's music scene. can anyone explain to me why they're so great?

maybe if he were married to baby spice

2007-01-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

i find it curious that everyone seems to think that the arrival of david beckham is going to renew interest in professional soccer. they're even calling him the next coming of pele. not that i know that much about soccer, but i'm sure that pele fans are not amused with the comparison.

anyways, aside from the whole "really good international soccer players only come to america after they're washed up theory," let me again remind everyone that sports, particularly professional spectator sports is a male domain. i'm not saying it's right, but the fact is for a sport to take off in the states, it has to be popular with males. even further, it has to be really popular with young males. the best example i can give you is skateboarding. i could cite some studies that have found that the skating culture, a pseudo punk/masculine, made it very marketable and that it made it fit in with existing sports culture, but instead i'll offer you a simpler explanation. tony hawk popularized skatebaording. why? he was the best skatebaorder (at the time) andhis video game kicked ass, two things that young males really dig. now i can almost assure you that the average 15-30 year old male is not excited about david beckham playing in the states. maybe if rolandinho or someone like that came over, but not david beckham. in fact, the main demographic that is interested in david beckham coming over are females, who enjoy his good looks, and are interested in the fact that he is married to posh spice. if you ask me that is not a recipe for success in the states.

i know i'm biased because i'm on record as not enjoying professional soccer, but just because i'm biased doesn't mean i'm not right.

more playoffs

2007-01-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

apparently, according to the following comment, erik wants to play:

Bob you're killing me.

I wont' have a chance to post before the Saturday games start, so here are your guaranteed picks for this weekend's NFL games. I'd like to dedicate these picks to Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

BAL (-3.5) over ind - I can't wait to see Peyton Manning weeping like Tony Romo.

phi (+5) over NO - I think NO wins but not by 5. Philly has the firepower to keep up with these guys, particularly since they're rocking Jeff Garcia.

sea (+9) over CHI - This line is way too big. Chicago wins, of course.

SD (-5) over ne - Now here's a blowout.

bye (-17.5) over DET - Detroit wins, of course, but not by this much.

erik's logic can be so problematic sometimes. according to his logic, the bye is favored against detroit, yet in his comment he says that he's picking detroit to win but not covering the spread. when an underdog wins, by definition, it covers the spread. this is why erik sucks as picking football games. anyways, this is how i see everything going this week.

ind (+3.5) over BAL (o/u - 42)
it's going to be close and the ravens have really proven themselves to be worthy of this spot. but, there's only ben one team with a lights out defense and almost no offense to make a deep run in the post season. of course it was the ravens, but i think peyton wil come through. also the line is now -4, so i'm going the opposite of what most people are thinking. at the same time however, home teams in this round of the playoffs almost always win. something tells me to take the over here as well.

NO (-5) over phi (o/u - 49)
i just think that philadelphia is overmatched on offense here. this one is going to be shootout city. it's going to be like the dallas game, except that the eagles with put up much more of a fight. over over over.

sea (+9) over CHI (o/u - 37)
erik is right, that is way too many points when someone named rex grossman is your quarterback. i want to like this version of the bears, but i have decided i don't. however, i'm not worried since the NFL will exert its influence to make sure that the saints get int the super bowl. after all, as ford or chevy or whichever car company runs those stupid ads....this is our country. gimme the over here as well.

SD (-5) over ne (o/u - 46.5)
i fear the wiliness of belichick a little bit here, but the chargers are phenomenal against the spread this season, no sense in not taking them. over over. there's going to be a lot of offense.

boise state (-20) over DET (o/u - 40)
seriously, were you that impressed with florida's win over the buckeyes? me neither, and i'm pretty damned sure that the lions couldn't beat ohio state, therefore, boise state gets the nod here.

as bono said, "for the reverend martin luther king....sing it!"

bobby the gook season 3, end of season wrap up + playoff picks

2007-01-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

well, no sense in putting it off any longer, here are the final tallies for title of football genius:

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	126-122-6	(.508)	$2150	+$730
Fredo	142-106-6	(.573)	$1265	-$65

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	101-93-6	(.521)
Erik	89-103-6	(.464)

as we can all see, after a mini-slump fredo went 10-6 to finish up an astonishing 36 games over .500. me on the other hand finished off with a modest week of 9-7 to finish 4 games over .500. now of course in real gambling terms, finishing at .500 actually means that you would lose money since the house always gets its rake. the general consensus is that to win money you need to get at least 55% of your bets right to finish positive. so even by that measure fredo seems to have done very well. however, as we know you would have to be stupid to bet on every single football game every week. in the vegas round, fredo also finished very strong. he ended up winning $565. that's a lot of bob bucks but not enough to bring fredo back to even. even so, however, he finished the season at only -65. in the big picture that is one freaking fun weekend in vegas. me however, finished pretty strong, winning $475 to end the year at +$730, which is an even more fun weekend in vegas. so it would seem that in a sense, fredo and i tied for the title of official football genius of the ragin' asian blog. however, the truth is, we're both football geniuses. fredo and i finished in first place in the santa barbara wide football pool each pocketing a nice bit of change for doing what comes naturally to both of us. damnit we're good.

as an uninteresting sidenote, erik did the best he's done in weeks by going 8-8 to finish 14 games under .500. it takes a little sting out of losing to him in fantasy football, but both fredo and i had pretty low expectations for erik at the beginning of the season, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that i beat him by six percentage points.

overall i'm very pleased with the way that the season turned out. after last year's debaucle, i started to question whether or not my luck and knowledge had maybe run out. i think we can all see that last year was an abberation and that fredo and i are actually still pretty damn good at this thing of ours called handicapping. erik, however, should stick to hockey.

anyways, here are this weekends picks. no money, no contests or points, just picking for fun here.

IND (-7) over kc (o/u - 51)
last year, road teams went 3-1 in the wildcard round, but like i said, last year was an anomaly. peyton will take care of business at home. the defense will still get gashed by LJ, but not trent green. i'm a little worried since the colts aren't blowing people out like they were last year, so they might keep it close, but still, i think peyton is still playing great football this year. and give me the under.

dal (+3) over SEA (o/u - 47)
yeah, i know, there's no reason to have any optimism for the cowboys. but what did you expect me to do? plus i have to take at least one underdog. also i'm gimme the over - big time.

NE (-8.5) over nyj (o/u - 38)
the pats are going to roll like you would not believe. the jets are the biggest mirage in the NFL. most of their wins against crappy teams, and chad pennington at qb. no thank you. i like the over here as well as i think NE will score 30 by themselves.

PHI (-7) over nyg (o/u - 46)
this is the easiest money this week. the giants are horrible. sure they beat the skins last week but look at this team. coughlin, shockey, eli, plaxico, and tiki. this line should be at least ten. there's just no way that the giants are even going to sniff victory. under as well.

in the next few days, we'll go over our pre season over/under picks.

bobby the gook season 3, week 17

2006-12-29T20:17:00.000-08:00

well, here it is folks, the last week of the season and what better way to mourn/celebrate the death of james brown, gerald ford, and saddam hussein then picking football games! it just goes to show you, that the sports/entertainment complex has us so thoroughly distracted that we (meaning me) could really give a crap about the supreme irony of the execution of one of the world's most notorious dictators being used as a distraction for one of the worst military quagmires since vietnam. don't get me wrong, i appreciate the irony, i just don't give a crap cuz there are over 200 different NFL playoff scenarios still possible in this last week that i need to think about so that i can win imaginary money on my virtual soapbox. it's depressing isn't it. anyways, even more depressing is how both fredo and i fared last week. fredo went 6-10, while i didn't do much better at 7-9. erik as always sucked too, going 6-10. what isn't depressing is how much ass i kicked in the vegas round. i won $320, while fredo, despite going crazy with his bets still lost 60 bucks. here are the standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	117-115-6	(.504)	$1675	+$255
Fredo	132-100-6	(.569)	$790	-$630

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	92-86-6	(.517)
Erik	81-95-6	(.460)

it's amazing how fredo is 32 games above five hundred, and equally amazing that erik is virtually guaranteed a losing season, just like a certain midwestern-leonine-mascotted-professional-football-team is every year. anyways, this week's board is pretty tough and given the fact that underdogs have ruled the year, expect lots of dogs from me and fredo. the main thing to look for however, is that i need to at least tread water to finish above .500, which is all i really am hoping for. let's finish this. home team in caps and numbers from caesars.

nyg (-2.5) over WAS (o/u - 42.5)
i hate myself for taking the giants. they are a disaster in every sense of the word. eli does suck, tiki's retirement was a distraction, and coughlin did lose control of his team. but the redskins are still the redskins. seriously, daniel snyder was trying so hard to be the ultimate evil genius combo of mark cuban and jerry jones that you know he's gotta be looking to sell the team at this point. the worse part of this is that if the giants win, they'll almost guarantee themselves a playoff berth.

BAL (-9.5) over buf (o/u - 35)
it's tough to take such big favorites, and despite the bills showing some signs of life late this season, i think that with home field still a possibility for the ravens, that they'll take care of business at home.

CIN (-6) over pit (o/u - 44.5)
this game troubles me. on the one hand, i think that the steeler's secondary isn't going to be able to handle chad johnson and carson palmer. on the other hand, bill cowher is the kind of coach that can probably actually convince his team to play for pride and all of that kind of mumbo jumbo. still i just think that the bengals are a better team, and are at least a touchdown better than the steelers.

DAL (-13) over det (o/u - 44)
i have a couple of theories working here. first, the cowboys are the kind of team to kick total ass the last week to give me false hope for the playoffs. they really blew it last week in the loss to the eagles. the really bad thing about it was i knew from the very beginning of last week that the cowboys would lose that game. just goes to show you that coaches are extremely overrated. but bad management trumps bad coaching, and the detroit lions are the single most mismanaged sports team in football. i see multiple defensive scores for the cowboys in this one.

HOU (-4) over cle (o/u - 38.5)
wouldn't it be awesome if somehow the loser of this game was forced to fold its franchise? this game makes me like football a little less.

IND (-9) over mia (o/u - 42)
i find it amusing that saban is rumored to be leaving for the alabama job after the season. this after two years of football scribes fellating him for putting together two sub-.500 teams. why is it that people love hard ass white coaches. it's like they yearn for the day when older white authority figures kept black people in line with disciplinary tactics such as firehoses or lynchmobs. the crazy thing is that for the same reasons, you would think that they would also love laid back black coaches like art shell or lovie smith, but they don't. shell sucks so that's no big deal, but lovie smith, how can you not think this guy is a genius.

kc (-2.5) over JAX (o/u - 36.5)
jack del rio = nick saban lite.

stl (-2.5) over MIN (o/u - 44)
let's take a minute to appreciate how badly the rams have fallen off since their super bowl win all those years ago. they had probably the best offense in the history of the NFL, and now i think that there are maybe two or three of those guys left in place. maybe if kurt warner doesn't hurt his thumb, then maybe it is the rams who might have played the role that the patriots ended up playing.

car (-3) over NO (o/u - 37)
still taking the panthers on the road, plus i'd be really surprised to see drew brees play more than two series.

oak (+12) over NYJ (o/u - 34)
part of me wants to say that the raiders lay the biggest stinkbomb to put an exclamation on one of the worst seasons ever for a once-storied franchise, but that's just too many points for a mediocre jets team.

atl (+8) over PHI (o/u - 43)
i would have taken the eagles earlier in the week when they were -6.

TB (-3) over sea (o/u - 36.5)
i guess that the seahawks are resting starters? who cares, there's no way in hell the seahawks get out of the wildcard game. parity is a cruel mistress.

TEN (-3) over ne (o/u - 43)
at this rate, the titans might never lose a game while vince young is playing. but seriously, what do the patriots have to play for?

DEN (-10.5) over sfo (o/u - 38)
the broncos got completely lucky last week, but that's the kind of thing that actually really helps the broncos i think. cutler has another win under his belt to boost his confidence, and home field of course helps. it also helps that the niners are still a wide reciever, a quarterback, and half a defense from being any good.

SD (-14) over ari (o/u - 44)
the only thing that worries me about this game is that it will be over by half time. but the chargers have been pretty awesome against the spread this year.

gb (-3) over CHI (o/u - 36)
what i hate about this game is how everyone is trying to play it up as brett favre's last game, when i'm willing to bet anything that he'll be back next year. certainly, he breaks marino's all-time td record next season. it almost doesn't make any sense for him retire. nobody remembers jordan half assing it with the wizards, and no one remembers willie mays sucking ass with the mets. people do however, remember how awesome their career numbers were.

money bets coming later, but expect both fredo and i to kick it up a notch here in the last week of the season. i'm planning on making at least 1000 bob bucks worth of bets and i'm pretty sure that we'll see fredo bet the farm and then some to try and catch up.

bobby the gook season 3, week 16

2006-12-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

and down the homestretch we come. i tell you, in terms of the whole year, i'm more confused as i've ever been about who the good teams and the bad teams are. here is a list of teams that i think are legitimate contenders to win the super bowl. san diego and chicago, and really, chicago is just a rex grossman meltdown from being a one and done team. every other team may as well be the dillon panthers as far as i'm concerned. while it makes for an exciting end to the season, it sure does make for a bunch of uninspiring possibilities for the playoffs. i mean the eagles are still in this thing, even after losing their best two players from last year. how is this possible? and how is this a good thing? it all just goes to show you that there are probably too many teams in the league right now. i've beat this drum before, but with the realization that the houston texans passed up on reggie bush, i think it's safe to say that their presence along with the browns only hurts the league. can anyone name anything positive that comes with having the browns or the texans. contraction is the best idea for this league right now. anyways, time to step down from my soapbox to inform you that i totally kicked everyone's freakin' ass last week. i went a sterling 12-4 against a tough slate. fredo meanwhile has his first really really bad week of the season and clocked in at 6-10. erik, as usual brought up the rear and finished 4-11. not only did he stink up my blog for another week, he also forgot to pick the ten/jax game. seriously, do i have to keep track of his picks anymore. despite my good week, i'm probably too far behind to catch fredo in the overall standings. however, two things to note. i finally cracked .500 which does wonders for my ego. second and more importantly, i did really well in the vegas round last week winning 450 bucks including a $120 parlay while fredo lost $250. i think this is of interest because if i know my good friend fredo at all, my guess is that we will get to see a flurry of crazy bets and parlays. if there's ever a time where fredo's clutch gambling ability will be tested, it is now. lastly, i'm also close to being even in the vegas round which would also make me and my ego fairly happy after such a lousy start to the season. anyways, here are the current standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	110-106-6	(.509)	$1355	-$65
Fredo	126-90-6	(.583)	$850	-$570

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	85-77-6	(.525)
Erik	75-85-6	(.469)

i'm in texas with the parentals right now, so i'm stuck in dial-up internet access hell. these picks are probably going to really suck since i haven't had any real chance to do any kind of research, but as always, numbers from caesar's, home team in caps.

GB (-3.5) over min (o/u - 37)
it's always good to see a young good looking black quarterback with a cool name like tavarius to get the start for the vikes, but it seems that the packers are playing a little harder in case brett favre dies in the next two games. by the way, i have this theory that the packers are completely unconcerned about winning and are going to do whatever they can do to get brett favre the 8 tds he needs to break marino's record. that way, he'll retire and they can finally start trying to rebuild.

kc (-7) over OAK (o/u - 36)
the chiefs fighting for their playoff lives coupled with an oakland team that has packed it in for the winter spells larry johnson scoring a whole lot. something that is also important about this game is that it is a lot of league's championship week. and i think if you're still alive and have larry johnson going against LT, i think you have a pretty decent chance.

BUF (-4.5) over ten (o/u - 36.5)
i could go either way here. both of these teams seem like they have young qbs that are incrementally figured it out. so i figured i'd just take the home team with the better defense. but on the other hand, i can totally see that vince young got his bad game out of his system last week and they still freaking won. maybe he's got a horseshoe shoved up his ass, but i'd stay away from this one if i were you.

no (+3) over NYG (o/u - 47.5)
strahan is back so that worries me. actually, a lot of things about this game worries me. new orleans has clinched their division and the giants are the desperate team. however, i think that the saints are still gunning hard for that first round bye.

ATL (-6.5) over car (o/u - 42)
with or without weinke, the panthers are hands down the most disappointing team of the year. i heard john clayton say it on sportscenter, "the panthers have lost their identity," which i couldn't have siad better myself. last year, they had a great running game with a game breaking wide receiver and suffocating defense. this year, they're just inconsistent.

was (+2.5) over STL (o/u - 43)
ummmmm...this is another game that i have no idea about so i'll just take the points.

ind (-9.5) over HOU (o/u - 47.5)
i'm really surprised that this line isn't up to 13 or 14 yet. i can't remember the last time the texans covered against the colts.

bal (+3.5) over PIT (o/u - 36)
similar situation to the saints where the ravens have clinched the division and are unlikely to improve on their playoff seeding with the colts and the chargers ahead of them. that said, i don't know if mcnair is going or not. either way, i think that big ben is going to have a bad day against the ravens defense.

tb (+3) over CLE (o/u - 36)
no idea. taking the points.

DET (+4.5) over chi (o/u - 42)
no idea, but i figure that with chicago having sewn up homefield, and with detroit at home, that maybe we have a super low scoring game. seriously, i hate picking games at the end of the season.

ne (+2.5) over JAX (o/u - 37)
don't know about this line, but i freakin' nailed that jags pick last week. anyways, i'll reiterate, the jags are not for real and they probably won't beat the pats who i think are still probably a legit playoff contender.

SFO (-4.5) over ari (o/u - 45.5)
is the NFC west crazy or what. it looks like 8-8 is going to win that division. and with last weeks win over the seahawks, man why wouldn't the niners be the favorite?

cin (+3) over DEN (o/u - 44.5)
i don't like picking against the broncos at home, but did you guys see the bengals game last week. peyton was fantastic in that game. i mean seriously, there was nothing that the bengals could do. jay cutler is no peyton manning.

sd (-5) over SEA (o/u - 46.5)
i waffled on this one a lot. one the one hand, it seems like the chargers are due for a letdown and that the seahawks are a more desperate team. but the chargers still haven't clinched homefield for the playoffs yet, so they'll keep the heat coming. and the seahawks will have blown winning the worst division in football.

phi (+7) over DAL (o/u - 46.5)
i am envisioning a much closer game than vegas does. as i've said before, i fear the eagle. the cwoboys defense hasn't been all that lately, but i think that big bill will get the troops together and get them to play better. but i think that this will be a low scoring affair with the cowboys winning by 4 or 5.

MIA (-2.5) over nyj (o/u - 36.5)
seriously, was there really any need to schedule another christmas day game? whatever.

ok, that's it for now folks. i'll get the money bets in a little later. hope everyone has a nice xmas.

bobby the gook season 3, week 15

2006-12-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

i think it's time we took some time to acknowledge the season that fredo is having. last fredo extended his streak of double digits wins to three by going a more than stellar 12-4. even after getting 11 games the previous two weeks he somehow managed to actually improve last week. the downside to this is that yours truly went 11-5 and lost ground. not that it matters cuz right now, fredo is just like the san diego chargers and LT, we know they're going to win alot, but we're just sticking around now to see how many touchdowns he can score. erik on the other hand is letting his true sorry colors show and finished in a distant third with only 9 wins. but i can't talk much since he ended my fantasy season last week. eff him. anyways, i'm getting closer to .500 which is the goal for me right now. on the other hand, the money round is getting a little more interesting as i managed to make $220 last week, while fredo only made $80, most of it on a three team parlay. anyways, here are the standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	98-102-6	(.490)	$905	-$515
Fredo	120-80-6	(.600)	$1100	-$320

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	73-73-6	(.500)
Erik	71-74-6	(.490)

anyways, let's get on with it since there's a game in about three hours.

SEA (-9.5) over sfo (o/u - 38)
the niners aren't looking so hot these days, but neither do the seahawks. the seahawks are most definitely a better team and i'm just guessing that the hawks roll at home here. also, how crappy must it be for shaun alexander to only have one of the glamour records, most touchdowns in a season, for not even a full year. man LT is good.

dal (-3.5) over ATL (o/u - 43)
this one makes me nervous because despite the debaucle of last sunday night, the falcons are still the more desperate team. they aren't in charge of their division, so they really need to win out to make it. however, i'm hoping that parcells and his big FUPA can straighten out the cowboys and make them realize that they pretty much need to win out to win the division. so that makes them desperate in their own way. on a personal note, i'm getting a little nervous with how well the eagles are playing. also, saturday games are completely stupid.

nyj (+3) over MIN (o/u - 41)
i actually think that the jets are the better team, but i fear the mini-trap here. at the same time, i guess i could be getting sucked in by their win last week against the lions. actually, i'm changing my original pick, gimme the jets.

BAL (-11) over cle (o/u - 34)
this is the time of the year where we start to see more blowouts. ravens at home, a terrible browns offense, and a quarterback i've never ever heard of...seems easy enough.

NE (-12) over hou (o/u - 37)
again, the end of year blowout theory + the fact that i nailed the new england pick last year. i think that tom brady is just too good to play that poorly two weeks in a row. throw in the fact that david carr is playing on the road, outside, etc....well you get the picture.

mia (+1.5) over BUF (o/u - 34.5)
perhaps it is unwise to take the warm weather team on the road, but miami's defense just seems completely dominant right now. on the other hand, willis mcgahee is looking real good these days. in other words, i have no idea, so gimme the points.

pit (-3) over CAR (o/u - 39)
go against the panthers at home.

was (+10) over NO (o/u - 45)
this is going against the late season blowout theory, but i think the saints will let down a little after last weeks great game, and maybe the skins can show some signs of life now that there is no pressure on them at all.

TEN (+3.5) over jax (o/u - 41)
you wanna pick against the great vince young right now? me neither. and let's not forget how bad the jaguars can be. this is a team built for inconsistency, and they've been good the last two weeks, so i expect them to regress back to the mean here.

CHI (-13.5) over tam (o/u - 33.5)
blowout theory. however, as always, beware the rex. it's weird how everyone seems to be saying that the rex grossman thing is not an issue anymore. but he didn't have that great a game last week. all the same, the buccs are el stinko.

phi (+5.5) over NYG (o/u - 43.5)
no i don't think that the eagles are better off with jeff garcia, but still, i kinda fear the eagles. again, i'm not sure where all the talk about the giants solving their problems is coming from, after all, they only beat chris weinke last week.

GB (-5) over det (o/u - 43.5)
erik seems to say that it's real easy to run on the lions, but i think that brett favre is going to make a lot of progress towards marino's all time td record. i should probably take the points here, but detroit is pretty bad.

DEN (-3) over ari (o/u - 41.5)
i'm pleased with matt leinart's progress. but i just think that this late in the season, with as much on the line for the broncos, shanahan will have a good enough game plan to show the cards that they still have a ways to go.

SD (-8.5) over kc (o/u - 46.5)
man i'm taking a lot of favorites. not good. but seriously, 29 touchdowns with three games left + 2 passing tds. i don't think it is a stretch to say that LT's season is the single most dominant statistical year that i've ever seen in my lifetime.

stl (+2.5) over OAK (o/u - 38)
again, i'm not real happy with this game. is st. louis that bad? maybe, but why are the raiders any of a smarter pick? i'll take the points.

IND (-3) over cin (o/u - 54)
this can't be a good pick. in fact, everything i can come up with says that the bengals will just let rudi run wild over the colts. i know i used this logic last week, but can the colts be this bad for this long of a stretch? it's clear that they are a one and done playoff team, but they can't be so bad as to lose 4 out of 5? maybe i'm completely wrong, but i coulda sworn that peyton was playing his ass off before this last few games. whatever you do, don't base your own pick on mine cuz i have no confidence in this pick whatsoever.

again, i'll get the money bets down later.

sports quick hits

2006-12-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

1) the duke rape case is starting to fall apart. i don't know the specifics of prosecuting a rape case, but it would seem to me that when you find the DNA of other guys and not the DNA of anyone on the team on the accuser, you would not be able to convict beyond a shadow of a doubt. very unfortunate situation. i was one of those people who said that duke lacrosse players were getting a free pass because they were white, but it turns out they are probably not guilty. however, that doesn't change my opinion that lacrosse is the province of privileged kids and that alcohol is a gigantic issue in college sports and college in general that no one really wants to do anything about.

2) more title IX stuff. a while back, i wrote about a girls high school basketball coach who was fired for asking for some practice time in the nice gym (can't find the link, sorry). anyways, the court went to the supreme court and lo and behold, he freakin' won! it's a step in the right direction. but if you're interested i suggest you read the linked article, because things were a lot worse than i thought they would be.

3) joey porter apologizes to kellen winslow jr for calling him a "fag". seriously, between mel gibson, kramer, rosie o'donnell and this, it befuddles me whenever people think i talk about race too much.

rosie o'donnell is a 'hippo'-crite

2006-12-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

ha ha get it! hippo? you know, cuz she's fat, and not funny. it's not so nice when the name calling is directed at you now is it rosie. anyways, for those of you who haven't heard yet, rosie o'donnell is a big fat hypocrite. i know you all knew about the big and fat part, but i'm talking about the hypocrite part. in case you didn't hear, she did some racist shtick on that stupid show, the view the other day. it's not as if i didn't already hate rosie o'donnell, but this just really rachets up the level of hatred to a new level. i now hate her more than mike krzyzewski, but less than scott stapp. this youtube video sums up my feelings nicely.

seriously, the view is the single worst show on television today. try to think of a worse show...you can't think of one can you? anyways, now it is the single worst racist show on television today.

p.s. the really crazy thing about this is that the youtube video is by michelle malkin, a crazy right wing asian political pundit (think anne coulter lite, except much hotter) that usually gives my people a bad name. but i got to give her props here, cuz she nailed it (except for saying that rosie is a leading voice of the left...she's certainly not this lefty's leader).

bobby the gook season 3, week 14

2006-12-06T23:23:00.000-08:00

for all intensive purposes, this season is over. fredo has demolished me and currently holds a 21 game lead over my sorry ass. what can i say, i'm just not a good gambler anymore. which is just as well. this was the first fall in about 5 years where i didn't make a couple of trips to vegas, so i guess if i want to look on the bright side, i saved a whole lot of money on car insurance, i mean gambling debts. anyways, last week was pretty emblematic of my whole season. i went a slightly less than mediocre 6-9, while fredo simply shined with an 11-4 record. so fredo, like dirk diggler in boogie nights, "you've got the touch!"*. erik on the other hand, is showing his true idiot colors as he managed to go 5-10. what a loser! in the money round, i actually had an ok day as i won sixty bucks on the strength of my two over under bets (nailed it!). fredo with his crazy ass betting almost did ok. as i was adding up his bets, at one point he was up $140, but after all was said and done, he was -$70 on the week. however, i should mention that fredo hit a three leg over/under parlay, so mad props to fred for that. anyways, here are the standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	87-97-6	(.473)	$685	-$735
Fredo	108-76-6	(.592)	$1020	-$400

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	62-68-6	(.477)
Erik	62-67-6	(.481)

as you can see, erik is hanging on by the slimmest of margins. i suspect if he had picked the game that he missed, we'd be tied right now. seriously, major league A-1 certified loser. anyways, on with the show, home team in caps, and numbers from caesars.

PIT (-7) over cle (o/u - 33)
is it possible that the browns can cover two weeks in a row, and even more importantly, can they do it on the road? hines ward is still out, but receiver ain't the problem. seriously, has there ever been a super bowl team that has been this bad the next season. i blame terry bradshaw.

bal (+3) over KC (o/u - 36)
this line seems weird to me, especially how good the ravens are against the run. trent green had a nice game last week, but seriously, eff him. there's no way i think he can do it two weeks in a row.

ATL (-3.5) over tb (o/u - 38)
i really should roll with the home dog here, but i feel that atlanta has been really good on the road. i think that the falcons seize control of the wild card race here. and then after the game, mike vick goes to mons venus and gives all the dancers herpes after the game.

min (+1.5) over DET (o/u - 38.5)
how in the world did detroit pull last week's performance out of their ass? i mean sure they ended up blowing it and losing, but they more than covered the spread of 13.5 points. that really was too many points, and i'm an idiot for not taking them last week. that said, there's just no way in hell that i would take the lions as a favorite. and erik is a loser.

ten (+1.5) over HOU (o/u - 41.5)
this lines perplexes me. the titans beat one of the best teams in the NFL and yet their dogs at the freakin' texans. trap? i don't know, i'm just a caveman. i don't understand your complicated games of chance. but what i do know is that my fantasy team is about to ride vince young to a league championship. seriously, vince young looks to me like he's starting to figure out this NFL. he has the air of a super bowl doug williams about him, where everything he does just turns to gold.

nyg (pk) over CAR (o/u - n/a)
this line is off the board everywhere i've checked. i'm not really sure what is going on, but in a battle of extremely mediocre teams that are fighting for a playoff spot, i'll take the giants. i just think that they're going to end up at the wildcard, if for no other reason just to piss me off for the season as i am forced to care about the outcome of giants game for the sake of the cowboys winning the division. which leads us to....

DAL (-7) over no (o/u - 47.5)
for those of you who haven't seen the highlights, at the end of the game, with the score tied and time running out and deep in giants territory, romo takes the snap, scrambles left to avoid the rush, and then throws the most perfect 40 yard pass to jason witten who had one step on the corner and had the safety bearing down on him. it was in all seriousness, the definition of the perfect pass. i turned to erik and said, "that is a major league throw". it got me thinking about which qb's that are currently in the NFL that have a good chance of making that same throw. this is the list that i came up with in order of probability of making that play: tom brady, donavan mcnabb, carson palmer, drew brees, mike vick. and those last two are reaches. the point is, of course it is too early to anoint tony romo the next tom brady. but i simply cannot see how anyone can look at this kid and not think that he's going to be a really good qb.

buf (+4) over NYJ (o/u - 37)
eric mangini may be the next nick saban in that he is the coach that everyone refuses to say might not be good. one win against the packers and pundits are all penciling the jets in for a playoff spot. i'm not buying.

ind (-1.5) over JAX (o/u - 44)
the jags are the desperate team here, so beware, but i just don't think it is possible for a team like the colts to lose 3 out of 4.

WAS (+1) over phi (o/u - 40)
andy reid is another coach who is regularly fellated by writers and tv people. i'm not saying he's bad, but in at least two of the four NFC championship games, he was badly outcoached. they beat a terrible panthers team and everyone wants to say how reid is keeping things together. not that washington is great or anything, but this seems like a good place to take the home dog.

oak (+11) over CIN (o/u - 40)
lesson learned, not taking favorites for more than 10 points again.

MIA (+3.5) over ne (o/u - 37)
i'm not saying that i think that the patriots suck. they're pretty good this year, but clearly, they've regressed from their salad days. in years past, this was a game that you were absolutely sure that the pats would take care of business, but they've lost a couple of games like that already this season, and this seems like another case where this happens again.

gb (+4) over SFO (o/u - 44)
remember in the nineties when this was a great freakin' game? me neither. the crazy thing is that brett favre was the quarterback then as well. ughhh, gimme the points.

sea (-3.5) over ARI (o/u - 45.5)
i don't know about this one so i should take the points, but i just feel that i might be getting sucked in by the cards beating a crappy rams team last week.

SD (-7.5) over den (o/u - 42.5)
it's a pretty big spread, but jay cutler on the road against a real good defense? forget it. by the way, i was so freakin' right about him. fredo brought up a good point in that he went to freakin' vanderbilt. how could anyone think that this was going to work out this season.

chi (-6.5) over STL (o/u - 40.5)
i have rex grossman on both of my fantasy teams. he has screwed me in so many different ways this year that i'm actually starting to question my sexuality. so like i said, i'm playing vince young in my playoff game with erik, the biggest loser of all time, so naturally, grossman is going to throw for three TDs and 400 yds on monday night.

it's late, so i'll get my money picks in a little later. go cowboys!

* i've never really noticed it before, but john c. reilly really turns in a fantastic performance during the recording session scenes of boogie nights.

bobby the gook season 3, week 13

2006-12-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

last week, in our real-life pool, the guy in charge did a real douchebag thing and changed from picking against the spread to having to pick winners. as a result, fredo and i got effed in the a, as we only got 8 games, while picking against the spread both of us got at least 10. the only reason i bring this up is that picking against the spread is an entirely different animal from picking winners. conventional wisdom would say that picking winners is easier than against the spread, but we've gotten so good at picking against the spread, picking winners seems like just a foreign thing to me these days, hence explaining our poor performance in the real life pool. anyways, last week, i went 10-5 and fredo went 11-4, so no real change in the standings. although fredo did pick the thursday night game correctly, while i sucked the big one and picked the freakin' ravens. erik went 10-5 as well, so no real change this week in those standings and got the cinci game right as well. a couple of things about this week. fredo says that football outsiders say that blowouts are much more likey in weeks 1-4 and in weeks 13-17, so seemingly, taking the dog with a lot of points in not as safe as it was last week. we both skipped out on the money betting, and seeing how it was thanksgiving and all, let's just call last week a holiday and we'll just start the money betting again. second, this is the last week of the regular season for both of my fantasy leagues. i need to win in both leagues to make the playoffs, so needless to say, it's a big football weekend for me. anyways, here are the standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	81-88-6	(.479)	$625	-$795
Fredo	98-71-6	(.574)	$1090	-$330

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	56-59-6	(.487)
Erik	57-57-6	(.500)

home team in caps, and point spreads from caesars.

CHI (-9.5) over min (o/u - 35)
i hate leaving this many points on the table, but after chicago's first loss, they rebounded well. and what do the vikings have? i really need rex grossman to do well if i'm to have any chance in fantasy as well.

tb (+7.5) over PIT (o/u - 41)
seriously, big ben has been playing worse than leftwich and vick combined, yet nobody is calling him a coach killer. i wonder why. anyways, i'm just following the rule that when you don't have a good idea, take the points.

ari (+6.5) over STL (o/u - 46)
seriously, matt leinart is playing really well, as i predicted at the beginning of the season. the rams' defense sucks just enough to let matt leinart start his legacy as captain comeback here.

ind (-7.5) over TEN (o/u - 46.5)
i was pretty impressed by vince young last week. it was hard to say how good he would be in the NFL, but if we see anything resembling his fourth quarter in this game, i think it is safe to say that he'll be pretty good. that being said, everyone and their mom is taking the titans because of last week and because they nearly beat the colts last time out. so i'm inclined to go the other way.

MIA (-1) over jax (o/u - 35.5)
with as well as they've been playing, why would anyone pick against the dolphins at this point. why would anyone take the jags for that matter. what a pretender the jags turned out to be.

NO (-7) over sfo (o/u - 46)
the saints on the other hand seem to be legit after all. the niners are the trendy pick here, so that is why i'm inclined to take the saints again here. however, i'd stay away if i were you.

atl (+1) over WAS (o/u - 38.5)
man i sure am taking a lot of road dogs. not a good philosophy. anyways, after winning the game on an electrifying 64 yard touchdown run, mike vick is going to unveil his new touchdown dance, where warrick dunn stands behind michael vick to make it look like he has four arms and hands and then they'll proceed to flip four birds to the crowd, thereby outdoing his bird flipping performance of last week. on the serious tip, it kinda galls me to hear everyone talk about how michael vick just can't win in the NFL. if your offensive coordinator can't put together an offense that takes full advantage of one othe best athletes of this century, then your problem isn't your quarterback. anyways, just taking the points here.

kc (-5.5) over CLE (o/u - 35.5)
i really want to take another home dog at some point, but not here. seriously, what does anyone see in charlie frye?

NE (-13.5) over det (o/u - 41.5)
back and forth on this one. i don't know, a lot of points, but i just feel like detroit has been screwing me all year.

dal (-3.5) over NYG (o/u - 43.5)
it's kinda weird, i feel like the giants and the cowboys have switched positions from the beginning of the year. for the giants, they were winning at the beginning of the year and everything was going great, whereas it was all T.O. all the time for the cowboys as they struggled early. now the cowboys are winning and no one even batted an eye when owens said that he thought cutting vanderjagt was a bad idea, and granted they're in new york, but there can't be enough things wrong with the giants ship right now. i might be jinxing this, but i'm pretty sure that the cowboys are going to roll here. the only thing that makes me nervous is that this is a must-win emotion game for the giants, and in football, those always seem to go the way of the desperate team.

oak (-3) over HOU (o/u - 35.5)
i have nothing to say about this game except that david carr is officially a bust. the texans seriously need to be contracted. houston doesn't deserve an NFL franchise.

sea (+4) over DEN (o/u - 40.5)
i know nothing about jay cutler except that he can't be worse than jake plummer. but that's really not saying much now is it. it's weird that people are saying that denver has to play cutler if denver is going to have any chance to win the super bowl. unless jay cutler is the next coming of johnny unitas, denver never had a chance in the first place.

car (-3) over PHI (o/u - 37.5)
i hate this pick because i'm pretty sure that the panthers are pretenders in this thing. the eagles for all intensive purposes have shut things down for this season, and this is a must win for the panthers so i'll think they win, but the panthers look like a wild card loser if i ever saw one.

bonus betting
$50 on chi-min over
$50 on dal-nyg under

$10 3 team parlay - dal/chi/kc
$10 3 team parlay - nyg/chi/kc
$10 4 team parlay - oak/sea/chi/kc
$10 4 team parlay - oak/sea/min/kc

more title IX madness

2006-11-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

i guess i am resuming my regular blogging duties now. anyways, a wisconsin boy recently lost his title IX case, where he was suing so that he could compete on a girls' gymnastics team. at his school, there wasn't a boys' team because there wasn't enough interest and in his quest to become the next paul hamm, he wanted an opportunity to compete. he actually ended up losing on technical grounds with the court ruling that the athletic federation that administers high school sports in wisconsin is not technically an arm of the state. in other words, it technically doesn't get any government money.

i'm actually a little torn on this. on the one hand, i can see that girls would lose out if this was allowed since 1) he's taking opportunities away from other girls and 2) he would have an unfair advantage in some competitions such as the vault, where his natural advantage in muscle mass would help him. but on the other hand, how is this different from the girld who wants to play football? i suppose the deciding factor is the greater good, which in my opinion is girls having opportunities to participate in sports that they didn't have before, over the individual good, this dude getting to prance around in tights (look at me reinforcing hegemonic masculinity!). either way, as we get closer to equity in sports, we can see that we still have a long way to go in terms of really figuring out gender equity.

freakin' NFL

2006-11-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

i hate that there's going to be a thursday night game from here on out. anyways, i don't have time to get all of my picks out there, but here is the thursday game.

bal (+3) over CIN (o/u - 41.5)
for some reason i can't figure out, the bengals are favored here. their offense has looked great the past few games, so this could be a trap, but the ravens offense and defense have been just as hot, so i'll go with the dog here.

i'll get the rest of the picks up later today or tommorow. bn

clear eyes, full heart, can't lose

2006-11-29T21:07:00.000-08:00

for those of you who are uninitiated, the title of this post refers to the tagline of the new television show friday night lights. i know that i haven't been blogging about anything other than football picks, but this show is so freakin' good, that i felt compelled to put down in writing why i think the show works on so many levels. who knows, maybe, i'll start blogging on a normal basis again after this.

anyways, the show is about a fictional small town texas high school team, the dillon panthers. when i first heard that they were making a television show about this i was super skeptical. as mentioned on this blog before, i am a gigantic fan of the book, and i thought the movie was pretty good too. however, i could not just wrap my head around how NBC was going to be able to turn this into a regular television show. i had bad visions of varsity blues, the television series going through my head (not that i didn't love the movie, cuz i did). but you know what i mean, over the top sports scenes, ridiculous dialog from adults who were supposed to be teenagers and dumb stuff like that. but it turns out that i was wrong on a lot of levels.

first of all, it's well written. and in television, that is really the key to any good show, that the dialog be compelling. i feel like the teenagers talk and look like teenagers (with a couple of exceptions, but i'm not going to quibble over the fact that two of the three female leads look at least 23). but more importantly, i feel like the writers make it a point to not be predictable in terms of shows like this. for example, almost all of the main characters are flawed in some way, but they all also have moments we're we empathize with them and more importantly, we root for them because they decide to do the right thing.

in terms of subject matter, another thing i was afraid of is that they were going to try and cram every single topic pertaining to high school sports into one season. granted there have only been seven or so episodes, but i feel like the show is taking its time with a lot of the story lines. for example, in the first few shows, the stage is set for two of the players, the black star running back, and the hick drunk fullback, to hate each other. since then, they really haven't done much with it other than to show a few reaction shots to remind us that these guys don't like each other much. i could be wrong, and they end up doing a whole show on just that, but there are enough subplots to make sure that no one plot takes complete center stage for one episode. and i think that makes it more realistic. don't get me wrong, i understand that the medium of television is limited in the way it able to tell stories, so there needs to be some tidiness to story arcs, but like i said, i feel like the producers are taking their time. it definitely takes some commitment on the viewers part, but i personally like shows that are a bit challenging like that. it might have something to do with the fact that the show is produced by peter berg, whose background is in movies.

the second thing that i'm surprised i like is that the do deal with some typical teen angst show topics. i.e. cheating on your boyfriend, the vagaries of learning how to date in high school, jocks vs. nerds, etc. however, unlike it's predecessors like 90210 or even dawson's creek, instead of wrapping up the problem in a single show, the characters often make the wrong decisions, and then have to live with the consequences for several episodes. like i said, it is a show about teenagers, so of course some of these things are going to show up. i just feel that it's not done in the saved by the bell kind of way.

the biggest thing for me however, is that i find the overall tone of the show to be just plain sad. which is something you don't often find on television. and that is what i think makes it realistic. these are not people who are rising above what society has given them to achieve great things. they are people who make do with what society gives them and the only time that they really find solace in each other or their community is through the success of high school football. and that is how it really is in those small texas towns. perhaps it is my urban cosmopolitan background, but in high school whenever we went to one of these small towns to play an away game (no, i didn't play football, i was a band nerd), i always sensed this sadness among the people. that they are born, grow up, live, and then die in the same town. and it's not that they don't want to live in the big city and become all cultured or whatever, it is just that there are so many things that prevent them from leaving and that makes them sad. anyways, the sadness is done just so real, it's heartbreaking at times. and at the risk of sounding really lame, the sadness can be beautiful.

the sports scenes are done well, especially in light of the fact that there only seems to be a game every other episode. there's enough sports footage to give us an idea of how the game went, but most of the show focuses on life outside the actual game.

i also like that the show devotes a good portion of time to the lives of the adults. the coach, his wife, the parents, and things like that. again, this adds to the realism, since shows like 90210 or saved by the bell which revolved exclusively around the teens always came off as whiny and stupid to me. raising kids in small town texas ain't easy, and you can see it in this show.

it's by no means a perfect show. the first couple of episodes had a little bit of hokiness in how the dillon panthers won their games. and much like the movie, i'm not completely satisfied with the
treatment of race. there have been some real subtle things about the black/white dynamic, but there's been nothing about latinos, and in texas, believe me, they're everywhere, so it seems a little bit unrealistic in that respect. but overall, this is easily one of the best television shows that i've seen in a while.

anyways, NBC is doing a real interesting thing in making all of the episodes in their entirety available for viewing on their website. so for those of you who need to catch up, i highly recommend devoting a couple of hours this weekend in catching up.

bobby the gook season 3, week 12

2006-11-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

hoy cow, we are getting down to the stretch run and last week i think told us a lot about how things are going to turn out for our overall picks. in terms of picks, it was mega-status quo week as both fredo and i went 8-8 and therefore no change in how far apart we are. erik, who let his girlfriend pick his games went 7-9. i guess he was doing that bit where the radio talk show host will let his dog pick or something. in this case, erik's GF is the dog. way to go erik! anyways, after losing everything in a fit of wildass betting last week, i nailed two big parlays, one 10 dollar five team for +200, and even better a 15 dollar six team parlay for 600 bucks. fredo on the other hand went with quantity instead of quality and ended up losing 20 bucks. i'm still far away, but come on, i won 800 bucks on two parlays! give it up for me! anyways, here are the standings.

Bob vs. Fredo

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.	Vegas Round	+/-
Bob	71-82-6	(.464)	$625	-$795
Fredo	86-67-6	(.562)	$1090	-$330

Bob vs. Erik

Playa	season record	Winning Pct.
Bob	46-53-6	(.465)
Erik	46-52-6	(.469)

how do ya like my table skills? anyways, on to picks, numbers from caesar's, home teams in caps.

mia (-2.5) over DET (o/u - 39)
yeah, i know that detroit has the thanksgiving game advantage, but after losing to the cardinals last week, i'm never ever going to take the lions in the matt millen era. erik, you're team is continuing to be the laughing stock of the NFL. i feel bad for you at this point. oh well, at least you have the tigers.

tb (+11) over DAL (o/u - 39)
SEASON IS BACK ON! seriously, last week's win over the undefeated manning colts is one of the best wins in franchise history. i fully willing to admit that i was wrong on romo. he's got a little something and maybe the cowboys won't win the super bowl this year, i think that they're going to be stable at QB for a couple of years now, which it really hasn't been since troy aikman, NFL quarterback retired. given that, i'm just not going to leave 11 points on the table.

KC (-1) over den (o/u - 38)
this one makes me nervous, but have i ever mentioned that jake plummer is the devil? shanahan has screwed himself by not going to cutler earlier, cuz if he makes the switch now, there's no way that denver can win the division or make a deep playoff run. rookie quarterbacks, just can't do that.

jax (-3) over BUF (o/u - 36)
i'm going to end up regretting this, i just have trouble with the jags. i think they'll build on last week's win, while buffalo has had their moment in the sun by covering the spread with a minute left.

NYJ (-5.5) over hou (o/u - 39.5)
not that i like the jets, cuz i don't, but i don't like the texans on the road even more.

BAL (-2.5) over pit (o/u - 38)
nice little run that the steelers put together, but i can't imagine it lasting against a quality team. the ravens have been looking alot better since billick took over the play calling.

cin (-3) over CLE (o/u - 43)
i really think this line should be a lot bigger so it worries me a little bit, but the carson-CJ show has been quite impressive, and i don't see it slowing down against a less than mediocre browns team.

MIN (-6.5) over ari (o/u - 38.5)
again, i don't like the cards on the road. min may be tanking their season, but i just can't bring myself to take the cards this season.

STL (-6.5) over sfo (o/u - 44.5)
middle of the road teams will win home division games against other middle of the road teams. and i refuse to believe that the niners are better than middle of the road.

no (-3) over ATL (o/u - 48)
even though we saw bad vick last week, i think the saints will get it together if for no other reason than the NFL wants to keep its feel good story of the year going.

car (-4) over WAS (o/u - 36)
good luck to jason campbell, without clinton portis, and against julius peppers. i forsee defensive touchdowns in this game.

IND (-9.5) over phi (o/u - 44)
what's more likely, that the eagles rally around jeff garcia to send indy reeling to two consecutive losses, something they haven't done in over two years? or that indy blows the eagles out of the water. give me the latter.

TEN (+3) over nyg (o/u - 42.5)
last week, after the cowboys won and the eagles lost, i was extremely happy about the way the NFC east was shaping up, because everytime i see the giants play, i see nothing even remotely special about this team. they really showed it on monday night, and i think that this is the week that the cowboys seize the division.

oak (+13.5) over SD (o/u - 43)
of course, i don't think the raiders are going to win, but the rule is to take big dogs.

SEA (pk) over gb (o/u - 45)
this line is off at most places, as no one knows if hasselbeck is ready to go. if he's not, i might be really tempted to go the other way with the packers, but since most reports are saying he'll be ready, we'll stick with the hawks for now.

i need to think about my money bets, so i'll post them as a comment later. have a great thanksgiving everyone.

bobby the gook season 3, week 11

2006-11-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

all you need to know is that fredo and i are two different ships headed in the opposite direction. after the last two weeks, i'm at 63-74-6 (.460), while fredo is at 78-59-6 (.569). even worse, in the money betting, i blew everything in a series of ill-advised bets and i'm down to $0.00. so we'll have to make up some new rules so that i can keep betting. fredo on the other hand actually, won 50 bucks two weeks ago, but he blew it all this past weekend, despite hitting a 5 team parlay. he's sitting on $1110 for the year, (-310 on the year). erik sucked as much as i did and went 6-10 last week and he forgot to play the week before. anyways, in that matchup, i'm 38-45-5 (.458) and erik is 39-43-5 (.476). whatever, he's still an effing a-hole. on to the picks, numbers from caesar's and home team in caps.

KC (-9) over oak (o/u - 35)
umm, i know i shouldn't leave that many points on the table, but i just heard that they're putting aaron brooks back in. this fact really pisses me off because i didn't know this when i made my real life pool picks. damn you art shell. you give black coaches everywhere a bad name.

ind (-1) over DAL (o/u - 49)
as much as it pains me to pick against the good guys, the simple fact is that even with romo playing at a pretty decent level, he is no peyton manning, who is seriously playing quarterback better than i've ever seen in my whole life. seriously, there's just no question that he's the MVP right now. the other thing is that i would have to believe that dallas is a serious contender to think that they might win. and unfortunately, i don't.

cin (+3.5) over NO (o/u - 52)
lord knows why i'm taking the bengals, as they've kinda screwed me the last two weeks. but here's how i see it. their season basically ended with that crazy loss to the chargers last week. the pressure is off, they have something to prove, and they'll play well against a saints team that has basically overachieved all year. dammit, i hate my reasoning, yet another pick in my real football pool that i don't feel good about.

CLE (+3.5) over pit (o/u - 37.5)
i'm not fooled by last week's steeler's win. the browns are going to be frisky the rest of the season, so i'll just go with the home dog here.

ten (-13) over PHI (o/u - 43.5)
i don't feel good about this one either. i know it's a gigantic number, but it seems to me that philly is one of the teams that consistently takes care of business against the crappy teams in the league. but just too many points.

atl (+3.5) over BAL (o/u - 41)
my falcons pick are simply based on the idea that michael vick totally kicks ass some weeks and then just sucks in others. i think he'll be good after being bad last week.

CAR (-7) over stl (o/u - 44.5)
the panthers seem to always be a late season team and starting in the second half of last night's monday night game, i thought they looked great. like a real threat to win the NFC. julius peppers is simply unreal. and i'll think he'll cause all sorts of problems for bulger and company.

HOU (-2.5) over buf (o/u - 36)
dammit, we took the bills in the pool too.

GB (+6) over ne (o/u - 45)
i know people have said this before, but the pats look to be in pretty bad shape. i just don't see how this team can do more than win a wild card game.

was (+3) over TAM (o/u - -33)
in probably one of the worst matchups of all time, jason campbell faces off against bruce gradowski. so this one will probably be playing here in santa barbara.

chi (-6) over NYJ (o/u - 38)
people are overreacting to the jets beating the patriots last week. remember folks the patriots are in serious trouble so they're not as good as people think. therefore beating the patriots is also not as good as people think. give me lovie smith, the sure fire coach of the year over eric mangini, yet another completely overrated belichick disciple.

MIA (-3.5) over min (o/u - 33.5)
seriously, what the hell happened to the vikings. for the first month of the season, i thought they looked great. now they've lost to the niners and the packers in consecutive weeks. another one i wish i could change in real life.

det (+2) over ARI (o/u - 45.5)
you figure that this is good as any week where the cards get it together. but i can't take the cards for anything less than +5.

SFO (+5.5) over sea (o/u - 43)
no real logic here, just a feeling about the dog here.

sd (+2) over DEN (o/u - 42.5)
i hate picking against denver at home, but i love picking against jake the snake against the greatest TCU running back ever.

JAX (-3.5) over nyg (o/u - 38.5)
what the hell have the giants done to make me think that they won't get killed on the road? i'll tell you what, not a goddammed thing.

ok, for the money thing, we'll just do the jeopardy thing and say that i can't wager more than 100 bucks a week until i'm back in the black.

so i'll try fifty bucks on indy and since i have to catch up i'll try some crazy parlays

$10 5 team - SD/IND/ind-dal under/hou-buf over/CHI
$10 5 team - SD/DAL/ind-dal under/hou-buf over/CHI
$15 6 team - SD/IND/ind-dal under/hou-buf over/CHI/JAX
$15 6 team - SD/DAL/ind-dal under/hou-buf over/CHI/JAX

this doesn't make any sense, but since i'm just making rules up at this point, i don't care anymore. i'm terrible at handicapping football.

bobby the gook season 3, week 10

2006-11-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

good golly miss molly. so much has happened this week, between the dems taking over the government to the transition from k-fed to fedex, i'm only assured that my impending decision to retire from blogging might be a really good one. however, bloggers new addition of labels, may tempt me to stay on. technology rules! i've got a zillion things to do right now, so i can't talk much, so i'm just going to get on with the picks. i'll tally up our current standings in the comments section tomorrow or monday, but right now, i've got a fever and the only prescription is gamblin'! and more cowbell! number's from caesar's, home teams in caps.

kc (-1) over MIA (o/u - 40)
this one seems easy to me as the dolphins ruined parlays all over the nation last week. my take, complete aberration. the chiefs are just a much better team for me to take the home dog.

JAX (-10) over hou (o/u - 37)
my extremely sound logic is that houston won the last game, which they probably shouldn't have, and division games almost always split for the season.

CIN (+1) over sd (o/u - 48)
not that i think cinnci is any good, it just seems that the chargers have been rolling all season against the spread. stay away.

cle (+8) over ATL (o/u - 42)
seriously, the falcons are the most maddening team to pick. some weeks they look unbeatable, others they look like crap. usually i would say that since the falcons had a bad week last week, they'll have a good one this week. however, they had two good weeks in a row before than one, so again, with the bulletproof logic, i'll say they will make it even out here.

IND (-12.5) over buf (o/u - 45)
i want to take the dog here as it's very possible that indy has a let down after last week, but without mcgahee, i just can't do it.

PIT (-5.5) over no (o/u - 45.5)
last week's steeler's game was supposed to be a trap, but it wasn't as the steelers sucked like they have all year, the rare reverse trap if you will. however, this looks as trappy as can be, and i'd rather pick wrong then get caught.

PHI (-7.5) over was (o/u - 42.5)
as bad as things have been for the cowboys, at least i can take some solace in the fact that the redskins are infinitely worse off than the boys.

chi (+1.5) over NYG (o/u -37.5)
i'm surprised that the giants are still favored with all those injuries. the bears have a injury problem of their own with mike brown out. still, the giants are going to be basically starting their scout team on offense.

MIN (-5.5) over gb (o/u -39)
i really should take the packers here, but i remember something about how favre sucks inside and in the metrodome.

NE (-10.5) over nyj (o/u - 37.5)
i have nothing to say here, so i'll just say that even though we all saw the train wreck of the federline-spears marriage coming, it still is a relief that fedex will soon fade into pop culture obscurity.

DET (-6) over sfo (o/u - 46)
can't take the niners on the road.

den (-9) over OAK (o/u - 33)
seriously, will al davis please just die already?

stl (+3.5) over SEA (o/u - 43)
just have a really good feeling about this one.

dal (-7) over ARI (o/u - 43.5)
minus the playoff debacle a few years ago, the cards haven't beat the good guys for the last 7-8 games.

tb (+9.5) over CAR (o/u - 37)
give up the points at home with the panthers.

money bets
damn it i really screwed myself last week with my wild ass betting. so eff it, let's end it all right now. i'm all in - give me everything i have the freakin' broncos. dammit, i hate gambling. all right kids, back to writing my comprehensive exam. see ya' next week.

bobby the gook season 3, week 9

2006-11-05T00:33:00.000-08:00

howdy kids, just got back from seeing borat. solid enough movie, but not life changing by any means. think of it as jackass for the nerds. i give it a B. for whatever reason, however, i get really giggly whenever he pronounces the word anus as ah-NUS. but that's neither here nor there. anyways, it was an interesting week of football last week. because of the screwy relationship that central california has to the northern and southern california markets, i missed the best game in indy/den, but i did get to see the tony romo era get off to a rousing start. am i sold on the kid? not yet for this season, but next year will be the real test to see if the kids got a future as the most important position in the most important professional football franchise in america. seriously, before six years ago, the qb succession line went like this - roger staubach, danny white, troy aikman. good qbs don't come like they used to. anyways, last week, fredo and i pretty much tied, with me going 6-8 and fredo going 7-7. so i didn't make up any real ground, but i didn't lose any ground either. for the season, i'm sitting at 51-58-6 (.468) and fredo is at 63-44-6 (.578). a quick note, previously, i had been calculating the win-loss percentage by including the ties. i don't know why, but i realize that's stupid to count ties as a loss, so the percentages reflect that now. and even still, i'm more than ten percentage points behind fredo. that's a lot of gorund to make up in the next few weeks, but it's not out of reach yet. on the side however, it's still pretty interesting. i made 60 bucks on my bets bringing me to $1298 (-$132 on the year) and fredo ended up with only losing 5 bucks on the strength of a 4 team parlay, bringing him to $1325 (-$95 on the year). however, just to warn you, i'm going to go crazy this week with the money bets so get ready for a big shakeup in that respects.

erik rejoined the game last week and he posted a pathetic 5-9 record. but even better, in our fantasy league, he went from being 20 points up to losing in about the thirty minutes it took to play the fourth quarter of the cowboys game. let me tell you, that was lots of fun to watch with him. anyways, his season record is 33-33-5 (.500) and i'm catching up quickly at 32-35-5 (.478). he sucks. anyways, let's get on with it, numbers from caesar's and home team in caps.

kc (+2.5) over STL (o/u - 48)
herm edwards is telling people that he's going to go with trent green when he's ready to go next week. now i'm not a professional head coach or anything, but why would you do that when damon huard is playing so efficiently. i see big numbers for LJ this week as the chiefs roll in huard's swan song.

cin (+3) over BAL (o/u - 41)
this one doesn't feel great to me, but this is a must win for the bengals. lose and their season is over and nearly any decent team usually wins those games in the NFL. i'm underwhelmed by the bengals (although i did take the preseason under on these guys), but i can see them getting it together against a less than mediocre ravens offense.

hou (+13) over NYG (o/u - 43)
man alive, i'm apparently feeling really frisky taking all of these dogs on the road. i don't know, i hate the giants. i really can't tell with this big a number. i find that houston and the giants are tough teams for me to figure out, so i'm just gonna take the points.

ten (+9.5) over JAX (o/u - 37.5)
let's just keep the crazy train rolling with another road dog. i thought about this one alot and even though the jags look alot better with garrard under center, what i've seen from the titans is more than what i expected. maybe they don't win this game, but i just have a hunch that they make a game out of this.

dal (-3) over WAS (o/u - 41)
look, no one is happier that tony romo doesn't suck worse than say, jp losman. and to prove it, i'm going to take the boys even though, my usual thinking says that middle of the pack teams lose division games on the road.

gb (+3.5) over BUF (o/u - 40.5)
the question to ask here is why are the bills favored here. perhaps i'm on the wrong side of a trap here, but i can't imagine that anyone thinks that the bills are better than the packers. plus, i get to get back on the road dog crazy train here.

no (-1.5) over TAM (o/u - 38)
back off the train. i have a riddle for you. how many spleens does it take to be a terrible and overrated quarterback? zero. just as well that simms is out for the season, but gradkowski really isn't that much better. and that's saying something when you suck as much as simms did.

atl (-5.5) over DET (o/u - 47)
man i really need to take one of these home dogs here. anyways, michael vick has been making a play to regain my love and sexual desire by throwing 7 touchdowns over the last two weeks, but i gotta be honest with you, wild ass scrambling mike vick is much sexier than accurate pocket quarterback mike vick. something tells me i ought to take the lions here, but i'm willing to give mike vick another chance at my heart.

CHI (-13.5) over mia (o/u - 37.5)
i just read something crazy in bill simmons latest column a while ago. did you know that the dolphins haven't covered all year? 0-7 against the spread! that's just plain crazy. i find that more crazy than going 0-7 in real life. conventional wisdom says that almost every team ends up finishing somewhere around .500 against the spread, but the dolphins on the road against one of the top 3 teams in the NFL? forget it.

SFO (+5) over min (o/u - 42.5)
i'm cheating here a little bit since i originally liked minnesota here. fredo thinks they're overrated which might be true, especially after seeing them get carved up by the patriots last monday night. but the reason i'm taking them is so i can get at least one home dog on my side.

SD (-13) over cle (o/u - 41.5)
do you remember how football coming back to cleveland was such a feel good story? how people said that football "belongs" in cleveland and how the fans "deserve" a team? i'm really beginning to think that resurrecting the browns was a mistake. they've been around for about four years now, and they don't seem any better than they were year one. at least with the texans, i can say that there are a couple of really nice players on the team, but i can't think of one player on the browns that might start on another decent team. i think it's time we seriously consider moving the browns. seriously, why does ohio need two football teams? on a different note, at the beginning of the year before all the fantasy drafts, i was telling anyone who would listen that even though the conventional wisdom was the draft order should be 1. LJ, 2. shaun alexander, 3. LT, that LT is probably still the best player out of those three. johnson has come on in the past few weeks but LT has been consistently studly for about every week for about two years now.

den (+3) over PIT (o/u - 37)
everything about this line screams "trap". yet i can't bring myself to take the steelers. their season is over and i think the broncos will rebound after last week's tough loss. and seriously, the whole shanahan boggling fantasy owners minds with his running back workload distribution is pure evil genius. i hereby do solemnly swear that for the rest of my fantasy career, i will never ever draft a shanahan coached running back. if you're in vegas though, take the steelers. one more thing, fredo pointed out to me last week, how a lot of times in my picks, i have a curious habit of making a really good case for one team, and then just inexplicably taking the other. genius, i know. actually, evil genius, just like shanahan. but seriously, i can't even begin to tell you how this is so obviously a trap.

NE (-3) over ind (o/u - 49)
the line started at 0.5, which is kinda bad news for this pick. however, even though peyton won this game last year, the fact is he's 1-9 against brady and belichick. it's called playing the percentages, it's what good handicappers do. seriously, did you see how the broncos running game gashed the indy defense last week. i predict that both dillon and maroney will top 100 yards this week and i predict that it will only take maroney 10-12 carries to get there. do you hear that sound? i think that's the new england train pulling into the station again, and i don't want to miss it.

SEA (-7.5) over oak (o/u - 37)
yeah....i'm not going to get suckered in by the raiders. so don't you either. although it is seneca wallace and maurice morris starting for the seahawks....they can't be that bad though.

crazy betting time!
$100 - CHI
$100 - NE
$50 - KC-STL over
$25 - CHI-MIA over
$25 - SD

$25 parlay - CHI/NE/SD
$10 parlay - KC-STL over/CHI-MIA over/GB/DAL
$5 parlay - NE-IND under/SD-CLE over/GB-BUF under/DAL/CHI/NE <- this is so ridiculous.

your move alfredo, your move.

bobby the gook season 3, week 8

2006-10-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

i know that the last two posts have been shitty, but like i said, life's been busy. i feel like i have a lot to say about the state of some teams today, so hopefully that'll kinda make up for it. i've gone back and figured out all of the records for fredo and i for the last two weeks and this is what we look like today. i'm 45-50-6 (.446) and fredo is 56-37-6 (.554). money wise, i lost 150 and then another 70 so i'm now at $1238 (-$192 on the year) and fredo lost 100 the first week for not making bets and then won 10 bucks last week thanks to a three team parlay. that puts him at $1330(-$100 on the year).i really don't know what to do about erik, so i just may disqualify him from the whole deal. erik needs to give me a good reason to keep keeping track of our side show. anyways, let's get on with it. home team in caps and numbers from caesar's.

TEN (-3) over hou (o/u - 41.5)
did anyone see the texans coming out and puttin' a whuppin' on the jags? i guess i should just say that is just how we texans do. not really, since i hate that team. however, i do like alot about the texans offense. especially the way andre johnson and david carr are playing with such inferior talent surrounding them. that defense, with your number #1 overall pick however, is still pretty bad and i can see them not really knowing how to contain the young/henry rushing express. plus tennessee is coming off the bye at home. i like the over a whole freaking lot here people.

PHI (-7) over jax (o/u - 40.5)
not that i am closing the book on the jags chances of making some noise in the playoffs, but if they lose this one, then the season is over for them. as for philly, the last time they got beat in a bad way (to the giants a few weeks ago), they responded with a good win against a quality opponent. i don't see anything different about this situation, and especially since they're at home, this seems like an easy pick. so i guess i am saying that the jags season is basically over.

CIN (-4) over atl (o/u - 44)
does anyone think that the NFL is not a better place with chad johnson running his mouth during the week? didn't think so. i know that michael vick had a "breakout" performance last week, but it seems to me that he has one of those every 4-5 games and then proceeds to spare everyone to death for a few weeks more. i want to...nay, i need to see that touchdown dance from CJ. it would also do my fantasy team some good as well.

NYG (+9.5) over tam (o/u - 40)
it's not that i think that the giants are any good. it's just that the gradkowski kid is going to a relatively tough place to play and as we all know, we shouldn't take crappy qbs on the road. the giants success this year completely maddens me by the way. i just don't see how they're going to keep this up.

sfo (+16) over CHI (o/u - 42)
admittedly, i don't like this pick a whole lot. the truly great teams always respond after lackluster performances, and i suppose that is entirely possible with the bears defense going against a bad team at home, but that's just a whole lot of points for a team that can move the ball pretty well.

ari (+3) over GB (o/u - 44.5)
the cards may have blown a game in an epic way against the bears two weeks ago, but they did cover the spread. i know that they're a mess, but i think that leinart can pull it together for his first win against a crappy team.

KC (pk) over sea (o/u - 38.5)
this one is off the board for some reason, so i'm just going to go with a pick 'em. do you like seneca wallace on the road? i don't either.

NO (-2) over bal (o/u - 37)
i'm beginning to think that there is some credence to the NFL conspiracy that won't let the saints lose at home.

SD (-10) over stl (o/u - 45.5)
just think, if someone not named marty shottenheimer were the coach of the chargers, they might be undefeated right now. the rams are a frisky team who will be challenging to pick against the spread for the rest of the way, but i just can't see the LT not having an epic day after last week's loss. like i said, the truly good teams always bounce back after tough losses and lackluster performances.

pit (-9) over OAK (o/u - 38.5)
the corollary to the truly good team theory is that truly bad teams always revert back to form after overperforming. granted, beating a cards team that was still a little bit on the ropes from a historic loss isn't exactly overperforming, but still they're the worst team in the league. however, i should say that i think that the steelers season is over. i'm starting to think that big ben should change his number to #13. he's supposed to start, but if i were the steelers, i'd make up some frak injury and put him on injured reserve so that he can work on getting his mojo back.

CLE (-2) over nyj (o/u - 37)
either there's some kind of injury for the jets that i'm unaware of or this is a trap. in either case, i don't want to be on the wrong end of this one.

ind (+3) over DEN (o/u - 39.5)
i must be crazy to take the colts against a possibly historic defense. but i just really can't buy that the broncos defense is going to be one of the great scoring defenses of all time when the only person who i think is really that good is champ baily. plus the broncos starting left guard matt lepsis is out which means dwight freeny has a carpool lane to captain kickass, jake the snake. pressure + plummer = lots of ints. one more thing: why oh why is joseph addai not starting yet? anyone who's watching can see that he's ten times better than dominic rhodes.

CAR (-5.5) over dal (o/u - 41)
bill simmons has this thing where he says take the panthers on the road and take the points at home which seems like a good theory, however, let's dissect the dallas cowboys situation a little shall we. last week, when parcells made the call and finally put romo in for bledsoe, i started to panic a little. the only conceivable way for this to work out is if romo threw 3 touchdowns and led the cowboys to an amazing victory. instead he crapped his pants and looked just terrible. i know it looked like the cowboys could move the ball a little better, but the important thing to take away from that loss is that romo is in no way ready to lead a team to the playoffs. in fact after the second int, i muttered to my roommate, "hell just put bledsoe in, it doesn't really matter anymore". this week, i imagine that there has been sports radio chaos. sports radio chaos is when there is a topic that is so polarizing and demoralizing to talk about for the sports radio shows that it drains the life out of all listeners. there is non stop second guessing of parcells, of jerry jones, and everything. the only thing that everyone can agree on is that the offensive line is terrible. no good can come out of sports radio chaos. parcells has started thinking about life after the cowboys and jerry is just fine with that since parcells hasn't done jack shit since his first season here. like i said before, the only possible way that romo was going to work was if he was tom brady and i think it's safe to say that he's no tom brady. i've been in a bad mood all week because of this: the cowboys season is over and they lose out to any team worth a damn the rest of the way. julius peppers is going to eat tony romo's spleen on sunday. bledsoe will probably end up having to come back in. do you see what i mean when i say that no good can come out of this situation?

before we get to the monday night game, let's talk a little bit about terell owens. fredo brought up the point that no matter what terell owens does on the sideline he's screwed. football is an emotional game and any number of players can be seen moving their hands excitedly while talking during the game. but according to all media, when terell owens does it, he's screaming. fredo brought up that this is actually somewhat racist, since if it were a white dude, he'd be praised for trying to fire up his team. even worse, if terell owens is sitting on the bench, not doing anything waiting to go back in, he is described as sulking. i'm not saying terell owens is a saint or anything, but for whatever reason, the media hates him. what is really bizarre about this whole thing is that the only people he's screwed over are other teammates. media people should love him for making their lives easier, but you get blowhards like joe theismann who can't stand it non-white players don't shut up and dance, so they villify him. terell owens is no worse than he was in his first few years in san francisco. and for the media to cover like they are, it's a hatchet job, plain and simple.

ne (-2) over MIN (o/u - 38.5)
this is a really good number. the patriots run seems to be coming together. besides which seems more likely to you? john madden going on and on about how good brady is and how the patriots are football par excellence or is more likely to be singing the praises of vikings defense. i'll take tom brady thank you very much.

bonus bets
$50 - KC
$25 - PHI
$50 - Ten-Hou over

$10 underdog parlay - SFO/NYG/ARI
$5 wild ass parlay - ne/ten-hou over/no/car/ind/sd

bobby the gook season 3, week 7

2006-10-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

sorry this is so late. and it's going to be short. i've been awful busy and i still haven't figured out what to do about fredo not getting his picks in last week. i'll sort that out later. there's twenty minutes before the morning games kick off so i'm just gonna do my picks real quick and we'll discuss some of these issues later. home team in caps.

i just did my picks and i realized that i'm taking mostly favorites on the road. that seems like stupid idea. so i'm changing most of them to home dogs.
KC (+5) over sd (o/u - 39.5)
jax (-9) over HOU (o/u - 39)
BUF (+6) over ne (o/u - 36.5)
ATL (+3) over pit (o/u - 38)
MIA (-6) over gb (o/u - 40.5)
phi (-6) over TAM (o/u - 43)
NYJ (-4) over det (o/u - 43.5)
car (+3) over CIN (o/u - 44.5)
CLE (+5) over den (o/u - 31.5)
IND (-8.5) over was (o/u - 48)
min (+6.5) over SEA (o/u - 41)
OAK (+3) over ari (o/u - 40)
DAL (-3) over nyg (o/u - 45)

50 bucks on the eagles
50 bucks on carolina
$10 parlay jax/ind-was under/phi
$10 parlay jax/phil/nyj/dal

here are fredo's bets
Car
NYJ
green bay
jax
ne
TB
pitt
sd
den
OAK
SEA
was
DAL

$50 SD (-5.5)
$10 IND/NYJ/TB
$10 car/ne/den

random quick hits

2006-10-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

i am seriously turning into the worst blogger of all time. what can i say, i've got a PhD to earn. i think we all see the writing on the wall. i've got some serious thinking to do about a hiatus after football season ends. if you have any feedback, please leave me a comment and i will promptly ignore it. anyways, here are some things worth mentioning.

1) steve lyons hates mexicans. this happened a while ago, but one of fox's play by play guys got fired because of some racially insensitive comments he made. here's what went down according to the toronto star:

In the second inning of Friday's game between Detroit and Oakland, Piniella talked about the success light-hitting A's infielder Marco Scutaro had in the first round of the playoffs. Piniella said that slugger Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to contribute, comparing Scutaro's production to finding a "wallet on Friday" and hoping it happened again the next week.

Later, Piniella said the A's needed Thomas to get "en fuego" - hot in Spanish - because he was currently "frio" - or cold. After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons spoke up.

Lyons said that Piniella was "hablaing Espanol" - butchering the conjugation for the word "to speak" - and added, "I still can't find my wallet."

"I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit too close to him now," Lyons continued.

to make things stranger, piniella has attempted to defend lyons, saying that the joke was misconstrued. i'm sure ian, our resident journalism correspondent will have something to say, but here's the deal. there is a good possibility that is was a misconstrued joke. and there's a good chance that lyons probably isn't a racist. however, in these times, how could you be so bad a broadcaster to say something like that. there are plenty of examples of borderline cases, but i feel that this exchange definitely goes beyond the cateogry of borderline. if you need to be funny then fine, be funny, but to say something like that right after brennaman got done praising piniella for being bilingual is just not something i think a good broadcaster can do.

the great part of all of this is that lyons was horrible anyways, so now we only have to deal with tim mccarver's banality and incoherence on fox. will someone at fox just pay 1 million dollars to tony gwynn or someone who can bring something to the table please?

in related news, lyons also works as a part time broadcaster for the dodgers, and in their infinite wisdom have decided to retain his services. and the dodgers' brass wonder why latinos in LA have turned on them in favor of the angels.

2) U2 is launching some kind of wacky internet scavenger hunt/publicity stunt. i hate to say it, but moves like this really make me think that U2's relevance is coming to an end. what really sucks is that i had a little faith after their appearance in the leonard cohen documentary, I'm Your Man (which is pretty great by the way), but this coupled with their horrible horrible, horrible...i can't stress horrible enough here people...collaboration with green day. a new single from their new album is due out in november, so let's hope that it's better than this crap.

3) giving credence to my roommate's theory that the sun never sets on phil collins, genesis is planning a reunion tour. which is actually something that i would be quite interested in seeing. however, my guess is that like all concerts, tickets will be unaffordable. i wonder if they'll be able to work in a prog-rock version of against all odds.

4) seriously, humans suck...

5) ...but sometimes sports don't. go tigers.

bobby the gook season 3, week 6

2006-10-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

i'm still trying to get my head over this cory lidle thing. i mean seriously, cory lidle was the definition of mediocre athlete. 7 teams in 9 years. yet he dies in a horrific accident and the networks can't get enough of it. granted he spiced up the whole deal by crashing a plane into a building in the post 9/11 era, but i can't help but think that if he weren't a new york yankee, the media just wouldn't give a damn. anyways, it's just as well, as it was a slow week for our little game here. there were three pushes last week, which may not seem like a lot, but in terms of this game, where fredo and i only end up disagreeing on a handful of teams, it makes all the difference. both fredo and i went 6-5-3 last week. so if those three pushes are different by one point, either of us could have been 9-5 or 6-8. in any case, no ground made up for me, but on a positive note, fredo and i came in third this week in our local pool and won fifty bucks. good times. anyways, on the season, fredo is 44-26-5 (.587), while i am 34-36-5 (.453). erik beat us both (i can't explain it) and went 7-4-3. so in that matchup, erik is 28-24-5 (.491) and i'm 26-27-5 (.448).

fredo went really nuts in the vegas portion of the game and ended up pulling $250 out of his ass by wagering 300 bucks on the broncos at the last second, to not only get out of the red but also to win a bunch of money. this after three previous rounds of betting to make up for his poor initial bets. fredo made 1000 bucks worth of bets and only came out ok on his very last bet. which leads me to think that fredo is not taking this part very seriously, since we would never bet so much in order to try and get in the black. maybe we'd bet enough to break even, but we'd never ever bet 300 bucks on the monday night game right before we leave vegas. so i'm going to apply a new rule, a spending limit. we are limited to 200 bucks a week. to reiterate, we must wager at least 100 dollars, but no more than 200 dollars. if fredo wants to go crazy and bet on the sunday or monday night game, he can, but he can't go apeshit and try to make up with pretend money. anyways, i broke just plain even. so on the year, i've still got $1458 (+$28 on the year), while fredo is at 1670 (+240) on the year. i'll go ahead and let him keep his ill gotten gains from last week, but from now on, 200 bucks is the limit. anyways, let's get started on the picks, i've got a busy weekend ahead of me and i need to knock these out. as always, point spreads and over/unders from caesar's and home team in caps.

CORRECTION (10/13/06, 5:30PM) - i'm terrible at math apparently and fredo actually didn't make any money as he broke even as well. so that puts him at 1420(-$10) on the year. i also did some thinking and decided that putting a cap on wagers doesn't make sense. so i'm just going to mandate that all wagers be in before the start of the sunday night game, which is usually 5:15PM PDT.

cin (-5.5) over TAM (o/u - 43)
that gradowski kid looked ok last week as tampa covered the spread. however, his name is still gradowski and he was just playing an ordinary saints defense that needed a punt return for a td from reggie bush to pull it out. never take crappy qb's on the road, and even though this is a home game for the bucs, cinnci is coming off the bye and they really needed it for chad johnson to get completely right.

WAS (-10.5) over ten (o/u - 39)
it's tempting to take the titans after they played the colts so tough last week and washington looked so bad. however, the more i think about it, the more i think that the titans really just suck and their defense just caught the colts on a bad day and i think that their offense had about as good of a day as it can have. the line started at 9, so i'm inclined to think i'm right about this one.

DAL (-12.5) over hou (o/u - 43)
i don't want to talk about it.

DET (+1) over buf (o/u - 40)
this could go either way, but the way i figure it, the lions aren't so bad that they'll go 0-6. although i have to say that this is the best chance they have for a win so they better make the most of it.

sea (-3) over STL (o/u - 45)
i really don't have a clue on this one. and i know i should take the points, but here are my arguments. first, the rams are overachieving while the seahawks are underachieving, and i think that things will balance out this week. second, hasselbeck has had a couple of weeks to figure stuff out with deion branch. third, the rams are on a three game winning streak and seriously, that seems to be about the ceiling of what a team of their talent can do. lastly, the rams win last week was very iffy and were it not for brett favre being 74 years old, they might have lost to a bad packers team.

ATL (-3) over nyg (o/u - 42)
the giants play the run pretty well (86.5 ypg, 9th in the NFL) but the falcons defend it even better (69.3 ypg, 2nd in the NFL). this is going to be a pretty low scoring affair and the falcons are at home so i'll take mike vick.

phi (-3.5) over NO (o/u - 46.5)
seriously, i'm not going to talk about it.

car (+3) over BAL (o/u - 33.5)
i think that this is the week that the panthers start to show that this might be their year while i think that mcnair is going to continue to regress. i'm not sure if billick has pulled jamal lewis out of the starting lineup, but he should.

NYJ (-2) over mia (o/u - 36)
the dolphins will be better with harrington under center, but crappy qb on the road...as they say in new york, fuggedaboutit.

sd (-10) over SFO (o/u - 42.5)
i'm ready to admit defeat in my prediction about the chargers. they're looking awesome and will probably make it to the AFC championship game. fredo and i can hopefully put this ugly chapter of our relationship behind us and be BFF again. LT is going to go buckwild against the niners.

kc (+7) over PIT (o/u - 36.5)
i don't like this pick a whole lot. who knows what damon huard is going to be like on the road. but i don't think that pittsburgh as currently constituted is a whole touchdown better than the chiefs.

DEN (-15) over oak (o/u - 36.5)
vegas finally got an oakland point spread right. i know that's a lot of points, but on the road, against a clearly superior in every way (even at qb) there's no way the raiders cover.

chi (-11) over ARI (o/u - 39)
leinart looked just fine last week even though the cards lost. however, that bears defense is pretty effing awesome. leinart is a rookie after all, and unless he's captain america, i just don't think leinart is going to be able to get anything going against the bears. as we said last week, why would we stop riding this gravy train?

i'm pretty tired right now, so i'll get my money picks in later.

sports quick hits

2006-10-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

it's been a while since i've done this, but that's a good thing, because that means i'm making progress towards my degree. anyways, let's get it going.

1) cory lidle may have died and possibly killed 3 other people when he ran his plane into a 50 story building in NYC. apparently he took the yankees' ALDS loss to the tigers pretty hard. no word on whether steinbrenner is going to fire torre or cashman because of this. man i'm dark sometimes.

2) in yesterday's TMQ, we learned that the NCAA is going after william and mary for their inclusion of feathers in their logo. the official nickname is "the tribe". as pointed out by easterbrook, this is but one example of the hypocrisy that is the NCAA. florida state can keep their mascot and logo, the seminoles, but william and mary can't keep feathers in their logo. let's see, this is ok:

but this is not:

let's see, what could possibly be the difference between florida state and william and mary? could it be that florida state is a football factory, while william and mary is an actual university? as we're often fond of saying here at the ragin' asian, follow the money.

3) the convenience store chain 7-11 has paid the white sox a lot of cash to start all of their home games at...take a wild gues...7:11PM. that's right, we've found a way to sponsor the time of day. next up, sponsorship deals for the virtues of hard work and determination..."today's valiant effort by the seattle mariners brought to you by verizon wireless, can you hear me now?"

4) someone mentioned to me that hockey season started...umm, what is hockey again?

bobby the gook season 3, week 5

2006-10-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

as ll cool j once said, don't call it a comeback. actually, you shouldn't because i'm still far behind alfredo, but i enjoyed quite a day in the football sun last week as i went 12-1-1. that's right, i was one away from the mythical perfecto week. but no complaints from me, just the quiet satisfaction that i kicked some major ass last week. not that fredo did bad per se, as he went 8-6 last week. fredo can be satisfied that he's been much more consistent than me thus far. but he can't be satisfied with me shaving 5 games off of his lead (by the way, the fact that i used the word "shaving" in this post will guarantee that this blog is going to get about 500 more hits than it normally would thanks to all the pervs doing searches for porn). anyways, i goofed last week as fredo actually went 8-5-1 in week 3 and not 7-6-1. anyways, the corrections bring our current standings to me: 28-31-1 (.466); fredo: 38-21-1 (.633). he's still got a double digit lead, but if i just keep going 13-1 every week, i should be able to catch him fairly soon. but seriously, last week kept this thing interesting for at least another week. erik, was pretty average at 7-6-1 as well. in our little side pissing match, erik is 21-20-2 (.488) and i'm 20-22-2 (.455). so it turns out that last week only just made up for the 2 win week that i had last week.

even more interesting was our vegas portion of game, where i would have won big if the browns had covered but they pushed so i only won a couple of individual bets for 30 bucks and missed all of my parlays. that adds $20 to my season total bringing me to $1458 (+$28 for the year). fredo went with the "more is more" approach and made a ton of bets. it backfired a little and he had a rough morning with his crazy bets and lost 85 bucks, but as you can see in the comments section of last week, he did some clutch gambling and got back up to +$30 on the strength of the chicago bears big victory. that brings his total to $1420 (-$10 overall). but that doesn't change the fact that dammit, i just kicked some effin' ass last week.

anyways, there's a real interesting board this week so let's get on with the show. the point spreads and over/unders are from caesar's and the home teams are in caps. let's get going.

IND (-18.5) over ten (over/under - 48)
ughhh, i hate these big point spreads. i hate giving up this many points, but the titans gave up 45 points to the cowboys, who have a pretty good offense. you figure that the colts probably have about the same caliber offense, if not better, so i'm basically betting that tennessee can't score more than three touchdowns, which seems like a safe bet to me.

NYG (-4.5) over was (over/under - 46)
is it me or does this line seem fishy? or perhaps i should say the line is more like a lobster since you use TRAPS to catch lobsters. why would the giants be favored over the skins who had a good win against a decent jaguars team? i guess there's home field, but the whole home-team-after-bye-week worked out pretty well last week with KC, so i'll put this to the test. p.s. clinton portis is at it again.

MIN (-6.5) over det (over/under -39.5)
not that i like this one that much, but i won't pick the lions, especially not on the road.

NO (-6.5) over tam (over/under - 35)
to paraphrase erik's latest bon mott, "hi, i'm bruce gradkowski, starting qb of the tampa bay buccaneers." and let's not forget how sorry jon gruden is.

stl (-3) over GB (over/under - 47)
i hate not taking favre as the home dog here, and i still haven't jumped on the st. louis bandwagon yet, but the packers actually didn't play the eagles that close in the first half. the score should have been 21-6 at halftime were it not for the buckhalter fumbles. remember when you could always feel good about betting on favre at lambeau...yeah, me neither, that was such a long time ago.

NE (-10) over mia (over/under - 36.5)
ok, bear with me as i take you through my completely convoluted logic. this is basically a must win for the dolphins. if they go 1-4, their season is completely over. the NFL wants and needs nick saban to succeed. the patriots however, are yesterday's news. sure they beat up on the bengals, but i think the bengals are set up for a late season slide where they'll show themselves as what they truly are, a middle of the pack team. i don't know if the dolphins are going to win. after all, nick saban won't say whether he'll start harrington or culpepper until game time. oh god, i just talked myself out of this. if we think that harrington is going to revive this team, we need to use the same kind of analysis as we should with culpepper. and that is, he is what he is, a very mediocre quarterback that will probably be out of football in a few years. gimme the pats here.

CHI (-10.5) over buf (over/under - 34.5)
what's with all these big freakin' point spreads? ummm, i just don't know about this one. on the one hand, i can see buffalo just pounding the rock with mcgahee which would be good for my fantasy squad. anyways, running the ball seems to be what you need to do with the bears since it is very clear to me that you can't pass on the bears. but then again, i'm starting to wonder if chicago is going to turn into that team whose train you just keep riding the whole season long.

CAR (-8) over cle (over/under - 37.5)
the browns suck.

nyj (+7) over JAX (over/under - 37)
one, i haven't taken an underdog yet, and two, that was a real bad loss for the jags i think. i mean the jets just lost to peyton manning, but two, i think that the skins showed last week that the jags defense has some problems.

kc (-4) over ARI (over/under - 39.5)
i've said this before and i'll say it again. i think that when it's all said and done, matt leinart is going to be a decent NFL quarterback. but not this week.

SFO (-3) over oak (over/under - 40)
dear northern california, i hate your attitude and i hate your football teams.

PHI (-2) over dal (over/under - 43.5)
i know, i know....i feel like a traitor believe me. but here's the deal. first, as you might guess, i'm going with the jinx here. second, from what i've seen, the eagles are actually really kickin' some ass. fredo and i were discussing this and what is getting lost in this whole T.O. returns thing is that philly has the best qb in the league going, and dallas has drew bledsoe. it's seems to me pretty much all other things in this game are equal, and if you had to bet on either mcnabb or bledsoe, who are you gonna take? that being said, i am really looking forward to the game. it's going to be a complete circus which i always feel is amusing to watch. and i am going to be rooting like hell for the cowboys. on a side note, one thing i'm not looking forward to is the shots of the crowd. fredo confirmed this for me, but last week during the monday night game, every time i they showed the crowd, i had the same thought, "jesus that is one grotesquely obese person". fredo thought that the women were pretty ugly as well, which is strange when you consider that the cheerleaders are some of the hottest in the leauge, but geez, philadelphia, take a look in the mirror before you go out and maybe don't eat that second cheesesteak you fat effer.

SD (-3) over pit (over/under - 37)
everyone is talking about how big ben's problems have been at the heart of how the steelers have played this year. maybe we're just seeing what happens when a team overacheives one year and then regresses back to the mean. san diego on the other hand, really needs to let philip rivers start throwing the ball. i don't think he's that great, but i know for sure that he won't be good if you only let him throw only dump passes to the fullback. i think that this comes down to LT vs. the pittsburgh defense. and since i heart LT, i'll take the chargers.

bal (+4) over DEN (over/under - 33.5)
denver's defense looks great to me, and they are the home team after the bye. but i don't like the prospect of jake plummer against the ravens' defense. seriously, jake plummer can just suck it.

bonus time
since it's the weekend of the red river shootout, i'm going to make an exception to the no college betting rule for this game only. texas is a 4.5 point favorite over the sooners. mack brown - vince young = same old mack brown. give me 50 bucks on the sooners. hunnamanoo maneck maneck! my NFL bets:
CAR (-8) - $50
kc (-4) - $50
PHI (-2) - $50 (that one kills me)
IND/ten over (48) - $25

$5 anti-crappy team parlay - CAR/SFO/stl/MIN
$10 parlay - SD/PHI/kc/NO
$10 parlay SD/PHI/ARI/NO

only two underdogs this week. i'm a wuss.

the NFL and Katrina

2006-10-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

i realize that this is probably a little late, but i wanted to put some time and thought into this subject and i wanted to see what other columnists had written about last week when the saints and their return to the superdome a year after it was basically destroyed by hurricane katrina. and after everything that has transpired so far, i think it is safe to say that the NFL's and the saints' organization's taking advantage of the situation is nothing less than a complete affront to common decency. perhaps sports journalists should bear some of the blame as well, but all in all, celebrating the return of the saints to the superdome is like celebrating the return of the enola gay from hiroshima.

for those of you who don't pay attention to these kind of things, let me give you a quick summary of what happened. two weeks ago in the week leading up to the saints first home game in the superdome since hurricane katrina, the game was hyped up by the league as a way of showing off how new orleans has rebuilt itself. the ESPN announcers of course, went over the top with this angle and could not stop talking about how the saints were a beacon of hope for the ravaged city. they especially hammered home the point that the superdome, which we most remember as the make shift shanty town for the displaced of new orleans was now all shiny and new and full of people in the city that had rallied around it as a symbol of its survival. espn's TMQ has gone so far as using the moniker, "the United States Saints" when referring to the team (although i can't tell if he's being sarcastic). mayor ray nagin probably summed up public sentiment about the saints when he said

Psychologically, the Saints mean everything to this community right now. We need them now more than ever -- at least until we get back on our feet.

how does this make any sense whatsoever? you wannna know what would really lift people up psychologically? if someone would spend the money to clean up the poor neighborhoods so that people could start with the process of rebuilding their lives. and by all accounts, the only place that is fixed up are the downtown areas and the nice nieghborhoods that didn't have that much damage to begin with. i've heard first hand accounts that the most damaged neighborhoods still look like war zones.

however, peter king's column from two weeks ago is most instructive however as we learn:

The federal and state governments poured $180 million into a new roof and massive rehab at the Superdome.

while king uses this as a warm and fuzzy story, we as american citizens should be offended by this. how can it be that the freakin' saints get 180 million dollars to fix the superdome, and the people in the 9th ward can't get the debris removed from the streets? the disconnect between this and what actually happened is amazing to me. and the NFL has been ruthless in taking advantage of the situation to generate profit for themselves.

nothing would have been worse for the saints, and by extension the league overall than the saints having to relocate to baton rouge, where they played some games last year, or to another city. attendance would have been down, the saints would have probably eventually relocated and football starts to resemble more a business and less like america's favorite and most important sporting institution. so somehow, they con the state and federal governments to use funds that should clearly be used to fix the levees, clean up the streets, and get people back on their feet, to instead fix a stadium for a completely troubled franchise. furthermore, they encourage people to spend money on season tickets instead of say donating to organizations that would help to rebuild the city. the saints have sold out every home game. so not only does the money from the government go the profit margins of the NFL, but they also get people to spend their own money on the saints as well, who by the way sucked worse than any team in the league last year (although i must admit they look ok this year, but trust me, the 3-1 saints...that's not gonna last.). this is the definition of ludicrous.

that's enough of the emotional stuff, let's talk sociology. this actually shouldn't be that big of a surprise. the NFL has co-opted other causes in the name of trying to make more money. most recently, they've turned themselves into the support the troops league, especially with the over the top honoring of pat tillman. in many ways, the NFL has perfected the process of manipulating the public's perception of the league into something that is nothing but pure goodness. by selectively choosing these causes (katrina, pat tillman) and then distilling them into simplistic notions of helping people, when in fact no one is getting helped, it is able to associate itself with the core values of those who consume most of its product: dumb guys who don't read the front page of the newspaper and only read the sports page. the end result is a brand that is even stronger than ever and can generate more revenue than ever.

even more masterful is it's manipulation of the press via PR blitz into turning the return of the saints into feel good event of the year. i can't find a single columnist who was angry about the situation. even tony kornheiser, the most cynical of sports columnists wrote

It will take years and years for it (New Orleans) to come back whole again. But the great elixir of sports, the great shot of adrenaline that sports gives you, is in those few hours when you can lose yourself -- and put your worries aside -- and if you get lucky your team wins and you go home happy. The problem in New Orleans, of course, is that not everybody has a home to go to. Still, nobody walking out of that Superdome on Monday night felt anything but hope. It's a script that was perfectly written and a moment that was perfectly lived.

can you think of a better commercial for the NFL? neither can i.

anyways, what i guess i'm trying to say is that NFL is trying to say that they are helping someone, when in fact they're just really helping themselves. if they really wanted to help out new orleans, they could have just used the money that was used to fix the superdome to help out those folks that are still homeless in the 9th ward. but instead, they're gong around promoting the idea that "hey look how the NFL saved the city from ruin!" which really just means that they're essentially just saying very loudly, "what about me?"

bobby the gook season 3, week 4

2006-09-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

oh man am i horrible at handicapping football. my guaranteed victory statements at the beginning of the season look pretty awful right about now. i'm beginning to think that i'm the daunte culpepper of football handicapping. for those first three years i was nails, but now i've been floundering for the past two years. i wish i had an explanation, but is there ever a good explanation for unfulfilled potential other than just simple tragedy? i went 2-12-1 last week, which you would be hard pressed to do even if you tried. i also whiffed on the big bet. for the season that brings me 16-32-1 (.327) and 1-2 on the big bet (.333). the worst part is that i missed an opportunity as fredo only went 7-6-1 last week. apparently, he forgot to pick a game as his fifty dollar bet, but it's not a problem as i am eliminating the big bet from this part of the game and i'll explain in a bit.. anyways, that last week brings fredo's season total to 30-17-1 (.625) . taking out the big bets from the frist two weeks, fredo is 29-16-1 (.630), while without the big bets, i am 15-30-1 (.326)

erik got around to joining our little gang bang here and in a incomprehensible twist of complete and sheer luck, he bested both me and fredo, going 8-5-1. what can i say, every a-hole from detroit has his day. anyways, the two week standings between erik and i are me: 9-18-1 (.321) and erik: 14-14-1 (.483).

bonus wise, fredo and i missed all of our parlays, with me losing 12 bucks and fredo losing 10. our current accounts check in at $178 and $130. anyways, after some discussion we've decided to change the way the bonus round works. instead of only doing parlays, we're going to let fred and me bet on pretty much any pro-football game against the spread or over unders. we're not going to do any straight up betting since i'm just too lazy to track down money lines, but we'll pretend that our imaginary casino just gives you straight up odds and doesn't charge a transaction fee. that is if you bet 50 bucks, you win 50 bucks. again, the whole point of this exercise is to simulate vegas as much as possible and we'd never go to vegas and just bet on parlays. so instead of 10 bucks a week, we're going to be required to bet 100 bucks a week. of course we're going to add 90 dollars per week for all of the remaining weeks in the pro-football season (14 weeks x $90 = $1260). and we can still do parlays if we want and those will pay out as they did before. we're not going to do college because the lines are going to change from day to day and i'm not going to post all of the college games' lines. besides, college football sucks. anyways, with our additional funds i now have $1438 and fredo has $1390. this is going to take the place of the fifty dollar bet, since now we actually will be able to make fifty dollar bets. man that's a long intro to read before getting to the picks. as always, point spreads from caesar's and home team in caps.

NYJ (+9.5) over ind (o/u - 46)
i hope that i'm wrong and that i'm jinxing this because i have all sorts of colts starting this week for my fantasy teams. plus that's just a whole lot of points to give up on the road.

BAL (+2.5) over sd (o/u - 33.5)
what's it going to take for me to give the chargers any respect? well i can't do anything after a bye week. if the chargers win this week then i will be more than happy to admit that i was wrong. but i forsee bad times for philip rivers in this game. he's a little better than i thought he'd be, but i'm pretty sure he's never faced a defense like this.

BUF (-1) over min (o/u -34.5)
did everyone see jp losman after the bills lost last week? he was all indignant and whining about being tired of people calling the bills losers or some crap like that. and inexplicably i saw at least 2 or 3 sports talking heads saying that they like to see that from a quarterback. puh-leeze, this guy really hasn't shown me much at all. he had 300 yards last week, but that is the first time he's ever shown a bit of anything. plus he couldn't find anyone in the end zone. the sooner that buffalo cuts ties with this assclown the better. that said, i still like buffalo's defense. the vikes seem to still not be able to do much with the running game. 3 ypc just ain't gonna get it done.

dal (-9.5) over TEN (o/u -37)
remember that thing about nine and a half points being too much for a road team. that rule doesn't apply when you have suicidal wide receivers on america's greatest sports franchise ever playing against kerry collins. this is where dallas is going to start blowing people out of the water with their defense. i know i'm jinxing it, but dammit, i think we all see it coming.

KC (-7) over sfo (o/u -40.5)
something about teams after the bye week at home...

no (+7) over CAR (o/u -42)
you know, both teams really showed something out there last week. i mean carolina finally put together something that resembled a decent offensive plan and the saints, well, aside from having the NFL on their side actually didn't look that bad. i think that emotion will carry over a little bit this week, but only enough to keep it close. by the way, i'm working on a little piece about how the NFL has unabashedly exploited the katrina mess for their own personal gain and profit, while screwing black people and poor people at the same time! look for it in the next couple of days.

ATL (-7.5) over ari (o/u -41)
you can't tell me that the falcoms aren't super pissed off that the NFL did everything they could to make sure that the saints won that game last week. and you can't tell me that the cards are better off with kurt warner fumbling away the football twice in the last five minutes. take the under too.

HOU (+3.5) over mia (o/u -40.5)
why would anyone ever take miami again? when in doubt, take the points.

STL (-6) over det (o/u -44)
lesson learned part 1: after taking detroit for three straight weeks, i've learned my lesson. that teams is not only bad, but it stinks to high hell. they just cut cory bradford because mike furrey has outplayed him. detroit is looking at another high draft pick this year and hopefully someone will mercifully put matt millen out of his misery and het him out of there.

CIN (-6) over ne (o/u -46)
the only thing that worries me about this game is that every year there always seems to be a point where a lot of people are talking about how the pats are done and that they had a great run, and then they go out and reel off four straight or something. it seems like a lot of people are saying that kinda stuff right now. i'm taking the bengals and i expect big things from carson in his last week of having a healthy knee, but i'd stay away from this one.

WAS (+3) over jax (o/u -34)
i thought that the jags actually didn't look that bad in the first half of last week's game. and as mentioned before in this column, clinton portis is what makes the redskins offense go. you could go either way on this one as well, so i'm going to take the points.

cle (-3) over OAK (o/u -34)
lesson learned part 2: i realize now the folly of putting any kind of faith in the raiders. from here on out unless the raiders are getting a ridiculous amount of points, i'm always going to pick against the raiders. this team embarrasses me.

CHI (-3) over sea (o/u -35)
the seahawks blew out the giants last week, but this week they face a real defense. like what i saw out of grossman last week as well. this is going to be a good football game for sure. i'm glad it's the sunday night game.

PHI (-11) over gb (o/u -48)
philly rolls in a big way, which is troublesome for me since the team that one of the teams that i am playing in fantasy this week has mcnabb going. green bay is going to get destroyed, if for no other reason than it will set up things perfectly for next weeks death match of the eagles vs. t.o. the nfl is smart and will not do anything to that might hurt the build up to what will be easily the most hyped game of the season.

bonus time - gimme fifty bucks on the browns, that's right, i'm putting my biggest bet on a team that's 0-3. gimme another twenty on the eagles to cover and ten on the sd/bal under. 5 dollar parlay on chi/cle/philly. and another 5 on cle/atl & ari under/dal/was. i already like this new format alot better.

T.O. = some kind of crazy

2006-09-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

as i'm sure you've all read by now, everyone's favorite prima donna reciever may or may not have attempted suicide last night. do i think he really tried? how the hell should i know? do i think he has some kind of mental disorder? youbetcha! here's an interesting take on the whole mental health thing in the NFL by Dr. Z.

my own theory is that i've always thought that terell might be gay and that being closeted causes him great mental discomfort as i'm sure it does for all people who don't think they can come out. think about it, remember how vitriolic he was towards gay people in san francisco? i've always thought that violent homophobia was a way of denying your own true sexuality. the obsession with physical fitness? the flamboyant touchdown celebrations? but now with the suicide attempt and the knowledge that gay people are much much more likely to attempt suicide than straight people? if that isn't enough to fuel completely unfounded speculation, than i don't know what is. either way, i'm glad he's ok, cuz in two weeks he's going to torch the eagles and put them out of division title contention.

bobby the gook season 3, week 3

2006-09-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

man do i suck in so many different ways. first, i really dropped the ball on blogging this week. there's plenty i missed too, but all i can say is that i've been busy. the GF is back in town and i've been spending time with her, so i have a legitimate excuse. i also sucked with last week's pick, while fredo was stellar. i know nothing about football. anyways, today is move-in day for HK so i don't really have a whole lot of time. so let's just get right to it. last week, i went 7-10, missing my big bet, while fredo was 13-4 hitting his big bet. that brings the two week standings to me: 14-20 ( .412) and 1-1 (.500) on the big bet; fredo: 23-11 (.676) and 2-0 (1.000) on the big bet. parlay wise, i lost 10 bucks so i'm at $190, while fredo lost 20 to brin his account balance to $140 as always, numbers from caesar's and home team in caps.

BUF (-6) over nyj (o/u - 34.5)
how about the bills defense? a wise woman once told me that the bills will always break your heart, but so far this year they've looked a lot better than advertised. i still think that losman sucks, but i just don't believe in the jets. i like the under a lot on this one as well.

PIT (-2) over cin (o/u -43)
yeah, big ben looked like ass last week. but at the same time, their defense still only gave up 9 points. not that the jags are the same kind of offensive juggernaut that the bengals are supposed to be, but i just really like the steelers defense at home.

jax (-7) over IND (o/u - 43)
i really don't know about this pick. the jags look like a legitimate team so far. and they always seem to play the colts tough. however, the line started at 8.5 so i'm a little worried about this one.

ten (+10.5) over MIA (o/u - 35.5)
that's just to many points to give up when your offense can barely muster 10 points a game. seriously, they're calling for joey harrington in miami. how bad do you have to be to have joey harrington breathing down your neck. jason whitlock wrote an interesting bit in his last NFL column about how black qb's always have more pressure on them when a white guy is the backup. seriously, joey harrington. anyways, a must win for the dolphins, but i think that the titans can score at least 10 points, which means that miami has to score 22 points, which is a tough order for a crappy offense. p.s. eff you nick saban for giving carries to lee suggs, which makes my ronnie brown less valuable fantasy wise.

HOU (+4) over was (o/u - 37.5)
the texans seemed to be able to move the ball decently late, and washington's whole offense is in complete disarray. those skins' corners suck balls. look for a big game for andre johnson and look for the redskins season go down the crapper. oh, and the over, big time.

chi (-3.5) over MIN (o/u - 35)
wow, no respect for the great play of the bears defense. i guess the vikings look ok, but they've beat washington who is not that good, and the panthers basically gave away last week's game. this seems like a sensible 50 dollar bet, so i'll make the bears my big bet of the week.

car (-3) over TAM (o/u - 34)
this seems like another easy bet. i'm pretty sure that steve smith is a go this week, and chris simms really really really really is regressing. but for some reason, most writers can't seem to admit that he crumbles under even the least bit of pressure. when it's all said and done i think that chris simms is going to go down as the guy that people always give a chance and simms will always let those people down.

DET (-6.5) over gb (o/u - 39)
last week, as soon as the games started, i felt pretty bad about my detroit pick. that was the worst pick last week. yet here i am, betting on jon kitna again. what is my problem? actually, what is brett favre's problem. i think that the fact that he looked ok on a couple of drives last week is causing the weinies of football writers all over the nation go crazy. don't believe the hype, it's going to be a sequel.

bal (-7) over CLE (o/u - 33)
i'm feeling pretty good about the ravens this day. remember, they're my pick to win their division and if that defense is what is seems to be, they might make a deep playoff run. but i don't really think that's going to happen, i just think that the browns are bad.

ARI (-4.5) over stl (o/u - 44.5)
the rams aren't actually as bad i thought they were going to be. steve jackson looks great this year, but i don't see much happening on defense. on the flip side, the cards aren't probably as good as i thought they were going to be, but i think that god will reward kurt warner's piety with 3 touchdowns this week.

nyg (+3.5) over SEA (o/u - 43)
i'm just real impressed with the giants so far. while seattle may be the most underwhelming 2-0 in the league. this could go either way, but after last weeks comeback win, i think that the giants will avenge their horrible loss against the seahawks from last year.

phi (6.5) over SFO (o/u - 42)
bay area fans are the biggest knee jerkers in the world. almost every san fran fan i talked to last week think that the niners are going to score 30+ a game from here on out. that's just stupid. d-mac shows what a great qb this week with a monster game.

NE (-6.5) over den (o/u - 39)
the pats did come awfully close to blowing the spread last week, but brady just was himself and wasted 8 minutes of the clock with dink and dunk bs. on the other side of the ball, the anti-brady, jake, my personal rake really seems like he wants to retire. i wonder if jay cutler will get into this game?

atl (-4) over NO (o/u - 43.5)
the line started out at 2.5 which has to be the whole "first game at the superdome since katrina thing". but it seems that the bettors aren't buying into the emotion thing either. so why would i? if this line were 7.5 i might go with the saints, but i think that michael vick is going to run buckwild on the saints as he continues his quest to win my heart back from ladanian tomlinson.

parlays, i'm going to go crazy here, so bear with me

4 bucks on bal/chi/jax
4 bucks on det/chi/hou-wash over/buff-nyj under
4 bucks on buf/ten/ari/phi/chi/atl

bobby the gook season 3, week 2

2006-09-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

it looks like the guaranteed victory season has gotten off to an inauspicious start. the first week was one of the more strange week ones i can remember. home teams sucked last week, both in real life and against the spread. furthermore, the schedule featured a bunch of good teams taking care of business on the road against bad teams, so it's hard to take away any impressions about last week in terms of how good teams are going to be. for example, do we really learn anything about the bears after a 26-0 win over the horrible packers? ditto with the chargers killing the raiders on monday night. anyways, i got off to a bad start with a 7-10 record (.412) including hitting my fifty dollar bet (1-0 1.000), while fredo also got his fifty dollar bet (1-0, 1.000) and started the year 10-7 (.588). erik on the other hand didn't fare any better than me and finished 6-9. if you count the miami game than we tied. either way, he's still a big douchebag. i play him in fantasy this week and i am going to freakin' destroy him. anyways, in the second part of the scoring, fredo missed all of his wacky parlays, while i hit on my three team parlay, which really makes me wish that i had been in vegas this weekend. anyways, as of right now, fredo has $160 in his account, and i, by virtue of hitting the three team parlay get 6-1 on a five dollar bet. losing my 4 team cancels out the money betted, so i'm up to $200 bucks. anyways, let's get on with the picks. as always, the spreads are from caesar's and home team in caps.

oak (+12.5) over BAL (o/u - 34)
i know, i know, picking the raiders really was a stupid move last week. but sometimes, you have to take the left field pick, because there's almost always a game that goes exactly the way it should. anyways, this is the first of several very large numbers on the board. let's see if the whole away team covering thing keeps up, and seriously, how good can the ravens be? although several prominent writers like peter king and eric allen think that the ravens are back to their super bowl defense days with ray lewis seemingly at 100%. as much as i hated the raiders last week, however, i just can't give up that many points to anyone, except to...

IND (-12.5) over hou (o/u - 47)
for one second, houston looked like they might have something last week. they took the opening kickoff and scored a touchdown on a good philly defense. and then reality set in and mario williams sucked ass, while the running game sucked even more. we obviously can't judge bush versus williams right now but let's just say someone seems to have the upper hand early. seriously, once, mario williams ends up on anther team, we should take away the franchise from houston. indy all the way.

CIN (-10.5) over cle (o/u - 42)
did i mention that there were a lot of big numbers this week? what do you make of the bengals beating the chiefs? sure they beat them handily, but really shouldn't they have beaten them by fifty points? i had better plans in mind for the browns this year, but they looked pretty awful last week. in the battle of teams from ohio, the single worst state in the union, i'll take the bengals here.

buf (+6.5) over MIA (o/u -37)
this could very well be an extremely knee jerk reaction to miami's performance against the steelers, but man , i thought they looked like dogshit. their defense couldn't stop the run or charlie effin batch. and as for the bills, well, they choked it away at the end, but they looked like they might be a little better than expected last week. we'll go with the bills, but like i said, it's possible that i'm just overreacting to last week here.

det (+8.5) over CHI (o/u -32)
i'm getting nervous about taking so many road teams, but this one seems about right to me as well. i thought the lions looked really good on defense against the seahawks...can it be much harder to stop the bears offense? i'm not saying the lions win, but that's just a lot of points to give up, so gimme detroit here.

car (pk) over MIN (o/u -37.5)
seriously, somebody stop the madness with all of these road teams. look, the vikes looked ok, and hopefully chester taylor can turn his 31 carries a game into fantasy gold for me, but i just think that everyone's super bowl pick will be just fine once steve smith gets into the fold. i'll take carolina.

nyg (+3) over PHI (o/u - 42)
seriously, this is getting ridiculous with the road teams. ok, here's the deal. the giants were going to lose that game to the colts no matter what. and philly was going to win that game against the texans no matter what. so if you ask me, both of these teams are exactly the same on paper, so when in doubt, take the points.

ATL (-5.5) over tam (o/u - 35.5)
seriously, michael vick looked hot last week. while chris simms did not look so hot. you know when you think about it, gruden and simms deserve each other. atlanta all the way.

no (-1.5) over GB (o/u -38)
brett farvre is become as easy money as they come in the NFL these days, unless i have a really good reason not to do so, i'm always gonna bet against favre this season.

SFO (+3) over stl (o/u -44)
i have no idea about this one. i will say this, san fran's offense looked pretty ok with frank gore in there as the number one guy. and st. louis isn't going to get it done with only their kicker scoring.

ari (+7) over SEA (o/u -47)
again, i have very little feel for games this week since last week was so ambiguous, but i just think that number is a little big if arizona is supposed to be that surprise team this year.

ne (-6.5) over NYJ (o/u -37)
brady and dillon come back with a vengeance this week. i know everyone loves how the jets played last week, but i'm pretty sure that can't last.

ten (+12) over SD (o/u -38)
ok, i know this seems crazy, but i didn't see anything out of rivers to make me think that they're going to be able to rely on him to not make any mistakes. unless marty plans to run the ball exclusively this year, then at some point, i think we're going to see failure. not that the titans are really any good, but they have a better secondary than the raiders. san diego wins, but i think the titans barely cover however.

DEN (-10.5) over kc (o/u -39)
this line troubles me quite a bit. denver looked hella bad last week, but i'm just going to chalk that up to jake being jake. however, i think that the chiefs have big problems as they really couldn't get the running game going at all last week, and this week with trent green out, they're really going to need it. but at the same time, you're still betting with the snake here? aughhh! gimme denver.

was (+6.5) over DAL (o/u -37)
just going for the jinx here people. stay away from this one.

pit (-2.5) over JAX (o/u -37.5)
looks like i was wrong about pittsburgh. they look awesome, especially that defense. however, i read that polamalu is quiestionable for this game. if that's the case, then stay away, but otherwise, this one is going to be another blowout on monday night. gimme fifty on the steelers.

again, i'm pressed for time, so i'll have to get my parlays in a comment later.

punter-on-punter violence

2006-09-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

so according to this story, northern colorado's backup punter attacked the starter and then stabbed him in his kicking leg. that's right, the freakin' backup punter wanted that starting punting job for a also-ran college football program so badly that he was willing to stab someone for it. anyways, i'm sure he'll have plenty of time to build up his leg strength on the prison yard leg press. let's just say that he'll probably be fielding punts pretty soon, if you know what i mean.

i got your coffin corner right here bee-otch!

weird picture

2006-09-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

is it me or does tiger woods actually look black in this picture? maybe it's because he's standing next to swiss guy roger federer (i don't think you can get any whiter than swiss) or maybe it's because we're so used to seeing him in vanilla golf outfits, but i just thought it was worth posting for posterity.

racializing survivor

2006-09-09T23:51:00.000-07:00

as i am sure you have all heard by now, survivor is going to divide up their next set of contestants by race. i'm sure that many of you, when you first heard this, shook your head and cringed at the thought of racial representation on television being set back 20 years. this was my first reaction, but after a little bit of thought, i just wanted to say that we, especially the sociology community should actually welcome this opportunity. is the editing of the show going to play up the race card and do so in a way that probably plays up stereotypes? of course it is. however, that's something we know. and to be honest, even though it's better than it was in the eighties, racial representation on television isn't nearly as progressive as we want to think it is. did any of you realize that with the cancellation of the bernie mac show, that there isn't a single major network primetime show anchored by a person of color?

but like i said, that's not the point. what we should pay attention to is the discourse that it generates and how viewers react to this contrived racial segregation. it may not be what we hope it is, but i think that if we research this carefully we can learn a lot about where we are as a television viewing nation in terms of race. if i were a more enterprising sociologists, i would be coming up with ways to record observations of talk shows and internet fan sites and see how we talk about racial conflict. cuz let's face it, that's what the show is going to be about. the producers of the show are going to create situations where race is a salient issue and is part of the story line. anyways, i'm not an enterprising sociologist, rather i'm a lazy one who is trying to get his dissertation started, so i'll just be making armchair observations like the rest of you. but do i have any predictions? you bet.

1. i predict that the contestants will actually downplay race. the dominant discourse about race on television is what herman gray calls the assimilationist discourse which minimizes racial difference. contestants will instead be focused on the idea that they're all just trying to win a million dollars. this is not that different from how race is downplayed via the rhetoric of capitalism. in other words, people aren't oppressing me because they're racist, they're doing it because they're trying to make some cash.

2. i predict that there will be at least one storyline where a racial epiteth is uttered and made a very big deal about. this is one of the most tried and true television story lines when it comes to race, both in fictionalized television and news. i don't know how the producers will do it, as i imagine that people will be on their best behavior when on camera, but i bet that the producers will follow people around as best they can hoping that someone slips up and says something offensive. obviously, what the producers are really hoping is that one of the contestants, preferably white uses one of the big ones, like the n-word. however, what will probably happen is that one of the contestants will use a lesser epiteth, like calling one of the african americans lazy or saying that they have an advantage in physical challenges. either way, it will make for good discussion.

3. i predict that there is no way in hell that one of the white contestants wins. you do the math, 15 non-whites get to decide the fate of 5 white people. it's like the judicial system but in reverse!

lastly, let me also say that i think that most of the criticism seems to follow a corporate diversity kind of philosophy. that is, by talking about race, we're being racist. obviously, i think that this is stupid and the more chances we have to talk about race, even if it takes watching trashy televsion, then it's a good thing.

anyways, like i said, from a sociological and a pedagogical point of view, i think that this is going to be fun to follow. feel free to leave any predictions of your own in the comments section.

bobby the gook season 3, week 1

2006-09-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

all right kids, let's just hit the ground running, kickoff is less than an hour away, so no time to waste. scoring rules can be found here, and lines come from caesar's sportsbook. home team in caps.

mia (+1) over PIT (o/u - 34.5)
this line started at miami +5.5, but since roethlisberger hurt his appendix, it has plummeted. to be honest, i'm amazed that the steelers are still favored. this is going to be a pretty defensive affair especially with america's favorite qb charlie batch lining up for your defending super bowl champs. hmmm...good luck with all that. although the steelers were 2-0 with him starting last year. miami on the other hand is everyone, and i mean everyone's trendy pick to kick ass this year. count me as one of those people. in other news, i read that the steelers were going to play all kickoffs without helmets as a tribute to their fallen comrade. not that it will matter, gimme miami.

den (-4) over STL (o/u - 46)
seriously, over the years, i estimate that i've won well over 1000 bucks betting against jake plummer. it seems that this year, he's got a lot of things going for him with a proven receiver in javon walker and the always steady running game. mike martz really left things a mess in st. louis. some people seem to think that the rams are going to surprise people this season, but i just don't see it. believe it or not, i hate marc bulger worst than jake plummer this year. i'll take denver.

TEN(-3) over nyj (o/u - 36)
how much does it suck to have a game in week 1 where both teams' season is already over? the jets are horrible and the titans are at home, seems pretty easy to me. smart money is on tennessee, i'm since i'm smart, i'll take the titans.

buf (-9.5) over NE (o/u - 41)
wow, that's a big number, up from 7 earlier in the week. this is stupid, but i'm going to be a contrarian since i have willis mcgahee on my fantasy team, and say that the bills lose but keep it within a touchdown. hello rochester! gimme the bills.

bal (+3) over TAM (o/u -34)
admittedly, this isn't a smart pick, but chris simms may become my new jake plummer. do i think mcnair has anything left for the ravens, no, but when i think of the matchup of ray lewis and ed reed vs. chris simms, my heart goes out to chris' father phil. upset special, as i want the ravens.

cin (-2.5) over KC (o/u -46)
as fredo and i discussed earlier today...you should and i will include the over in your parlay. that's good money as kc's defense isn't going to stop anyone just yet, let alone the bengals. don't get me wrong, i think that carson palmer is still going to have problems with the knee, but he'll be fine for week 1 as the johnson brothers are going to go buckwild. although, this spread is down a point and a half from where it started. the pick is cinncinnatti.

sea (-6) over DET (o/u -45)
the more i think about the seahawks, the less i like their chances of returning to the super bowl. however, the more i think about detroit, the less i like their chances of winning a game this season. i feel bad for my roommate who is lions superfan #1. i tried to justify taking the lions, i really did, but i can't in good conscience pick the lions. seattle.

CAR (-4.5) over atl (o/u -39.5)
ughhhhh. stay away. this pick seems too easy. i'll take the carolina pantha'.

phi (-5) over HOU (o/u - 37)
i think fredo nailed it when he said the eagles are going to start hot and then fade hard after week 10. i think that mcnabb is going to have a really big game this week, so fantasy people with eagles, start 'em with confidence as the eagles are going to roll. eagles all the way.

CLE (-3) over no (o/u -36)
if i were a patriotic american i would say that the saints are a cinch to win their first game this season. however, i am not a patriotic american and more importantly, the saints defense has a lot of problems, which probably means that they hate america as well. the browns on the other hand are as american as apple pie and love the freedom which is brought to us via dead iraqi civilians. as seeing as how they're dying by the dozen over there, gimme the browns.

dal (+2) over JAX (o/u -36.5)
i have plenty of reasons not to take the cowboys here. dallas has a lousy record on opening day in the past 5 years. the jags play stout defense against the run, which i think parcells is going to do alot of. however, i just heard that marcus stroud sprained his ankle in practice and is questionable for sunday. he is the one that makes that defense go. besides, did you really think i'd pick against the cowboys during their super bowl run? the cowboys start with a win over the jags and win over the number.

chi (-3.5) over GB (o/u -34.5)
defense wins championships and in the case of this game, it also bends brett favre over and inserts the football into his anus. the funny thing is that i bet that in some alternate universe, this game is hailed as the passing of the torch from rex grossman to brett favre. however, in this universe, grossman sucks and favre gets concussed in the first quarter. bears, big time.

ARI (-7.5) over sfo (o/u - 42.5)
new stadium, new running back, worst team in the national football league. sounds like a blowout to me. gimme the cards and gimme three TDs for kurt warner. and gimme the under as i think that the niners get shut out.

ind (-3) over NYG (o/u -48.5)
fredo and i are thinking about calling our team for our football pool "peyton loves eli". that has nothing to do with anything but worth mentioning. if the colts don't blow out the giants, then i'll eat a live frog. gimme fiddy on the colts.

WAS (-4) over minn (o/u - 35)
ummm...no one knows what the deal is with portis is yet, but it shouldn't matter as i think the defense will end up winning this one for the skins. i hate taking the skins by the way, but the skins are the pick.

OAK (+3) over sd (o/u - 43.5)
as mentioned before, the chargers are the cause of the great rift between fred and i. always slow starters, i think the chargers are going to be unprepared for the brooks/moss connection. call me crazy, but aaron brooks looked good in preseason. that and i've only taken three underdogs so far, so let's get this rumble started. i'll take the raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiders.

ok, fred isn't going to be able to get his picks until later, but he told me he's taking miami tonight. i've got to get out to watch the game now, so i'll get my parlays in a comment later on. but i think we can all agree that our parlays this week cannot have the miami game on it. ok kids, let's rock and roll.

bobby the gook season 3, rules and scoring

2006-09-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

hot damn tamales! dress me up in a plaid skirt and call me britney, football season kicks off today! and with the start of football season comes our favorite past time, handicapping football games like handicapped people! this season is so ripe with good story lines and interesting propositions that i can hardly wait to start making money with my bookie. last year, fredo and i endured the worst season imaginable by two football geniuses. relatively speaking, fredo won, but overall, we both sucked ass. this year, i vow to make amends and will prove to you that i deserve the mantle of football prodigy which you the adoring crowd have so lovingly bestowed upon me. in fact, this year, after a two year losing streak to fredo, it's time to pull out the big guns:

I GUARANTEE VICTORY AGAINST FREDO THIS YEAR

that's right, i'm going namath on y'all (circa 1969, not 2003). i hate to do this to fredo, but his opinions on the san diego chargers have already driven a boulder size wedge between us, so i'm going to go ahead and complete the alienation.

anyways, on to the scoring system. last year, i came up with a pretty convoluted scoring system and to be honest, it was too much of a headache to keep up with. this year we're going to employ a two part scoring system that is much simpler. part 1 is your basic win/loss record. as always, we are required to pick one game that will be designated as the fifty dollar bet, and this will count as two wins or two losses toward the winning percentage. part 2 is going to employ an imaginary casino for parlays. we will both start with $170 in our account ($10 per week) and parlays will pay out according to real world parlay odds which i am getting from this website, but i'll post them now for posterity.

3 Teams	6/1
4 Teams	11/1
5 Teams	20/1
6 Teams	40/1
7 Teams	75/1
8 Teams	150/1
9 Teams	300/1
10 Teams	700/1

anyays, we'll each be required to make at least ten dollars worth of parlay bets per week, but we can bet as much as we want, and we can make as many different parlays as we want (minimum $2 per bet). so i could put $10 on a 4-team parlay if i wanted. or i can make a $6 5-team parlay and 2 $2 3-team parlays. parlays can be made up of picks against the spread or over/unders which i will start listing next to the games. anyways, we'll calculate winnings each week and add that up every week. whoever ends up with more money in their account at the end of the year wins that part of the game. the idea here is to simulate real vegas betting conditions, where you obviously would not bet on every single game.

i'll be getting the lines from caesar's sportsbook, and you can find the lines here. lastly, anyone who wants to join us is more than welcome. spending tuesday morning calculating the winners and losers is always a good distraction for me. anyways, them's the rules...but i suppose it moot, since i have already

GUARANTEED VICTORY FOR THE RAGIN' ASIAN!

good luck fredo. next post, week 1.

the ragin' asian returns, but steve irwin sure won't be

2006-09-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

howdy kids! i'm finally back from my big trip. i've actually been back for a while now but i've been laying low and taking it easy. first off, before i say anything, let me send out a ragin' welcome to ADBR, the newest addition to the dallas cowboy nation. we here at the ragin' asian can't think of a better sign about the outcome of the cowboys' season than your timely arrival. as they say in montreal, bienvenue!

anyways, the croc hunter finally died while trying to piss off a stingray for his show. i say finally because very few people have tempted death publicly as many times as this guy. by all accounts, he seemed like a nice fellow and i'm sure he did much to educate australia's children about nature. however, everytime i watched him, i couldn't help but thinking that he was playing with fire. i would never go so far as to say i wished death on him, but i did often wish that he would leave those damn animals alone. i mean, how would you like it if some dude randomly tackled you and started pointing out your privates on television.

did he deserve to die? of course not. but could he have avoided it by being a little more careful? probably. i mean, he didn't have to always wear shorts around the posionous snakes did he, did he? seriously, how far was he from being that dude in that movie grizzly man?

anyways, i suppose that there's some comfort to be found in knowing that he died while doing what he loved, effing with wildlife. g'day mate!

australian authorities have released this sketch of the suspected assailant.

bobby the gook season 3, preseason action part 4

2006-08-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

well, here it is the final installment of the preseason preview. today, we go over the east divisions

AFC east
new england - 10.5: over(-115) under(-115)
vegas is right to be wary of this team. on the one hand, last year, the pats were good but very mortal, unlike the two previous years, and they've lost a ton of players this year to free agency. on the other hand, they're still the the patriots with belichick and tom brady. it's kinda like betting against walsh and montana or spouting anti-semitic rants during your DUI arrest...not a good idea. however, they didn't beat the number last year, and vegas has reduced it accordingly. add to the mix a 'phins team that is supposed to be better. however, they get the bills and jets twice plus houston, detroit, green bay, and tennesee. that means that they need 3 more wins from the rest of the schedule to get there. i hate doing this, but i'll take the over here.

miami - 9: over(-155) under(+125)
everyone's trendy preseason pick, including vegas'. this is the biggest spread on the money lines and it makes sense. last year, saban showed everyone that he is in fact, that good. the defense will be fine as it always is and the skill positions have underrated talent in ronnie brown and chris chambers. as usual, the big question mark is whether or not daunte culpepper can regain his touch. remember folks, he was having a piss-poor year before he went down, leading many, including yours truly to believe that his numbers were inflated by the presence of randy moss. add that a major leg injury and i feel that pencilling in these guys as contenders is not that easy. however, they're playing the same patsy schedule as the patriots, and instead of needing only 3 wins, they only need 2. this is a no brainer i think but horrible value on your bet. over.

buffalo - 6.5: over(even) under(-130)
new york jets - 6: over(-130) under(even)
let me save everyone some time and just say that these teams have mediocre defenses, and horrible offenses. the jets' money line preplexes me a bit, but i suspect a push there. buffalo might win only 3 games this year. under on both of these "football teams".

NFC east
new york giants - 9: over(+105) under(-135)
the defense will always be solid with their studs up front and adding lavar arrington, and eli looked like he might take the next step this year, but i hear a lot of things about players getting fed up with coughlin. i guess you hear this every year with a hardass like coughlin, but i feel like there's more talk than i've heard in recent years. and vegas seems to think there's something up here as well...under.

washington - 9: over(-145) under(+115)
second biggest spread on the board. ughh...i hate saying this but there is quite a bit of talent and even more importantly, i was completely wrong about clinton portis. i love that guy this year and i think he'll have a big big year. no i still don't like the qb situation and i definitely don't like any defense that loses someone like lavar arrington, but on paper this team is worth at least 10 wins. over.

philadelphia - 8.5: over(-135) under(+105)
this number offends me. how is this team worth 9 wins? i absolutely do not see it. i mean their defense is pretty good, but not on the same level as carolina or chicago. offense...don't get me started. i'm obviously biased, but who cares. eff the eagles, and give me the under here. if you're in vegas, bet this hard.

dallas - 9.5: over(-140) under(+110)
the one we've all been waiting for, bobby the gook's dallas cowboys prediction. let's see, sixteen games in a season...16 > 9.5, therefore i'll take the over. but seriously, i know the baggage that comes with T.O. but come on, he took the eagles to the super bowl in his first year. he got paid, and he's got a quarterback with a strong arm. the thing is that the bledsoe needs lots of time to be effective and the offensive line is a major question mark. however, what i think is going to happen is that you're going to see the defense really come together, especially those young guys: canty, ware, and spears. i envision a team that was similar to the chicago bears last season that wins on defense except instead of a solid running game keeping the offense going, it will be a wide receiver. guess which one i'm talking about? T.O. will be great, if for no other reason, he's going to be the first option on most plays. don't let bill parcells fool you, he'll try to run alot in the beginning but after watching game film, he's going to realize that T.O. is open a lot and that he's matched up against inferior talent. i do worry about the running game as julius jones took a step back last year, and with no sign of the o-line being any better, this could be the thing to sink the cowboys. if this sounds like a cowboy homer...well duh. it's super bowl or bust this year. o. v. e. r.

ok kids, that's it. i'm off on a three-week, five-stop tour of texas, canada and the east coast. i will not have any access to a computer for an extended period of time, so there's a greater than zero chance that there won't be any blogging at all during this time. everyone enjoy their august and stay cool. i know fredo is going to weigh in, but seriously, anybody else who wants to please weigh in.

bobby the gook season 3, preseason action part 3

2006-08-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

north divisions ho!

AFC north
cincinnati - 9: over (-105) under(-125)
this is a real interesting one. we'll use fredo's SI litmus test for this one. what's more likely to appear in sports illustrated, a story about how carson palmer has defied history and all medical science to come back from a major major injury to lead the bengals to another hot start, or a story about how the bengals fans are tortured and cursed and palmer's injury is causing problems. give me the latter. as much as i love chad johnson and rudi, i just don't see how carson palmer can come back from an ACL tear and kick as much ass. under, big time.

pittsburgh - 10: over(-125) under (-105)
again, i think vegas has it all wrong. do the steelers have the look or feel of a team on the beginning of its dynasty run, or do they look like a pretty good team that maybe won because of some questionable calls in the super bowl. again, give me scenario #2, and i'll take the under here as well. on a side note, i think it'd be a pretty good gag for ben rothlisberger to play the first series of the first game without his helmet.

cleveland - 6.5: over(-150) under(+120)
i'm not sure why vegas likes the browns so much. seriously, what about them scares you, i don't even know who any of the skill position starters are. jesus h. christ does this division stink so far. i'm going to take the under here as well.

baltimore - 8: over(-150) under(+120)
i'm not real high on the ravens truth be told. mcnair may be better than boller, but come on, is there any doubt that he'll only play 9-11 games? but geez, someone has to win this horrible division, by default, i will take the over here.

NFC north
chicago - 9.5: over(-130) under(even)
vegas has such little faith in the bears. it seems like they always encourage the under for the monsters of the midway. i still hate their offense (i'm predicting grossman to get injured in the third quarter of week 1), but i think the running game is pretty sound, which is perfect for their defense. factor in a rather weak division and you've got the looks of 10 wins and a wild card loss. over.

minnesota - 8: over(-125) under(-105)
i can't get behind brad johnson for another year, but i can get behind chester taylor runnign behind a pretty good line. i'm not sure where taylor is going in fantasy drafts but i'm guessing a season similar to lamont jordan's season last year. in that this is his first year at the man, so he'll get yards by default, but not consistently from week to week. i think i'm going to angle for him in my drafts. in terms of wins, the schedule looks fairly easy, so i'll side with vegas and take the over.

detroit - 7: over(even) under(-130)
with the harrington era finally over, detroit can finally begin the process of rebuilding. that's right erik, rebuilding. and that means another losing season. i actually like john kitna and josh mccown. but here's the deal, detroit sucks. what are the odds that a city has winners in basketball, baseball, and football in the same year. the schedule looks pretty easy, but i just can't bring myself to do it. this team doesn't have a single proven starter on offense. not a one. this team has 4-6 wins written all over it. vegas hit this one on the head, under all the way.

green bay - 6.5: over(-110) under(-120)
it sure is nice of brett favre to treat us all like idiots and proclaim that this team is the most talented he's ever been on. ridiculous. ahman green coming off an injury, no javon walker, and a qb who has abso-effing-lutely nothing left in the tank. i'll go ahead and also set the over/under on favre ints at 19...give me the over on that one and the under on the season.

of all the divisions in the NFL, i think that the north division is my least favorite.

bobby the gook season 3, preseason action part 2

2006-08-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

today we're going to go over the south divisions.

AFC south
indianapolis - 11.5: over(-120) under(-110)
this is the biggest number on the board and after peyton's numbers last year, it's hard to see this team dropping off much. but 12 wins is a whole lot. the biggest question mark is how losing edgerrin james affects the colts. for some reason, i still feel that people are underrating how good james is. we talked about this alot last season, but the colts offensive line is vastly overrated and james made them look a hell of a lot better than they actually are. the odds of dominick rhodes or that rookie putting up the same numbers are pretty much impossible. the colts won 14 games last year and without james, i think they lose 3 of those games. however, if there's one rule that's worked really well for me the past few years is that once you figure out a gravy train, no sense getting off that train until it stops. all though the colts did eff me in the a last time i was in vegas. ehhh...pretty middling schedule...over.

jacksonville - 9: over(-120) under(-110)
another team that i haven't really paid much attention to in the offseason. i don't know why but i've never really liked this team. maybe it's because i really don't think that there should be an NFL franchise in jacksonville. or maybe it's because i think jack del rio gets a free pass as a coach because he's white. i like leftwich, but the running backs and the wide receiving corps are uninspiring to say the least. the schedule is interesting, they start out tough for the first four games home against dallas and pittsburgh and then at indy and at washington, then they have an easy stretch, and then the last three games get hard again. i'd be much more comfortable taking the over if the number was 8, but given the easy schedule, i'll still go ahead and take the over here.

tennessee - 5: over(-130) under(even)
everyone get ready for vince young to take over at about game 6 and then get ready for him to throw 30 interceptions. seriously, right now, the only player on this team that i think might put up decent numbers is lendale white. and that's a big might. i'll go ahead and predict that jeff fischer loses the players this year and will be coaching somewhere else next season. this line makes me nervous though, but give me the under.

houston - 5.5: over(-140) under(+110)
wow, vegas likes the texans more than it hates the titans. i do think that andre johnson will be much better this year and i think he'll have a breakout fantasy year and dominick davis is gonna rush for the most useuless 1200 yds ever. how's this for a first five games on the schedule - philly, at indy, washington, miami, bye, at dallas. the philly game is the only one they have a remote chance of winning. the texans dig themselves a deep hole early and never get out and david carr ends his tenure as the franchise qb. under.

NFC south
tampa bay - 8: over(-115) under(-115)
this number kinda surprises me. the defense is still pretty solid and cadillac williams looks to be the real deal as well. but then again, chris simms, chris simms, chris simms. to me it's amazing that people thought he looked good at times last year, cuz i thought he looked pretty bad every time i say him. your name really can carry you far in this league. but a wildly inaccurate arm won't. most of the division has gotten better, while tampa bay didn't do a whole lot in the offseason. eight's a good number so we'll probably push here, but i'll take the under.

atlanta - 8.5: over(-110) under(-120)
i'm sure you've all heard by now that brian finneran is out for the season leaving ron mexico with alge crumpler as his only reliable target. warrick dunn has proven me wrong year after year, but i just don't trust little guys carrying the ball. when the break down, they do so very suddenly...actually all running backs do, but it seems to be more often the case with little ones. on the plus side mike vick has to be good this year. i just don't think the NFL will let one of it's most marketable and famous properties fail, so expect to see some fishy officiating in falcon's games this year. ahhh, what the hell, give me the over.

new orleans - 6.5: over(-140) under(+110)
that's a big discrepancy between the over and under and i can't quite figure it out. brees and bush are gonna help out a lot, sure, but the city is still a mess, and it doesn't sound like they're going to resolve the future home of the saints any time soon. from what i can tell the plans are still go to have games in the superdome, but as always, i suspect this sentimental factor is being overestimated. for the fantasy people, brees + shoulder injury = bad. remember everyone, it's only a feel good story if the team is any good, and this team isn't. not that i think vegas gets caught up in this crap, but i can't see drew brees putting this team over the top, so i don't know how else to explain the money lines. under.

sorry to put these out so close together, but i want to get them done before i take off in a few days.

bobby the gook season 3, preseason action part 1

2006-08-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

yes, folks, NFL training camps have opened across the nation. fans everywhere have begun obsessing over the battle for the fifth wide receiver spot as if a super bowl victory depended on it. i myself will be headed down to oxnard soon to watch t.o. begin his march towards super bowl immortality. i know, it's kinda goofy to watch guys run non-contact drills, but for many fans, it's as close as we'll ever get to the real thing. anyways, even more importantly, vegas has released it's season over/unders for each NFL teams. if you remember, last year, me and fredo went through and gave a team by team analysis of how the their season would turn out. well i finally went through and counted the number of teams that we got right and both fredo and i went 17 for 31, with one push (fredo, click here, for a complete breakdown). we're over .500, but would have very likely lost money had we actually bet money on these things...oh wait a minute...we did lose money. for those of you who follow us, click here, here, here, and here for some very prescient predictions

looks like vegas thinks that philly can't recover from the T.O. debacle. i know he looked good in the first pre-season game he played, but it there any question that he's going to blow up at some point in the season? and won't that cost the team dearly in terms of wins? also doesn't losing corey simon really really hurt. i already have 7 teams winning ten games which already sounds like too many to me. i definitely can't see 8 teams winning ten games. under.

some not so good predictions

i think that pittsburgh disappoints in a big way this year. give me the under.

and a very entertaining trip down memory lane, highlighted by this masterful bon mot from fredo:

dallas (8.5) - over all the way, and take it to the bank. i know drew bledsoe seems old, but he's only 33. do you know who else was 33 when he won the super bowl against sin and death? jesus h. christ, that's who.

man that still cracks me up. anyways, as i've said before, these bets have always intrigued me because you have to take into account so many things like scheduling, off-season moves, injury recovery, long term trends, etc., etc. plus it's a good way to get ready for my fantasy drafts. anyways, we'll start with the west divisions and then over the next four posts, we'll work our way to the east divisions. anyways, let's pass out the x and the roofies and get this party started.

AFC west
denver - 10: over (-130) under (even)
first off their non-division schedule is brutal. pittsburgh and seattle, indy, cinnci, and the pats. i know that schedules mean less than they used to, but day-umn. anyways, the real problem in denver is two fold. first the running back situation. seriously, should ron dayne be inthe mix for any real contender? my guess is that this is a psychological ploy by shanahan to motivate tatum bell. but more pressing, as always, is one former ASU sundevil lining up at QB (i was going to say a former bone-headed ASU sundevil, but that would be redundant). if i were samuel l. jackson, i'd call up shanahan and scream, "i'm so tired of this motherf*ing jake on this motherf*ing team!" fortunately for the snake, the addition of javon walker will help out a bunch. of course the caveat is that guys are never ever almost as fast after major leg injuries, so as donald rumsfeld would say, this is a known unknown. what really helps is having oakland and san diego in this division. i think that denver will be decent this year, vegas seems to be predicting a flip flop with KC and 9 wins, and i concur. under.

kansas city - 9.5: over(-115) under(-115)
as much as i like old white coaches who can cry in public, herm edwards is a definite upgrade at this position (although i'm inclined to think that he's still overrated). but there's a lot of known unknowns for the chiefs as well. with willie roaf retiring, can LJ have the same kind of season he did last year. seriously, they ran that stretch play to perfection last year, for 12 yards just over and over. but the more important question - how old is trent green and tony gonzalez. gonzalez definitely lost his best-at-his-position title last year. and trent green seems like he's been in the league forever. the schedule however, is a little bit easier than denver's in that they don't have to face indy and new england. defense reigns supreme with edwards in charge and i think the change in philosophy is good enough to get the chiefs over the top. over.

san diego - 8.5: over(-140) under(+110)
this is the first number that i'm suspicious of. is there no dropoff between drew brees and philip rivers? i know they have LT and gates, but seriously, does rivers to mccardell, rashaun rogers, and eric parker do anything for you? me neither. and my prediction for philip rivers is complete and utter failure. rivers reminds me more of the prototypical NFL bust - chris redman, tim couch, kyle boller, and jp losman, guys with really good skills but never seem to catch up to the level of NFL play. i don't have any feelings about the schedule either way. this is a very good value pick though, so give me the under.

oakland - 6.5: over(-105) under(-115)
with aaron brooks now calling the plays, it's easy to see why vegas thinks that the raiders are going to suck this year. and vegas is right, they are going to suck. but, what the raiders have going for them is that i think lamont jordan is going to have a much better year this year, after having a halfway decent one during his first stint as feature back. and i just can't see randy moss having this many bad seasons in a row. this is a really good number, because i think 7 is about the top-end of their potential talent wise. and with houston, cleveland, and the jets on the schedule, i think they can reach it. i have very little confidence in this pick. over.

NFC west
seattle - 10.5: over(-110) under(-120)
one of the biggest numbers on the board. to me, there's a lot not to like about the seahawks this year. i think the loss of that lineman is going to hurt more than people think. i also think that matt hasselback still doesn't have any good receivers to throw to. and as good as lofa tatupu was last year, those undersized linebackers always seem to wear down in year two a la brian ulracher. but that doesn't mean they're still not the favorite to win their division (and one of the favorites to make it to the super bowl at 10-1). the division sucks, shaun alexander is real real good and they have a pretty easy schedule. i'm not sure what to make of the money lines, but i'll take the over.

st louis - 7: over(-110) under (-120)
again, with these weird money lines...anyways, i really haven't kept up with the rams much in the offseason. all i know is that they underperformed last year. steve jackson had a somewhat inconsistent season in his first as the man, but i think that this is the year that he makes some real noise. in fact, i think that he'll go in about the 4th to 5th round in most fantasy drafts and be a steal there. bulger is a decent qb and torry holt is simply a stud. he's still underrated. so knowing little to nothing about this team, the schedule seems a bit tough to me. ummm...i guess i'll go with the under here.

arizona - 8: over(-115) under(-115)
i'm a little surprised at the money lines here. it seems pretty clear to me that with edgerrin james, the cardinals are a much much better team. great receivers, a stud back, etc. of course, there's kurt warner who is about as good as maybe half the quarterbacks out there, but as we all know is quite prone to injury, despite his intense faith in the lord jesus christ. apparently, jesus wants kurt to be injured. however, i actually think that him getting hurt will be a good thing for the cards. seriously, leinart was ready for the pro's two years ago. he basically has played not only in a pro-style offense at USC, he basically played with pro caliber players. there's a lot of reasons to think that he'll not pan out in the NFL, but i think when he ineveitably gets the starting nod this year, he'll be fine. did i mention edgerrin james is real good? i think the cards are going to vie for a playoff spot this year. give me the over.

san francisco -5: over (-115) under(-115)
let's see here...lost their best wide receiver, check. lost their best defensive player, check. 2nd year QB that wasn't any good in college, check. i'm almost starting to feel bad for niners fans. they've been in football hell for a while now. under all the way.

tell us something we didn't know

2006-07-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

of course he is.

of course he did.

in other "news", liberace comes out of the closet and jose canseco admits steroid use.

p.s. now this is what you call news.

espn gets even worse

2006-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

harold reynolds got shitcanned from ESPN's baseball tonight. reynolds, in my estimation is easily the most affable guy on that show. not afraid to disagree with someone but doesn't do it for the sake of just disagreeing, jokes around just enough, and will dish out criticism appropriately. he was still a little bit of a player's guy, but i always got the sense that he understood that some ex-players (hi john kruk!) take it too far. with gammons out indefinitely while recovering from a brain aneurysm, there's really no reason to watch this show anymore. tino matinez, steve phillips, and buck martinez all suck. kruk is all right but he's dense and doesn't add much insight.

anyways, there's no word on why reynolds was let go, but we'll keep an eye out for you. seriously, is there even a question as to who is the best guy on that show is? why does espn do everything in my power to make me stop watching them. and why do i keep watching?

UPDATE 10:05PM - according to deadspin and a bunch of other sources, harold got the boot for sexual harassment. is it harassment when you're as handsome as this?

i don't know about you guys, but that's a handsome black man if i ever saw one.

sports quick hits

2006-07-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

apologies for the lack of posting...i'm just busy dammit.

1) another american wins the tour de france. 1) like soccer, you still can't make me care. and 2) like lance armstrong's urine tests, the field was much diluted. seriously, if all of the top stars get suspended for roids, how am i supposed to take the tour seriously?

2) tiger wins the british open. this is really not that big a deal, since tiger appears to be keeping on course of going down as the greatest golfer of all time. but what i liked about this win was that he used a video game strategy to help him win. if you hadn't heard, tiger basically eschewed his driver this week, essentially trading off power for accuracy. in other words, he knew that he was still as long as the average PGA player with his 3W, so why use the club that gives him the most trouble. this is something i do when i play tiger woods PGA tour on my computer. which is easy to do since i'm just clicking my mouse to hit the ball, but to do this in real life...that's just dominance. by the way, what is sergio garcia's problem? you can't tell me that this is acceptable golfwear in europe.

3) espn.com's e-ticket did a great piece on pat tillman. although this was nothing a certain flummoxed-pacific-rim-heritaged blogger hasn't already addressed. seriously, if stephen a. smith can have a job in sports journalism, why can't i?

4) so even though espn.com fiinally does something worth tuning into the site for, it still doesn't make up for the latest bane of my exisitence, espn.com's espn motion. it's that thing on the right of the page that let's you watch video with sound of sports highlights and what not. in theory a great idea, however, in practice, espn has completely effed up the website in the process. some of you who are regular readers of espn.com already know what i'm talking about but for those of you aren't, espn has decided that rather than let you decide whether or not you're going to watch, it has decided that it will just have the player start randomly while you're reading something. in terms of annoying things on the web, it is on par with pop-ups for tranny porn (unless you're into that kind of thing, which by all means, who am i to judge?). i've been annoyed with things from espn.com before like when they basically started charging for every single baseball columnist, but i HATE this thing. it makes me want to shoot out my monitor every time it starts up. i may even have to fire off the proverbial "nasty letter to management".

5) jockey headbutts his own horse. i couldn't make that up if i tried. insert your own zidane joke here.

6) any day now, vegas should post the season over/unders for NFL teams. expect a full breakdown as soon as this happens.

britney spears reminds everyone that she's losing it

2006-07-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

so here's the latest on britney's website (don't ask why i check her website...i can't give you a good answer). anyways, i'm reproducing it here since her site is flash enabled and you have to fish around to find this, her latest diary/poetry entry (if you must, you have to click on the "love b" section, which is the large green bubble). apropros, it's called "stream of consiousness, and you will find it accompanied a translation, by noted professor of critical pop tart studies, dr. bob ngo. britney's words in italics, my translation in normal font.

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What Immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake

translation: i was watching animal planet last night and saw something on tigers. since i don't know shit about tigers, i googled them and found this poem by some guy with a hot sounding name. doesn't this make me look smart?

In some ways, people are a lot like animals. We all hunger for the same things. Love, lust, danger, warmth and adventure.

translation: hey remember the video for "slave," and how hot i looked back then, and how every male in america wanted to commit statutory rape with me? that's still me on the inside. i know that i looked like a mess on the outside on that matt lauer thing, but i promise inside, i'm still a little lolita that is worth shelling out 19 bucks a CD, just to look at the outfits i'm wearing in the liner notes. just because i've had a kid doesn't make me any less desirable. despite my pleas for privacy, please still pay attention to me!

Like people, animals all have their own rhythm to life.

translation: ok check it, i had absolutely nothing to do with po po zao. kevvie claims that it's a brazilian beat, but i'm not sure what beats have to do with waxing. i don't know why he just couldn't hire pharrell like i told him to.

I'm mesmerized by tigers. Their eyes, their stripes, their constant quest for survival. They almost have a sense of mysteriousness about them. They pull you in and make it difficult to look away. They make you wonder what is behind their gaze. A sense of eerie awe comes over you in their presence.

translation: look, i know you're tired about hearing about me and especially tired of having to put up with that leech of a husband i have, but you have to admit, it's pretty entertaining. i mean have you ever seen such an assclown? making fun of him is like shooting fish in a barrel. has there ever been a bigger waste of a human life since fred durst? oh crap wait, i banged him too...never mind.

The fear they give you when you pass them is stunning.

translation: don't worry, i'm leaving his sorry ass. soon. as soon as i have his other baby. after all that was the smart move in this troubled relationship.

Behold the beauty of the tiger.

translation: next stop playboy magazine!

to quote joe namath, "s-t-r-uggling"

handsome baseball players

2006-07-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

here's a list of the most handsome guys in baseball. always good fun for us hetero manly sports fans. anyways, i just thought i'd take this opportunity to say that even though he's not playing anymore and even though he's completely guilty of steroids, no one on the list even holds a candle to this:

right now, joe mauer and david wright are tied for first in the fan polling.

come on! neither of these guys even has a moustache...it's no contest.

link via deadspin

roberto begnini rejoices, while gerard depardieu weeps

2006-07-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

by now, we've all seen the replay a million times, zidane head butts random italian defender, gets red carded, italians win world's third largest sporting event (behind the olympics and the super bowl....look it up). lots of talk about double z disgracing his country, but i say, the french could have used a zidane's attitude in WWII.

anyways, dr. z from SI.com summarizes my feelings nicely about the whole deal. did he lose it? sure, do we kick him out of the game for possibly the lamest alley fight move in the world. why the chest? why not head butt him in the face like the rest of the world does? someone please explain this to me. anyways, i know i'm going to be in the minority here, but it just seems like one of those deals where you hand out warnings and give the ball to italy and viola! water under the bridge. perhaps as a violence hungry american, i just don't understand these things (more on this later). could you imagine if they tossed an NBA player for every shoving match that he got in? me neither.

although there have been whispers that what provoked the head-buttin' frenchman were racist remarks by the italian defender. if that were the case...holy cow, racism might have decided the outcome of the world cup! i mean i get pretty mad about the east coast bias in sports media, no telling how mad i would be if the NBA's MVP was handed out to someone just because he was white...oh wait. never mind. anyways, soccer's recent history is peppered with all sorts of incidents involving racism. i really haven't taken the time to examine what's up, but from what i can tell, it seems that things are actually worse in terms of racism in sports in europe than they are here, which if you think about our history, that's just mind blowing. i can't quite get my head around it right now, but i do just want to point out that america is often accused of being less progressive than the rest of the world. and while that's probably true on several accounts, i still stand by the idea that the whole world is just full of assholes, so any attempt to call the US is simply the whole kettle black thing.

anyways, there's my 2 cents on the world cup. i was thinking about writing a series of posts on why soccer is not more popular in america, but it turns out, now that world cup is over with, i don't care about soccer anymore. my final evaluation is that there is no one single reason, but rather a plethora of reasons why soccer is never ever going to catch on as a professional spectator sport. but here's my new thing...why do we even care? why do americans have to like soccer just like the rest of the world? we don't go around asking other countries why they don't like baseball, do we? i fully admit, baseball can be just as boring as any sport, but i have my reasons for liking it. soccer is exciting, we know, but i just can't get into it, unless nation-states or my friends are involved. isn't this ok? actually, isn't this good since it makes our cultures different? the idea that soccer is not popular in the united states as a metaphor for the ugly american, is a reach. we don't like soccer in the same way that the french don't like to fight (except the alliteratively named arab soccer players). i'd write more, but i just don't care about soccer enough to expend anymore energy on this topic. only three weeks left to football training camp opens and i need to work on my fantasy squad.

there is no justice

2006-07-05T23:28:00.000-07:00

ken lay died before he could get sent to a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

according to the SF chronicle story, he died of "coronary artery disease" in of all places, aspen colorado. this after no record of serious illness. so far the reportage of this case has been pretty muted. a sad ending to the enron saga, etc. however, call me crazy, but i think we ought to look more closely. it just doesn't add up. obviously, someone of lay's stature just wasn't going to make in the big house. my guess is that he committed suicide and paid off enough people like the coroner to say that his death was natural.

now here comes the crappy part. according to the story:

Lay's death all but ensures that defense lawyers will seek to throw out his criminal conviction -- and it casts doubt on the ability of the government and investors to recover money from the Lay estate, legal experts said.

come on people! is there any question as to whether he committed suicide? this one is too easy, so it seems strange to me that the press is just accepting this coronary artery disease nonsense.

it's amazing. ken lay is still ripping off enron investors from the grave. it is truly galling the lengths to which these people will go to avoid any kind of accountability for their actions.

pan-ethnic peeps keepin' it real in the war against terror

2006-07-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

just a shout out to a different kind of ragin' asian. US army 1st lt. ehren watada is going to trial for refusing to deploy to iraq because he believes the war is illegal. obviously, this is inviting all kinds of chaos into the system, but it seems clear that the usual channels of reasoned discourse or civil consent are not working out. as chuck d says, we gotta fight the powers that be!

p.s. in related pan-ethnic peeps kickin' ass news, that japanese kid that weighs a buck sixty breaks another hot dog eating record. then proceeds to take the most disgusting dump in the history of mankind.

what do elton john, michael stipe, and this guy have in common?

the last posting on performance enhancing drugs...

2006-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

i can't stand this subject anymore. it's the equivalent of the branjelina baby or tomkat, where there's really nothing left to be said, except that everyone in major athletics is somehow linked to performance enhancing drugs. anyways, i'm gonna do one last commentary on jose canseco. as some of you may know, he's back in baseball playing for a independent minor league team. the san diego surf dawgs. anyways, in addition to returning as a pitcher/outfielder, he's also dropped a couple of more interesting nuggets (the brown kind of course) of wisdom on the world of baseball. they're listed as a sidebar on the espn story, but i'll go through them with you with some ragin' commentary. anyways, nugget #1

Canseco accused baseball of cutting Rafael Palmeiro a deal to testify against him in March 2005, saying MLB then went ahead and leaked Palmeiro's positive test out of fear that Congress would find out anyway. "I know what I know" is all Canseco would say.

very interesting conspiracy theory. but in light of raffy's finger waving debaucle, one that isn't completely implausible. we like to scoff at these crazy conspiracy theories a lot, but just cuz they're crazy, doesn't mean they might not be true. lone gunman? i don't think so. canseco was right about palmeiro before, why should we not believe him now. nugget #2

Canseco said he will meet in the coming weeks with former Sen. George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader appointed in March by Selig to head the sport's investigation into steroids.

this is actually good news. who better to help out than someone who was basically at the cutting edge of the steroid culture in baseball. this is the equivalent of getting john gotti to turn states' evidence. let me put it this way, there are some baseball players out there who are extremely fearful of getting caught right now. nugget #3

He said that Alex Rodriguez told him about six years ago that Canseco was being "blackballed" by baseball.

while it may seem that a-rod is doing the right thing here, he's actually being his usual sorry self. what's the difference between what canseco is doing and what a-rod is doing...well, i'm not sure but i can tell you that jose canseco at least tried to be a team player while he was with the rangers, unlike some other person that i could name. nugget #4

He noted that years of steroids use has helped slow the aging process for him.

that and getting botox injections from janet dickinson while living in the surreal world house. nugget #5

Canseco is working on a movie and two more books, saying he intends to "rectify" his tarnished image.

what i'm interested in is who he thinks that he has a "tarnished" image. i think that the only people that don't like him right now are baseball people. as far as fans are concerned, i don't think they give two shits either way. he was the first 40/40 guy, he hit a hell of a lot of home runs with the A's, he's the guy who had the ball bounce of the top of his head for a homer, and he was just as roided out as any of those guys back in the day, no more, no less. i'm not sure he can undo history. as far as the players are concerned, i'm pretty sure that writing two more tell all books is not a step in the right direction. which leads us to nugget #6

"I feel one person can make a difference. I feel one person can change the world. I want Major League Baseball to know I'm not going away that easy."

i think we're all a little confused as to what kind of change jose is trying to bring about here. in his book, he advocates for the safe and regulated use of performance enhancers and then he famously backed down during the congresssional hearings. and this is the prime example of canseco's dilemma. he wants to be loved by players and fans, and that's not just going to happen. the fans, he can do something about, and to be honest, most of the fans that i know don't think that canseco is that bad a guy. but the players, and the baseball establishment who have gone on a full scale campaign against canseco for no other reason than being honest...that train has sailed. in the players eyes, he sold them out, and that's that. the other day on baseball tonight, one of the anchors mentioned that canseco was playing independent ball, and jeff brantley, the sparest of spare players and media people, shook his head in disgust. now if things were fair, we'd all realize that jose canseco's accomplishments on the field dwarf those of brantley's. and we would give respect accordingly. however, sports is a good old boys network and that's just never going to happen. which is actually a sociological point in that one of sport's main ideological function is to preserve existing hierachies of power. and like in regular society, that hierarchy is all effed up.

this is what happens when you don't have any black people go to your school

2006-07-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

hi alfredo.

via deadspin

i got mad blogger skillz

2006-07-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

hello faithful blog reader!

as you've have already figured out, i've finally gotten around to giving the blog a long overdue facelift. it took a while, but because my innate asian nerdiness (as depicted in the extremely racist picture to the left), i was able to figure out the basics of CSS. let me take you on a guided tour of some of the new features and a review of some of the old ones that you may have not been aware of. i'm doing this to help maximize your surfing time, and for posterity, so when i do this again, i can remember what exactly i did.

1) first you'll notice that the color scheme matches that of america's team, the one and only dallas cowboys. silver and blue, it's a nice winning combo dontcha think?

2) you'll also notice that i've figured out the holy grail of blog design and went with the three column layout. this blog was aped from some person who goes by the web handle of isnaini, who lives in indonesia, so don't bothering clicking on this person's link, unless of course, you speak indonesian, which if this is the case, Pergi mengambilnya! the name of the layout is called "lonely" and i found it here. i've made several modifications of course to make it look like it does now.

3) i've changed the search engine from freefind to google. free find worked fine, but i think that you'll find the google interface a little more elegant and user friendly. also, it may not be working fully right now, as it will probably take a couple of days for google to fully index my blog.

4) i've also added a link to my official website, bobngo.com, in my profile. just click on my name if you want to see it. however, i must warn you now, it thiroughly sucks and is terribly out of date. i doubt that i'll ever really get around to getting that to what it should be.

5) my browser of choice is firefox, and consequently, this blog is best viewed using firefox. if you aren't using firefox instead of ie or mozilla by now, why don't you just go ahead and start now. while you're at it, go ahead and get rid of your sony walkman and shell out the 20 bucks for a generic MP3 player as well.

6) if you're into newsreaders or aggregators, you can subscribe to my feed by clicking on the RSS button ().

7) one of the handy dandy features of firefox is that you can bookmark this blog as a live bookmark. look up in the address bar and you'll see this little icon: . just click on it and save the blog as a bookmark. now instead of checking every 15 minutes to see if i've updated the blog (which i know many of you do), you can just click on your bookmarks and any new posts will be listed when you hover the cursor over the bookmark. again, i'm keeping you in mind blog reader as this will cut down on your loadtimes, and more importantly, since i'm storing several elements of the blog on my webspace, it will reduce the amount of bandwidth that i use to maintain the blog. everyone wins with live bookmarks!

8) seriously, start using firefox. it's not even close as to what the best browser out there is.

9) i've reorgazined the blogroll and the list of links, which you will see in the right hand column. i've gotten rid of the links that i don't read anymore and i've organized blogs by subject. the most notable addition is the link-o-rama set of blogs. if you're looking to kill time, these are the places to go. but please note that several of these blogs are targeted to college males. as a result, many of them contain ads that are directed to this demographic and are Not Safe For Work (NSFW). some of the links in the lists are also for porn. in other words, nudity galore. i don't condone nor condemn these things, but know that they are there. don't click on them if you are at work or if you don't want to see that kind of thing.

10) this is a work in progress, as there are a few quirks that i have yet to figure out. i.e. i've also seem to have lost the blogger nav bar at the top of the page. i dunno, i kinda like it, so hopefully that'll be up soon again as well. if anything doesn't work, please be patient, and feel free to send me any feedback about things that aren't working correctly, ways i can improve the layout, if the font is readable, etc.

anyways, there you go. it's almost like a brand new blog, huh? anyways, i hope you appreciate the amount of effort i put into this redesign. cuz none of you ungrateful bastards sure as hell would ever take some of your precious time out of your life to spend five seconds leaving me a comment (except for you ian, H8R, fred, and erik).

pop culture quick hits

2006-06-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

hey guys, sorry again for the lack of real posting. i'm trying to change up the layout of my blog and i'm having some trouble. CSS is a bitch to figure out. anyways, here are some things i've seen in the past few days.

1) it turns out that aaron spelling's dramas were based on his own life. after his death on saturday, members of the family have been releasing press releases slamming each other. not that is news, as it was well known that no one in the family ever got along. i just find it amusing that a family would have the post-death-of-patriarch argument via press release. remind me to call my publicist next time my aunt asks me when i'm going to get married.

2) britney poses for naked photos, but it doesn't count for my britney will appear naked prediction, as she needs to pose in playboy with all her naughty bits showing to fulfill the prophecy. however, we should all be encouraged as her posing kinda naked in bazaar shows that she's getting more and more comfortable with the idea of being naked on camera. the britney spears playboy prediction is looking better than ever.

3) sleater-kinney break up and kevin richardson leaves the backstreet boys. i really don't have an opinion on either one of these things by themselves, but somehow there's some kind of beautiful cosmic symmetry about the fact that these things happened at about the same time.

4) leo di caprio's latest movie "blood diamonds" is getting some flak from diamond industry flaks who think that it makes the diamond industry look bad. the point of contention is centers around conflict diamonds, those diamonds that have been used to fund civil strife and genocide in politically unstable regions of africa. obviously, they fear that this may hurt diamond sales over the holiday. according to the diamond industry trade group, movie doesn't show how the industry has cleaned up its act and made it harder to buy and sell conflict diamonds. per their press release:

The WDC and its coalition are urging the studio and the filmmakers to present this story in the proper historical context so they can relate how conflict diamonds have improved since then.

as you might guess, i find it quite hypocritical that the diamond industry would ask for proper historical context. i'd doubt that they'd want the general public to understand the proper historical context in which diamonds became valuable. you can read a very excellend piece that appeared in the atlantic in 1982 here. basically, diamonds are not nearly as valuable or scarce as you would think. the diamond industry basically put on a blitz publicity campaign to make it seem like the diamond is the traditional symbol of love. in other words, the idea that the diamond is the symbol for love sine qua non is completely made up. and that is how the diamond industry cornered the engagement ring market. diamonds aren't rare, and they really aren't that useful, and it is impossible to sell them used. you may as well buy your fiancee a national secratries' day card, because they're both the same thing, something made up by corporate interests with the sole purpose of gouging you out of your money. seriously, click on the link, and read the story. afterwards, i suspect that like me, you'll resolve never ever to buy a diamond. i ain't nobody's sucka, especially debeers' sucka. don't you be either. in any case, i hope that leo and director ed zwick stick to their guns and don't change the movie.

(blog metanote - it's been a while since i've really commented on the world of pop culture. this was actually a conscious decision by me as it felt like there were already seventeen thousand other blogs that give similar opinions to the ones i do, so i didn't feel like replicating their work. however, with the end of the NBA playoffs, we are hitting the dry season as far as sports goings-ons, so the ragin pop culture blogger shall return.)

i'm back

2006-06-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

hey kids, sorry it's been so long. the whole transition from spring quarter to summer vacation is always pretty busy. anyways, i've got plenty to blog about these days to expect me to step it up soon. in the meantime, i'll leave you with this fun link.

still MFFL

2006-06-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

what can i say? the mavs lost and there's not a damn thing i can do about it. do i feel that the officiating was capricious, egregious and outrageous? of course, i'm a fan, how can i not feel that way. but at the same time, i recognize that dallas had several opportunities to win three of the games that they lost. dirk missed a whole lot of shots this series. so did josh howard. and dwayne wade made alot of them, albeit from the free throw line. anyways, this reminds me of why i prefer my teams to be dominant, so that i never have to really worry about losing the big one and having to sit with it for a whole freakin' year. even more so, why it's so hard to be a sports fan when part of that equation means being disappointed so greatly, and then realizing no matter how good of a fan you are, you have no material effect on the outcome of the game.

anyways, congrats to any heat fans out there. i can bitch all i want about how the mavs are a better team, and how this series turned on two calls that were probably really really bad calls, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that you have the trophy. as for the mavs and the future, i say keep this group together. maybe get keith van horn off the books and look for someone who can score in the paint, although truth be told there are only about four guys left in the NBA who can still do this. no no no, keep the core together. next year, josh howard is going to be better, devin harris is going to be better, desagana diop is going to be better, and most importantly, dirk is going to be better. he's only 28 you know. and don't forget that he's german. i fully expect this team to take it to the next level next year, win the division, and sweep their way to their first title.

and now for the bitching about the officiating part, which as a good fan, i am obliged to do. like i mentioned earlier, this series could have very well gone the other way had these two calls been made correctly. what's really frustrating for me is how the officiating style changed from the rest of the playoffs to this series. before we had a fast paced game where players were allowed to do the things that they are supposed to and those players who relied on poor basketball skills were punished. in other words, offenses flowed better, defense was more exciting, and games didn't devolve into rugby scrums. i don't think it is a coincidence that the finals were a much blander and not as entertaining brand of basketball. my main problem involves the two fouls involving dwyane wade or however the hell you spell his name. the phantom foul on dirk in game five was horrible. as fredo and i discussed, what basically happened was that wade had lost the handle and was flailing around completely out of control, and the officials bailed him out. some people say that devin harris had fouled him and there's even a picture floating around the internet that supposedly shows him fouling. however, in the picture, wade is already in the air, which means that harris got him after the whistle had already blown. even if there was any contact, we've seen a lot, and i mean a whole effin' lot worse not get called at the end of the game. how any ref calls it, also let's not forget that the ref that called it was at half court, and was much further away than the other officials, is a mystery to me. anyways, i've taken it upon myself to recreate the scene. erik, the white guy with the mavericks shirt on is dirk nowitzki. me, the ragin' asian with the headband on is dwyane wade. sorry i don't have a basketball and we needed at least one sports related prop in there. also, we reviewed the tapes for hours to ensure painstaking 110% complete absolute truthy accuracy. you can rest easy knowing that these photos are almost like being at the game and seeing it with your own eyes.

dirk was at least two feet away and wade flinging the toward the heat bench hoping that riley can hide the ball in his thinning hair lacquer. result: foul on nowitzki.

the second call that i'd like to talk about is in game six. mavs down by three, with a minute left, wade has the ball and penetrates, he clears nowitzki with his right arm. again, we'll recreate the scene for you here.

calling upon a move that he learned in pop warner football in chicago, wade uses his right arm to stiff arm an unsuspecting nowitzki. also note the blatant disrespect of the rev. dr. martin luther king, jr. result: foul on nowitzki.

the point is wade was getting calls that i'm not sure that jordan would've gotten in his prime. those calls go the other ways, there is no doubt in my mind that the mavs are sipping champagne right now instead of me taking hot sports action photos. anyways, there were a couple of other instances where i felt that wade blatantly got the benefit of the doubt. i'd like to remind you that these photos have been painstakingly recreated to ensure complete accuracy. you be the judge.

here we see wade making fist to jaw contact with nowitzki. it's a physical game, but this at least should have been called a jumpball. result: foul on nowtizki.

now here we see wade applying his patented sleeper hold on dirk. i could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure that martial arts based submission holds are grounds for a loose ball foul. result: foul on nowitzki

now this is just plain dirty. flagrant 1, dirk should be at the line shooting two, one for each testicle. result: foul on nowitzki.

what can i say, the photos don't lie. we'll see whoever the eastern conference can muster up next year. MFFL, bitch!