Thanks to our status as 6-pack plan ticket purchasers the New York Mets allowed us to buy tickets to one playoff game in either of the first two rounds. I chose Game 1 of the NLCS to be played on October 11th.
I also entered the random draw for the NLDS and won. I will be buying 4 tickets to Game 2, to be played on October 5th. Hopefully the website will work better this time. And hopefully my dad will win the NLCS lottery next week.
Friday, September 15, 2006
I'm Selling All My Old Used White Towels
In response to the Steelers Terrible Towel, the Cleveland Browns are coming up with their own version, The Dirty Brown Towel.
Someone Enjoyed 40-Year Old Virgin
Some idiot Notre Dame fan agreed to get a full body wax in exchange for tickets to the Notre Dame-Michigan game. There is actually video.
Reggie Bush is a Liar
Reggie Bush insisted his family never received any improper benefits from groups angling to represent him in his NFL contract talks. But Yahoo! has been tracking this story for months and here is what Bush got:
$595.20 in round-trip airfare from San Diego to Oakland in November 2005 for Bush's stepfather, LaMar Griffin, his mother, Denise Griffin and younger brother to attend the USC-California game
$250.65 for limousine transportation from the Oakland airport to the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco that November weekend for the Bush family
Suits for Bush's stepfather and brother to wear during the Dec. 10, 2005 Heisman ceremony in New York, a makeover for his mother for the event and limousine transportation
Weekly payments of at least $1,500 to the Bush family
$623.63 for a hotel stay by Bush at the Venetian Resort & Casino in Las Vegas
$1,574.86 for a stay by Bush at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego
Approximately $13,000 to Bush to purchase and modify a car
$54,000 in rent-free living
$28,000 to help Bush's family settle pre-existing debt
Thousands of dollars in spending money to both Bush and his family from the prospective agents
$595.20 in round-trip airfare from San Diego to Oakland in November 2005 for Bush's stepfather, LaMar Griffin, his mother, Denise Griffin and younger brother to attend the USC-California game
$250.65 for limousine transportation from the Oakland airport to the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco that November weekend for the Bush family
Suits for Bush's stepfather and brother to wear during the Dec. 10, 2005 Heisman ceremony in New York, a makeover for his mother for the event and limousine transportation
Weekly payments of at least $1,500 to the Bush family
$623.63 for a hotel stay by Bush at the Venetian Resort & Casino in Las Vegas
$1,574.86 for a stay by Bush at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego
Approximately $13,000 to Bush to purchase and modify a car
$54,000 in rent-free living
$28,000 to help Bush's family settle pre-existing debt
Thousands of dollars in spending money to both Bush and his family from the prospective agents
Thursday, September 14, 2006
What I Learned in Vegas
Most of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But because I try to learn from my mistakes, and the mistakes of my friends (life is too short to make all the good mistakes yourself) I thought this information would prove useful.
1) Be careful when girls are dancing on the bar. If you lean in real close (like Greenspan did) it will look to her as if you are trying to see what kind of panties she is wearing. She will then grab your head and scream at you, and her bartender friend will do the same.
2) Mrs. Freedo loves to read the Poop. When we ran into the Freeds at the Hard Rock, she at first had no idea why I was giving her a kiss hello. When Freedo subsequently referred to me as Paul, she warmed up, gave me a big hug and declared herself to be a daily reader.
3) Mike/Nails has exacting standards for craps shooters. Though my Friday night roll at the Hard Rock made everyone a considerable amount of money (two points, made the hardway -- the second resulted in $81 for Fox and $90 for Reiss) and the fact that 6 members of our group were rocking the table, he classified my turn with the dice as "excellent," falling one point short of "legendary."
4) Greenspan's ADHD is contagious, and Reissberg caught it. Jeremy's impatience manifested itself towards the craps dealers ("you forgot to pay me on my hardway"), the cocktail waitresses ("where is she with my drink?") and the Arizona Cardinals ("let's go play blackjack.") In the final circumstance, he was so addled while waiting for the game to end, I had to beg him to sit still until the clock read 0:00. He even admitted the problem "I want to do every thing at every moment."
5) Zach Morris scored a 1502 on his SAT. Not 1509.
6) Self-hating Jews are better or luckier gamblers than those with pride in Israel.
7) Don't leave the sportsbook until the game is over. I did a couple of things wrong, that aren't quite rules to live by yet. First of all, I bet against my alma mater Syracuse. Secondly, I bet it the night before the game so when Iowa's starting QB went down, I didn't get the benefit of the line changing 3 points, not that it mattered. Turns out Iowa's backup is worse than Perry Patterson and he threw 4 INTs. Thing is, Iowa was still winning with the ball and less than 2 minutes to play. I said to an Iowa fan "Congratulations, you just beat the worst team in the nation by 3 points." But they hadn't. SU got the ball back, tied it, sent it to OT, and then double OT. It was there that the Orange couldn't get the ball into endzone on 8 plays from inside the 5-yard line and lost by 7. But I didn't find any of that out until much later.
For the curious I split my college games, losing SU and Michigan winning Ohio State and Cal.
8) Take the redeye home...the day before everyone else leaves, not the day after. The redeye is a great way to sleep through a flight, and not lose a day to travel/sleep. I seemed to be the only one who was not dead tired. But don't hang out in the casino all day waiting for your flight. You are just asking to lose money.
9) Do not spill coffee on the roulette table. Ton tried this. It resulted in several very angry dealers who had to clean the felt, and towel off each chip individually. The funniest part was, not a drop got on Ton, but the poor woman at the table got coffee on her pants, and on all her chips.
10) When you see TallSkott making the Triple Threat, and Sobel wearing his Kool-Aid smile, you know they are having a good time.
11) If someone you know gets up from the poker table at 4am and says he's going to meet a friend, he's going to a strip club to see a girl he saw last night. If you see him the next morning and he says he just had breakfast with a friend, he didn't get laid.
12) It's usually gay when two guys share food, but not always. Jerry and Ray split a 40 ribeye, and it looked pretty good.
13) 9 Steakhouse in the best restaurant in the world. So many beautiful women. So many beautiful women with so many guys who don't look like they deserve them. At one table, in the middle of their meal, two gorgeous black women sat down next to two fat white dudes. Paid escorts?
14) Jerry has never seen those Keith Hernandez and Walt Frazier commercials.
15) Simpler is better when it comes to marketing. We stayed at THE Hotel. We opened THE door with THE Key. We shopped at THE Store. What a catchy gimmick. I even bought THE Shirt and THE hat.
16) If you read in the newspaper that a strip club was closed down for serving alcohol despite the suspension of its liquor licence, you can bet The Concierge was there drinking the night before.
17) An unlucky weekend at the tables can lead a man to change his life. Dylan has given up gambling, smoking, drinking, eating, cursing and hating Reiss.
18) Don't antagonize your friends. My luck took a serious turn for the worse when I showed up to watch the Giants-Colts game in a Dwight Freeney jersey. In fact, the number 93 on my jersey would haunt me later when I had aces cracked by 9-3.
1) Be careful when girls are dancing on the bar. If you lean in real close (like Greenspan did) it will look to her as if you are trying to see what kind of panties she is wearing. She will then grab your head and scream at you, and her bartender friend will do the same.
2) Mrs. Freedo loves to read the Poop. When we ran into the Freeds at the Hard Rock, she at first had no idea why I was giving her a kiss hello. When Freedo subsequently referred to me as Paul, she warmed up, gave me a big hug and declared herself to be a daily reader.
3) Mike/Nails has exacting standards for craps shooters. Though my Friday night roll at the Hard Rock made everyone a considerable amount of money (two points, made the hardway -- the second resulted in $81 for Fox and $90 for Reiss) and the fact that 6 members of our group were rocking the table, he classified my turn with the dice as "excellent," falling one point short of "legendary."
4) Greenspan's ADHD is contagious, and Reissberg caught it. Jeremy's impatience manifested itself towards the craps dealers ("you forgot to pay me on my hardway"), the cocktail waitresses ("where is she with my drink?") and the Arizona Cardinals ("let's go play blackjack.") In the final circumstance, he was so addled while waiting for the game to end, I had to beg him to sit still until the clock read 0:00. He even admitted the problem "I want to do every thing at every moment."
5) Zach Morris scored a 1502 on his SAT. Not 1509.
6) Self-hating Jews are better or luckier gamblers than those with pride in Israel.
7) Don't leave the sportsbook until the game is over. I did a couple of things wrong, that aren't quite rules to live by yet. First of all, I bet against my alma mater Syracuse. Secondly, I bet it the night before the game so when Iowa's starting QB went down, I didn't get the benefit of the line changing 3 points, not that it mattered. Turns out Iowa's backup is worse than Perry Patterson and he threw 4 INTs. Thing is, Iowa was still winning with the ball and less than 2 minutes to play. I said to an Iowa fan "Congratulations, you just beat the worst team in the nation by 3 points." But they hadn't. SU got the ball back, tied it, sent it to OT, and then double OT. It was there that the Orange couldn't get the ball into endzone on 8 plays from inside the 5-yard line and lost by 7. But I didn't find any of that out until much later.
For the curious I split my college games, losing SU and Michigan winning Ohio State and Cal.
8) Take the redeye home...the day before everyone else leaves, not the day after. The redeye is a great way to sleep through a flight, and not lose a day to travel/sleep. I seemed to be the only one who was not dead tired. But don't hang out in the casino all day waiting for your flight. You are just asking to lose money.
9) Do not spill coffee on the roulette table. Ton tried this. It resulted in several very angry dealers who had to clean the felt, and towel off each chip individually. The funniest part was, not a drop got on Ton, but the poor woman at the table got coffee on her pants, and on all her chips.
10) When you see TallSkott making the Triple Threat, and Sobel wearing his Kool-Aid smile, you know they are having a good time.
11) If someone you know gets up from the poker table at 4am and says he's going to meet a friend, he's going to a strip club to see a girl he saw last night. If you see him the next morning and he says he just had breakfast with a friend, he didn't get laid.
12) It's usually gay when two guys share food, but not always. Jerry and Ray split a 40 ribeye, and it looked pretty good.
13) 9 Steakhouse in the best restaurant in the world. So many beautiful women. So many beautiful women with so many guys who don't look like they deserve them. At one table, in the middle of their meal, two gorgeous black women sat down next to two fat white dudes. Paid escorts?
14) Jerry has never seen those Keith Hernandez and Walt Frazier commercials.
15) Simpler is better when it comes to marketing. We stayed at THE Hotel. We opened THE door with THE Key. We shopped at THE Store. What a catchy gimmick. I even bought THE Shirt and THE hat.
16) If you read in the newspaper that a strip club was closed down for serving alcohol despite the suspension of its liquor licence, you can bet The Concierge was there drinking the night before.
17) An unlucky weekend at the tables can lead a man to change his life. Dylan has given up gambling, smoking, drinking, eating, cursing and hating Reiss.
18) Don't antagonize your friends. My luck took a serious turn for the worse when I showed up to watch the Giants-Colts game in a Dwight Freeney jersey. In fact, the number 93 on my jersey would haunt me later when I had aces cracked by 9-3.
Another Good Blog
Please check out Dwight Schrute's blog. As you know, Mrs. Poop loves Dwight Schrute and she cannot wait for the show to return on September 21st.
What will happen to Jim and Pam?
What will happen to Jim and Pam?
Poor Danny
A Pennsylvania high school football coach pumps up his team with an impassioned pregame speech which of course, ended up on youtube.
While I Was Out
While in Vegas, I missed the 29th birthday of Pizza Parlor Derek.
Apparently there was no vodka snorting this year, no late night hook-ups at Darwin's and no binging at Cosmos, but he had a good time anyway.
Happy Birthday Derek!
Apparently there was no vodka snorting this year, no late night hook-ups at Darwin's and no binging at Cosmos, but he had a good time anyway.
Happy Birthday Derek!
Not Exactly a Terror Threat
British author J.K. Rowling says she won an argument with airport security officials in New York to carry the manuscript of the final "Harry Potter" book as carryon baggage.
Had security agents not relented, she said on her Web site, she might not have flown, she said in a posting dated Wednesday.
"I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't -- sailed home probably," she wrote.
Had security agents not relented, she said on her Web site, she might not have flown, she said in a posting dated Wednesday.
"I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't -- sailed home probably," she wrote.
Nancy Grace Badgers a Woman into Suicide
A Florida woman who claimed her toddler son was abducted from her home shot herself to death a day after bulldog CNN host Nancy Grace harshly interrogated her during an interview.
Melinda Duckett told police that her 2-year-old son, Trenton, was snatched from his crib on Aug. 27 as she watched TV in the next room.
Two weeks later, former prosecutor Grace trampled on the woman's timeline for the 26 hours before the alleged abduction took place and pressed her on her refusal to take a lie-detector test.
In the telephone interview, taped Sept. 7, Grace slammed her hand on her desk as she demanded, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"
Duckett, 21, committed suicide the next day - and bombshell evidence possibly implicating the mom in her son's disappearance has now surfaced, Grace and local media reported last night.
On Aug. 11, some 16 days before the boy vanished from his home in Leesburg, Fla., Duckett "placed the child's car seat for sale in an ad in a local newspaper," Grace reported on her Headline News cable show last night.
The ad ran for 10 days, reporter Marilyn Aciego of The Daily Commercial told Grace.
"She actually placed the ad on Trenton's second birthday," Aciego added.
Florida law mandates car seats for children up to age 3. Aciego said it was not known if Duckett had bought a replacement seat.
A defiant Grace denied responsibility for the young mom's death.
"I do not feel our show is to blame for what happened to Melinda Duckett," she said before last night's show, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Cops won't say if Duckett left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found so far in their probe of her death has shed any light on the whereabouts of the little boy. They also won't call Duckett a suspect in her son's disappearance.
But they have focused increasing attention on her movements before the boy vanished and seized notes, computers, cameras and other items from her house.
Duckett's relatives insist that she wouldn't have hurt her son and that his disappearance, and the media spotlight, led to the second tragedy.
"Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end," said Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank. "She wasn't one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn't get away from each other. She wouldn't hurt a bug."
Duckett had told cops that after she finished watching a movie Aug. 27, she went to check on Trenton and found an empty crib - and a 10-inch cut in the window screen above it.
She had just been laid off and was living with the baby while going through a messy divorce with his father, Josh Duckett.
The dad was closely questioned after Trenton disappeared.
Local newspapers reported that his wife had taken out a temporary restraining order against him.
But the 21-year-old dad took a polygraph test and has answered all police questions satisfactorily, Capt. Ginny Padgett said.
Josh Duckett said he doesn't blame Grace for his estranged wife's death.
"Nobody made her do the show," he told the Sentinel. "Nobody made her do anything."
Melinda Duckett told police that her 2-year-old son, Trenton, was snatched from his crib on Aug. 27 as she watched TV in the next room.
Two weeks later, former prosecutor Grace trampled on the woman's timeline for the 26 hours before the alleged abduction took place and pressed her on her refusal to take a lie-detector test.
In the telephone interview, taped Sept. 7, Grace slammed her hand on her desk as she demanded, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"
Duckett, 21, committed suicide the next day - and bombshell evidence possibly implicating the mom in her son's disappearance has now surfaced, Grace and local media reported last night.
On Aug. 11, some 16 days before the boy vanished from his home in Leesburg, Fla., Duckett "placed the child's car seat for sale in an ad in a local newspaper," Grace reported on her Headline News cable show last night.
The ad ran for 10 days, reporter Marilyn Aciego of The Daily Commercial told Grace.
"She actually placed the ad on Trenton's second birthday," Aciego added.
Florida law mandates car seats for children up to age 3. Aciego said it was not known if Duckett had bought a replacement seat.
A defiant Grace denied responsibility for the young mom's death.
"I do not feel our show is to blame for what happened to Melinda Duckett," she said before last night's show, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Cops won't say if Duckett left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found so far in their probe of her death has shed any light on the whereabouts of the little boy. They also won't call Duckett a suspect in her son's disappearance.
But they have focused increasing attention on her movements before the boy vanished and seized notes, computers, cameras and other items from her house.
Duckett's relatives insist that she wouldn't have hurt her son and that his disappearance, and the media spotlight, led to the second tragedy.
"Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end," said Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank. "She wasn't one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn't get away from each other. She wouldn't hurt a bug."
Duckett had told cops that after she finished watching a movie Aug. 27, she went to check on Trenton and found an empty crib - and a 10-inch cut in the window screen above it.
She had just been laid off and was living with the baby while going through a messy divorce with his father, Josh Duckett.
The dad was closely questioned after Trenton disappeared.
Local newspapers reported that his wife had taken out a temporary restraining order against him.
But the 21-year-old dad took a polygraph test and has answered all police questions satisfactorily, Capt. Ginny Padgett said.
Josh Duckett said he doesn't blame Grace for his estranged wife's death.
"Nobody made her do the show," he told the Sentinel. "Nobody made her do anything."
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Alex Trebek is a Sucka MC
This video is not on YouTube yet, so I can't embed it. You will have to click here to see it.
Nemesis
Albert Pooh Holes hit a 2 run walk off single last night to give the Cardinals a 6-5 win. That extends his dominance of Brad Lidge whose career he seems to have ruined. Pooh Holes won Game 5 of the NLCS with a monster home run off Lidge. Lidge is 1-5 this season with 6 blown saves and a 5.21 ERA.
Pooh Holes now has 4 walkoff hits this year and 10 in the past 4 years, trailing only David Ortiz in both categories.
Pooh Holes now has 4 walkoff hits this year and 10 in the past 4 years, trailing only David Ortiz in both categories.
Da Chairs
A local furniture store in Chicago offered to reimburse everyone who bought furniture over the Labor Day weekend if the Bears shut out Green Bay in the first week.
Brett Favre played like he just bought a new dinette set.
Now the store will have to give back about $275,000 worth of purchases.
Luckily he bought insurance from a company that specializes in stuff like this.
The store owner came up with the idea for the promotion after hearing Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher boast that the team would have the No. 1 defense in the league this year.
The gamble paid off for the store which increased sales by 30% that weekend and is now getting tons of free publicity.
The only people who got screwed were the Packers and the insurance company.
Brett Favre played like he just bought a new dinette set.
Now the store will have to give back about $275,000 worth of purchases.
Luckily he bought insurance from a company that specializes in stuff like this.
The store owner came up with the idea for the promotion after hearing Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher boast that the team would have the No. 1 defense in the league this year.
The gamble paid off for the store which increased sales by 30% that weekend and is now getting tons of free publicity.
The only people who got screwed were the Packers and the insurance company.