Song of the Week

"Special Lady" - Ray, Goodman & Brown

Seinfeld Night for the Cyclones

The Mets minor league team will host Seinfeld Night on July 5th, the 25th anniversary of the night the Seinfeld pilot aired.
The first 2,500 fans will get a Keith Hernandez Magic Loogie bobblehead which says "I'm Keith Hernandez" on the front and "Nice Game, Pretty Boy" on the back.

MCU Park will be named Vandelay Industries Park for the evening. Anyone presenting a legitimate business card showing he is a latex salesman will get in for free.
Mailmen in uniform will throw out the first pitch.
A dance contest will reward the best "Elaine."
And the best part of the whole thing: the Cyclones will wear puffy shirts during batting practice.

Julian Scares Me Sometimes

99% of sports fans, even serious ones, do not know who this man is.

Julian is the 1%.

Sports Illustrated's Pablo S. Torre filled in as the host of Olbermann when KO had shingles. Julian ran to the TV and screamed "that guy's name is Pablo."

At first Mrs. Poop thought no way. Then she looked over at me, saw I was dumbfounded and slackjawed and anxiously asked me "is that really his name?"

When I regained the power of speech I told her that yes, his name is Pablo and we asked Julian how he knew that.

We reconstructed the story with the help of Chase. Apparently they had been at Moe's and Around the Horn was on (Chase told me Pablo had 10 points), and it said his name. Chase read it to Julian and they both thought it was cool since to them Pablo is a blue penguin from the Backyardigans.

Sometimes we worry about Julian's memory because of all the blows to the head he's taken from all the times he's fallen while behaving recklessly. And because sometimes he can't remember a single thing about his day such that when we got to him for "Best Part of the Day" he says his best part of the day was hearing Chase's best part of the day.

But then he goes and does something like this and scares the shit out of me.

Trash or Treasure?

Our second installment of Trash or Treasure revolves around this naked lady cup I bought in Acapulco:

Now you may be saying "But Poop, it's not a naked lady cup if she's not naked." To which I say "fill it up with cold water and wait."

Mrs. Poop's New Favorite Yankee

Now that Derek Jeter is moving on to make banging Swimsuit models his full time job, this leaves a void in Mrs. Poop's heart.
Who will be her favorite Yankee next season?
Answer: Masahiro Tanaka.

What did Tanaka do to endear himself to Mrs. Poop?
This is what he said when asked about the biggest cultural difference between Japan and the U.S.:

"The washlet is a system in Japan where you press a button and water comes out and washes your ass. Not having that is a big difference."

Soulmates

I love Mrs. Poop with all my heart. But it's no secret that we have nothing in common. Ours is a love like Louis and Mrs. Pasteur's, we don't share a lot of common interests, but we make it WORK!

But it does make me wonder what it would be like to marry a woman who "gets" me, who understands what makes me tick and likes the same things I do.
Like Danica McKellar:



Tight dresses, math and palindromes.

Song of the Week

"Baby I'm-a Want You" - Bread

3000 Words: Fenway Park Edition

Fenway Park crowd in 1924. Notice how the fans and the concessionaire are dressed.

Fenway Park crowd in 2013.

A Coast Guard helicopter does a flyover and the Green Monster is draped in the American flag during the presentation of the 2013 World Series rings at Fenway Park.

Song of the Week

"Love is a Verb" - L Young
A smooth soul jam about grammar.
But I have to take issue with this part.
"I wanna listen to you vent
and tell you all about your day."
He must have done something really bad if he has to promise that.

What Is In the Lining of Jim Boeheim's Suit?

I noticed something strange inside the suit jacket Jim Boeheim wore during the Dayton game. The number 34,616 was sewn inside. Turns out that is the attendance record Syracuse set against Villanova back in 2011. On closer inspection it seems like the entire lining is a huge panoramic of the Dome, presumably from that day.
Pretty cool, but why didn't he get a new one when SU broke that record against Duke?
And why is he wearing a 3-year old suit? Isn't he supposed to wear them once and throw them away?

Give Billy A House

Congrats to Billy for winning the 2014 Tournament Challenge for our group. In one of the worst performances ever (not our fault, it was a crazy tournament), not a single entry in our group had either of the correct teams in the final game.
But Billy did have Kentucky making the Final Four which was good enough to propel him to a victory over Michael and over his own second entry. There is nothing wrong with submitting multiple brackets (our motto: vote early, vote often) and Billy would have had the top two spots, but he lost to Michael on the tiebreaker.
It was another fun year of the competition and it's cool that some of the kids are starting to pick their own brackets, though maybe next year Jack should be supervised.
Hope to see you all again next year.
One more thing just occurred to me, Billy and I had this debate after Jim Nantz went on his rant about the best freshman (Wiggins and Parker) getting knocked out early and both Nantz and Billy were on the team over talent side, I will take talent every single time. And yet, Billy won because he picked the greatest collection of talent to make the Final Four, beating the best "team" in Wichita State in the process.
As I said before, every game is a different circumstance and there is no one thing that predicts who will win.
Which makes the tournament challenge so much fun.

Billy joins this illustrious list of past champions:

2013: TON
2012: Reissberg
2011: Mrs. Poop
2010: Vacated (I forgot to keep accurate records)
2009: Mrs. Poop
2008: Pa Beers
2007: Michael

Jim Boeheim is a Dick, We Know This

The media and blogosphere are killing Jim Boeheim for what he said about Tyler Ennis on ESPN:

"I think he’s a great college player. I think physically he probably could’ve used another year. A little bit different than Dion Waiters who I had a couple of years ago who left. I think Dion was physically better, more physically ready. I think when you go to the NBA you need to be as physically ready as you can be. So I think Tyler could’ve benefited from another year, but certainly he’s a tremendous player and a very, very smart point guard. And I think the one thing I think is point guard is probably the hardest position to break into in the NBA, it’s a very difficult position, but he’s got the skill-set to do that. It’s just a question of him landing in the right place."

So he said he didn't think Ennis was physically ready to play in the NBA and he should have stayed in college another year. That actually seems like a fair and honest assessment to me.
BUT...why would he give a fair and honest assessment on TV to a nationwide viewing audience? Whom does that benefit? Certainly not Ennis, not Boeheim and not even the NBA scouts. If Boeheim wanted to do the best thing for everyone involved he should have given a stock answer on TV and if questioned by NBA people, given his true and honest assessment.
Sure, I love honesty, but as "Liar Liar" proved you don't just walk around telling people they look fat or that you like their big tits.

BUT...I would hate to defend Jim Boeheim on anything but the people who are blasting him for saying something negative are missing half the story. Boeheim said he's a tremendous player and a very smart point guard who has the skills to do well in the NBA. So when sites like Deadspin say kids shouldn't go to Syracuse, that's just so ridiculous that even a Boeheim-hater such as myself feels obligated to point out the other side.

This Year's Passover Parody

Every year some creative Jews come up with music video of some popular song with lyrics referring to Passover.
This year's "Let It Go" version is pretty clever.
The guy who plays Pharaoh steals the show.



Story Suggested by Mama Poop

Trash or Treasure?

While cleaning my house for sale, I have come across some very old items. Instead of deciding whether to throw them out, I will leave it up to the Poopheads.

First item up for bids, a picture of The Concierge cut out of the Staten Island Advance in the mid 1990s.

How I Met Your Dead Mother

And Ended Up With the Woman I Really Wanted the Entire Time

I really don’t know how to feel about the series finale of “How I Met Your Mother”. So let me start with a big sweeping generalization.

Women ruin everything, but especially sitcoms. When sitcoms are designed only for men they are funny. When sitcoms are designed to appeal to the female audience too, they become sappy and every couple that’s “supposed” to be together ends up together. It may be hard to remember this now, but “Friends” was actually funny when it started. But then the female fans started to clamor for certain characters to be coupled with other characters and it became an incestuous mess.

I firmly believe that’s what happened here. The female fans, and probably the female writers, and maybe some of the males, wanted Ted to end up with Robin in the end. It just felt right.

I actually kind of agree, untilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll they called her Aunt Robin for the first time. [I thought that happened in the season one series finale, evidently it was the first episode, but still my point remains]. Once they did that, they should have thrown the whole idea out the window. I know they didn’t want it to be too obvious (people would have bitched), but if it felt right, it would have felt right.

And if we’re looking at it from the sappy point of view why not make Ted and Tracy a happy couple who shares their life together. That’s how the show started, Ted running through all the wrong women because he believed in love and that he would eventually find the right one, the love of his life he was looking for.

I loved the scene when he finally met my mother under the yellow umbrella at the train station. And they talked about all their near misses, and all the luck that brought them together.

As I was watching I thought this would have worked out really well. Lily in her white whale costume, Robin walking out the door, and instead of Robin being Ted’s white whale. Ted became Robin’s. The symmetry would have been beautiful.

But they ruined the ending. It could have been beautiful, he went through all the trials and tribulations of looking for love and finally found the one perfect woman for him. Why did they have to kill her off and get him together with Robin? Girlz is dumb.

There have been many series finales (Sopranos and Seinfeld come to mind) that people hated because they weren’t true to the show.

Note: I sort of felt this way about “Breaking Bad”

But that’s bullshit. Sopranos was a mob show, we were never promised some deep look into the makeup of the American family. How I Met Your Mother is a comedy. Its only mission is to be funny. I think the finale failed on that point a little, because too many sad things happened (Barney-Robin divorce, deterioration of the gang and of course my mother’s death) and it wasn’t all that funny.

But I don’t think they degraded the entire series by making it about my mother who in the end didn’t necessarily turn out to be the real love of Ted’s life. Nor do I think the entire final season was a waste just because it focused on a wedding for a marriage that didn’t last.

My problem with the final season and especially the final episode is that they weren’t all that funny.

But as a whole, I do feel a little bit good about the way the series ended, with Ted and Robin and the blue French horn as the final image of a show I really enjoyed for a really long time.

Boy Meets World Meets Samuel L. Jackson

Another brilliant segment from "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon"
Here is Samuel L. Jackson doing a slam poem about "Boy Meets World" and perfectly summing up the entire series in 3 and a half minutes:



I wonder if Samuel L. is a BMW fan, if not he really practiced and studied this because he got everything perfect including the inflection on the "Fee-nay" call.

Song of the Week

"It's Alright" - The Impressions
One of my proudest moments came when this song was on the radio and I asked Mrs. Poop who the lead singer was.
After initially refusing to guess she came up with the correct answer "Curtis Mayfield."
Some of the things I've tried to teach her have sunk in.

)

It Only Took One Day For the First Gruesome Injury of the Season

Angels hitting coach and 1979 AL MVP (despite finishing 24th in the AL in WAR) Don Baylor was kneeling at home plate to catch the ceremonial first pitch from Angels legend Vladimir Guerrero, and this happened:



Diagnosis is a broken femur. Not quite sure how that happened. But the sickest part is not when he gets hurt, it's when he tries to stand and collapses back to the ground.

I'm not sure Guerrero knew immediately how serious the injury was. It looks like he is laughing.

If you are ever going to click on tag and scroll through old posts of a similar nature "Gruesome sports injuries" is the one for you.

Listen to Vin Scully Describe an Earthquake

Even an earthquake sounds pleasant and relaxing when described by legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully.

Late Game Strategies

Sometimes you just get beat by a good player making a great play. That’s what happened to Michigan against Kentucky. Aaron Harrison drained a 3 to win while being closely guarded.

But there might have been a way to avoid that result.
Here’s the situation, Michigan ball, down 2, 56 seconds left.
Michigan did the prudent thing by trying to get a quick shot, which Stauskas missed.
Here’s where they screwed up, twice they got offensive rebounds and kicked them out for rushed 3s. They didn’t need a 3 trailing by 2, and they certainly didn’t need the hurried jacks they settled for. It worked out because Jordan Morgan tipped one in (it actually looked like Julius Randle did) to the time game.

But Kentucky had plenty of time and Harrison hit the game winning shot.

I think once the shot clock was turned off (under 35 seconds to go in the game) Michigan should have held the ball for a better shot, with less time left. It seems to me, if you miss a shot there, no matter how much time is left, you have very little chance to win.
So if you’re best hope is overtime or a game-winning , it’s better to do that as late in the clock as possible to prevent Kentucky from getting the ball back with a legit opportunity to score.