Hot Chips and a Bunch of Other Hot Things

While following the World Series of Poker online I fell in love with Tiffany Michelle. She is the On-Camera Hostess for PokerNews.com and the one you can see chatting with Daniel Negreanu (here and here).

In every interview she conducted she displayed class, beauty, quick-thinking, beauty, poker knowledge and did I mention she's hot.



Tiffany Michelle (Graham is her real last name, Michelle is her middle name) grew up in LA and spent her childhood acting, singing, dancing and playing poker. She played poker for the first time with her two brothers (one is a twin, I bet he's handsome) and her grandfather when she was 9. She went to UCLA and pursued acting and that's when she started playing in Hollywood home games with some actor friends.
She turned 21 in 2005 and won the first tournament that she played at Harrah's in Las Vegas.
Since then, in addition to playing (best finish at a major tournament, 21st at a WPT event), she's become a poker reporter and now she's the On-Camera Hostess for PokerNews.com.



She also appeared on Game Show Network's World Series of Blackjack.



Tiffany is still trying to work on her acting and thinks her poker career will help her acting by giving her exposure. And I am all for more exposure for her.

Tiffany appeared in an episode of CSI with a gaping chest wound.



Tiffany says she is not dating double bracelet winner Jeff Madsen, but she gets that question all the time. She says they're just friends, there's no romance there and she feels like his older sister.

I'd like to think Jeff feels the same way about her but I have the feeling that he's dying to date her and everytime she dates some older, smarter, better looking guy who treats her like shit he dies inside. And when she gets drunk and says she loves him he wants to think it means that type of love he feels for her. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they have the world's only friendship between average looking guy and hot girl where the guy doesn't want to fuck her either. But I doubt it.



She loves skittles but she likes to shove them in her mouth all at once. I am very against this method of eating Skittles, I believe Skittles should be savored one at a time, by color, from worst to best. If she had to eat them that way, she would save the grape ones for last.

She has one dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Brooklyn. I guess a Jack Russell is a good breed for a hot chick to own. Of course I prefer that all hot chicks have labs, or other big dogs, but a Jack Russell is much better than a bichon or a 2 lb. chihuahua that fits in a Marc Jacobs handbag.

If you're ever at the poker table with Tiffany you can expect her to play some junk hands, especially those with a 6 in them. She didn't specifically say her favorite hand was 6-9 but I like to think it is.








Tiffany was so gracious, that when I e-mailed her a bunch of questions, some serious and some stupid, she answered almost all of them. She didn't say whether she had a boyfriend and she thought my question about palindromes was a trick to prove she's stupid. I'm sorry she felt that way, but I guess she had no way of knowing how much I love palindromes.

The Fielders in Simpler Times

You may remember from stories in Sports Illustrated and Real Sports about the strained relations between Prince Fielder and his father Cecil. But it wasn't always that way.

Thank God For Copy Editors

The sports teams at Northern Arizona University are called the Lumberjacks. The ladies' teams are called the Lady Lumberjacks, sometimes shortened to Lady Jacks. But maybe this is one time they should have stuck with Lady Lumberjacks.

Best Horse Name Ever

Mrs. Poop and I have been joking about this one for years. I'm glad someone finally found the clip.

Sometimes The World is a Great Place

Olivia Munn of the G4 Network was talking about a sport (or something) in which women eat hot dogs suspended on a string while riding a motorcycle. Then she demonstrates.

Only watch first two minutes or so, but notice the way she wipes the corners of her mouth.

Don't Cry Over Spilled Soda

I watched last night's dramatic Met game in my bedroom, which is rare since I don't have DVR up there. But right after Luis Castillo's game-tying single I jumped up and startled the dog. He got up and ran to me, and banged into my nightstand, knocking my can of soda onto the floor. Luckily it didn't spill, it just sort of splattered. But Mrs. Poop was furious.
Then after the game, after the double play, I jumped up to lead Diesel downstairs to give him his reward for a Mets victory.
On the way out of the room, Diesel again banged into the table knocking the can onto the floor again, prompting Mrs. Poop to yell at us again. Luckily for us, this time the can was empty.

Baseball is Poop

An Offensive Performance
The Los Angeles Dodgers have been shut out in three straight games, and 4 of their last 5. The pitchers who shut them out were Brandon Webb, Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang, and Doug Davis was not part of the streak. They have lost 6 straight and 14 of their last 18. Chad Billingsley started off the season 7-0. In his last two starts he has given up 2 runs in 12 2/3 innings and lost them both by the score 1-0. Over the longer 18-game slump, Matt Kemp has lost 61 points off his batting average and James Loney has lost 53. The Dodgers are now in fourth place in the NL West and falling fast.

Don't Harangue Him
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Aaron Harang is quietly having a remarkable season. He has a .786 winning percentage on a team with a .434 WPCT. His three losses were all legitimate games he pitched badly in, and the offense bailed him out of two other games he should have lost. But he also has a 1.62 ERA in his 8 other no decisions including 1 run in 10 innings, 1 run in 8 innings, 0 runs in 7 innings and 1 run in 9 innings.
In 1972 Steve Carlton had a .730 WPCT (27-10) on a team that had a .378 WPCT (59-97). The exact same difference as Harang has with this year's Reds, but Carlton had 46% of his team's total wins, compared to 22% for Harang.
I think I like Harang because a few years ago he pitched with a misspelling on his jersey.



A New Home Run Record
Barry Bonds broke the all-time home runs record again. Now he has 757, dramatically reducing the value of the home run ball caught by Matt Murphy.

Who Are These Guys?

Player A - 2005: 141 games 520 ABs 95 runs 32 HRs 108 RBI .317 BA .959 OPS
Player B - 2005: 151 games 582 ABs 83 runs 16 HRs 78 RBI .266 BA .744 OPS
Player A - 2006: 156 games 607 ABs 92 runs 33 HRs 116 RBI .329 BA .934 OPS
Player B - 2006: 140 games 510 ABs 127 runs 41 HRs 116 RBI .275 BA .982 OPS
Player A - 2007: 109 games 410 ABs 64 runs 18 HRs 90 RBI .329 BA .965 OPS
Player B - 2007: 96 games 373 ABs 55 runs 19 HRs 62 RBI .263 BA .823 OPS

Angry Drunk Uses My Trash Can As A Trash Can

The other day I found 3 bottles of beer and $23 worth of losing lottery tickets discarded in my trash can.
Now I don't really have a problem with people using my trash can for it's intended purpose but he could have at least but the bottles in recycling.
But what was interesting was the guy was drinking some strange beer I'd never heard of, Baltika Extra Lager.



I also found it unusual that he dumped all three bottles in my garbage. After he finished the first two he carried the bottles around until he finished the third. That seems strange. And how far was he walking that he finished three bottles of beer?

Why Youtube Is The Devil

Youtube is a great thing. But with all great things there is a downside. The downside of youtube, besides the hours Michael has wasted on it, is that people use it as an excuse to do stupid shit and then post it on youtube.

Remember when idiotic teenagers would jump out of their cars, while still in drive, and dance alongside as the car rolled down a hill, or into a dumpster? It was called ghostriding.

The new trend is called fire in the hole. You order a drink from the drive-thru then throw it in the face of the poor fast food employee while yelling "fire in the hole.

I believe Glenn Reinhardt started this trend except he yelled "eat a dick" before throwing the Moutain Dew.

Youtube is doing a good job policing this, taking down most of the clips right away. So good in fact that I had to embed a video from another site. Screw you youtube, you lost the publicity, but you get to keep the tag.

She's Just Jealous Because Jesus Is One Of Us

Amber Tomcavage a contestant on Big Brother 8 hates Jews. In a conversation with another houseguest which was caught on camera (everything is caught on camera, that's the point of the show) calling Jews "selfish," "money-hungry" and saying her mom and sister told her you can tell who is Jewish by looking at their noses.
Listen for yourself, the good parts go start at 50 seconds.



Amber is a cocktail waitress from Las Vegas. She is a single mother and former drug addict who probably got knocked up by her dealer when she was out of money and needed to score some more blow. She cries constantly over nothing and coupled with her occassional bouts of delirium she seems like a manic depressive. She also loves Jesus and admitted to being a nympho.

Les Moonves who runs CBS and is married to Julie Chen, the host of Big Brother, is Jewish. At first I thought they should kick her ass off (what she said was right out of Hitler's handbook, while Imus was only guilty of a bad joke), but now I've changed my mind. They should leave her in the house because the great thing about Jews compared to other racial groups is that we don't allow our self-esteem to be affected by these dumbass comments.

And I guarantee those $100 tippers she speaks about are Jews.

It's a Hard Knock Life

Airing on HBO tonight is "Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Kansas City Chiefs."
The show took four seasons off after teams were reluctant to consent to allowing the kind of access necessary.
The first season was with the Baltimore Ravens after they won the Super Bowl. Nothing will ever top the incredible confluence of circumstances that led to having Shannon Sharpe, Tony Siragusa and Ray Lewis on the same team at the same time. And Ray Lewis gets third billing. The most memorable moment of course was after Siragusa (Goose with 2 Os) locked the tight ends in their trailer. That led to Shannon Sharpe uttering these immortal words "I want my restitution Goose. I hate that Goose. Fat ass Goose." At least I think that's how it went.
The Chiefs may not even reach the level of the diminished second season which featured the Dallas Cowboys and Dave Campo in a wet suit ("swimming with killer whales, now that's gangsta"). Though they did have the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader tryouts running concurrently with the director of the squad telling the girls they were fat and not to wear their "thongs."
But with Herman Edwards, who is a complete idiot, but a funny idiot, the Chiefs season should be entertaining. If you are expecting the season to rival the Ravens year, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment, but I urge you to watch and I'm pretty sure we'll get a couple of gems from Edwards, we'll see some cool training camp stuff and meet at least one Chief that is funnier than we thought he was.

The Power of the Pack

Awesome video showing how the wild really works. You must watch this whole thing and pay attention really carefully. This is just an incredible, scary, but beautiful look inside the way the animal kingdom operates.

TON is going to get eaten by one of these lions on phase II of his honeymoon in Tanzania.

The Floods Are Coming

Right now, my building is flooded. The waters are rising and we're all in trouble. I'm really not sure how it happened, I think it was a combination of the rain and something breaking. This is not just a leak, it's pretty much a full fledged flood.
When you walk into the elevator bank you can hear running water. It sounds like one of those wasteful water treatments at a high end spa. You can also hear it in the ceilings in certain places. At one desk it sounds like one of those noise machines, set to "gentle rain."
I've gone to the bathroom to piss four times already this morning.
One of the elevators actually has a sheet of water spilling down into the doorway when the door opens, it's like you're walking through a waterfall.
On the 10th floor (where the cafeteria is), there is an inch of standing water, when I stepped out of the elevator I almost slipped and broke my ass.
When I got up there three maintenance guys were running around sloshing through the puddles and yelling frantically into their walkie-talkies. "There's water on 7 and 8 too? I'm on 10 and it's completely flooded."
The freight elevator is flooded, water is pouring out of the ceiling, and it has crept about two feet into the hallway.
Elevators are shut down so I will have to use the stairs, thankfully I'm only on the fourth floor.

Update: My egress from the building was just as exciting. I was directed to the 5th floor so the security guards could send me to the proper staircase to use to exit the building. The staircase they chose was incredibly hot and muggy and it smelled like and old gym locker. There was water on each and every step and halfway down I encountered the man charged with making this stairwell safe for everyone who wanted to leave the building. He was about 70 years old, he had a mop and bucket and he was sweating profusely and mopping his brow with a hankerchief. The staircase was so hot and humid that by the time I got outside into the regular New York City summer heat and humidity it felt like I had just walked into air conditioning.

Mets Fan Catches 756

Matt Murphy, a 22 year old Mets fan from Queens, caught Barry Bonds' record breaking home run ball. He went to the Giants game on a stop before a trip to Australia. Apparently he didn't even have a ticket he and his friend, a Yankee fan, got them from a scalper (not sure how much he paid but whatever it was it was a great investment). 43,000 Giants fans and one Mets fan grabs it, like I said, "we are few, but we are strong."

Song Of The Week

"Let's Get Married" - Jagged Edge
First it was TON, now Billy is getting married, so this certainly seems appropriate.
Plus it's just an awesome R&B song, my favorite kind, smooth and soulful with a good beat.
Some of you might prefer the remix, but I don't.
Also Jagged Edge has their own channel where you can see about a dozen of their videos, I recommend "What's It Like?" if you haven't heard it before.

Steroids in Baseball

At the start of the 1997 baseball season Syracuse University held a panel to discuss the state of baseball. On this panel were Murray Chass of the New York Times and Pete Thamel then of The Daily Orange, now of the New York Times and other people I don't remember.
After the panel discussion I went up to Murray Chass, and I swear this is true, and asked him about steroids in baseball. He looked at me like I was crazy. He trotted out the now trite apologists' argument "steroids don't help you hit a baseball."
I brought up Kevin Elster who basically took four years off, then came back and hit 24 homers in 1996.
The point is not that I was right, because that happens so often it's no longer worth pointing out, the point is that the establishment (players, managers, executives, writers) willingly ignored the signs of steroid use, that observant people should have noticed.
One writer who was on the ball was Bob Nightengale (now with USA Today) who on July 15, 1995 wrote an article for the LA Times titled "Steroids Become an Issue: Many Fear Performing Enhancing Drug is Becoming Prevalent and Believe Something Must Be Done."
But pretty much everybody else ignored it, including Bud Selig who said he knew nothing about the problem until Mark McGwire's use of andro was reported in 1998.
Looking back I think McGwire purposely planted andro in his locker to throw suspicion off him as a steroid user. It seemed a little too obvious that McGwire had the bottle so clearly displayed in his locker. He probably never used andro, just thought it would give him plausible deniablity when people started questioning him about steroid use.
I hope the steroid era is now over and a new breed of juice free sluggers like A-Rod, The Magnificent Pooh Holes, Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn will come along and wipe the cheaters out of the books.

There's A New Home Run Champion of All-Time...and It's Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run to pass Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home run king. Now you'd probably expect that a baseball purist like me would be sickened by this development, but I'm really not.

Note: If you don't think Barry Bonds took steroids please stop reading right now. You probably are having trouble reading this anyway, with having to sound out the words. Barry Bonds cheated, there is no way to logically dispute this.

First off, no, Bonds clearly does not deserve to be remembered as the all-time leader in home runs. But in sports and in life, a lot of times people don't get what they deserve, and they don't deserve things they get. It's not worth worrying about.

There's no justice, there's just us. A pithy statement that is true in this case. Bonds can't ruin the historical signifigance of baseball, only we can. Baseball is unique among sports because of its history and the majesty of its records. And its two most precious records have been tainted (officially) but they don't have to be tainted in our hearts, our minds and our memories.

The two players I heard about most growing up were Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax. Neither holds any significant career or season record. That doesn't matter. It's their greatness that inspired stories of them to be told and passed down through the generations.

And it is up to us to pass down the story of Barry Bonds (and Mark McGwire is not blameless in this) and to tell our children that he cheated the game, and that he stole from Hank Aaron (and McGwire from Roger Maris).

And someday Bonds will be proven as a cheat and at that time let's hope baseball has a commissioner with enough stones to wipe his records from the books.

Paulo's Book Club: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I'm going to try to do this like a real book review, I'll discuss some plot points but I won't give away the ending. If you haven't read the book by this point then you are not really a fan and deserve to have the ending ruined. But if you plan to read it and don't want to be checkered by my opinions then don't read past this picture.



First off, the book is 759 pages. It might have been 150 pages or so too long.

The first 300 - 350 pages of the book dragged on. It seemed more like it belonged in the Lord of the Rings series, not Harry Potter. For several months and hundred pages they were camping out along the English countryside on a quest for a powerful object. That sounds just like Frodo and Samwise. And the chapter called "The Battle for Hogwarts" was also atypical of what we've come to expect from the Harry Potter novels.

Also, the tone of this book was decidedly darker. There was no quidditch (and therefore no "Weasley is our King," my favorite part of any of the books), there were not funny names for spells or books or old wizards. All the book was about was the quest for the Horcruxes and the impending attacks from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

And the search for Horcruxes was very vague because we didn't know what the Horcruxes were which made it very confusing to try to follow along.

But once the book got going and Harry started progressing towards his goals, the book was an absolute page turner. Most of the long-standing mysteries were explained in satisfactory fashion and everything made perfect sense in the end.

And the last chapter provided a very fitting ending to the series of books that I've loved so much for the past 7 or 8 years.

Damn, This Was Going To Be My Babysitting Move

LA TIMES: Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today.

For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old watched such popular video series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children.

The makers of the videos sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth each year to parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are still working on walking.

Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota, determining their babies' vocabularies using a standard set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.



The researchers found that 32% of the babies watched the videos, and 17% of those watched more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.

Christakis said children whose parents read to them or told them stories had bigger vocabularies.

"I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them - which does have developmental benefits.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under 24 months.

So now, when I have to babysit Baby Poop, Mrs. Poop is going to make me find ways to entertain the kid myself. But at least I can use this as a defense to watch Mets games with the kid, at least I'll be talking and explaining stuff.

Also my elder niece Cayla is a genius and she watched a lot of TV before 2 years old, but I don't think she liked Baby Einstein, she prefers "Jack's Big Music Show" and "Annie."

Hungry Hungry Hippo

A four-day old baby hippopotamus hides under its 9-year-old mother Porn at Chiang Mai night safari zoo in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand

Baseball is Poop

I Know I'll Never Love This Way Again
Why are so many people saying that Tom Glavine will be the last 300 game winner? First of all, this makes a better story. If you say "Tom Glavine won 300 games a feat that will be accomplished again in a few years" that doesn't make for interesting newspaper or talk radio.
But there is some credence to this belief.
1) The current crop of contenders is weak.
Randy Johnson needs 16 wins, and he'd probably have to pitch until 2009, at age 45, to get there.
Andy Pettitte is averaging more than 15 wins a season, but he'd have to keep that up for 7 more years until age 41. Oswalt and Santana may have started a little too late.
2) The game has changed. This is the real reason people are referring to. Pitchers are pitching fewer innings, getting taken out earlier, especially in tie games and close games. Also bullpens are worse, and pitching more, meaning more blown leads.
3) It is hard. To win 300 you need to average 15 wins for 20 seasons. And if you don't start winning consistently at age 21 or 22, you'll have to pitch into your early 40s to do it.

But as we go on pitchers are pitching later in their careers, and maintaining their effectiveness.

I think it will happen, but the next person to do it isn't in the Major Leagues yet.

Best Rookie Ever?
Milwauke Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun is having one of the best rookie seasons ever. He didn't come up until May 25th, missing 47 games (about a third of the season). Since then Braun has been up for 66 games and put up incredible numbers compared to other great rookies:

Braun 266 AB 52 runs 21 HR 54 RBI .346 BA 1.057 OPS
Pujols 590 AB 112 runs 37 HR 130 RBI .329 BA 1.013 OPS
Howard 312 AB 52 runs 22 HR 63 RBI .289 BA .923 OPS
McCovey 192 AB 32 runs 13 HR 38 RBI .353 BA 1.085 OPS

If Braun keeps it up for another 200 at bats and hits 35 homers while maintaining high averages, it could go down as the best rookie season anyone has ever had.

Home Sweet Home
Astros pitcher Wandy Rodriguez has some of the most disparate home/road splits I've ever seen.

Home 11 starts 6-2 record 74 2/3 innings 52 hits 14 earned runs 16 walks 65 Ks 1.69 ERA
Away 11 starts 1-8 record 57 1/3 innings 77 hits 52 earned runs 22 walks 51 Ks 8.16 ERA

The Way the Game is Going
For a brief period of time on Saturday and Sunday (after A-Rod's homer, before Glavine's win) there were exactly 22 members of the 500 Home Run and 300 Win clubs. By the time the next pitcher joins that club, there were be at least 50 guys with 500 homers. I count at least 7 active players who should accomplish that feat (Thome, Manny, Sheff, Andruw, Vladi, Pooh Holes and Adam Dunn).

I'm Not the Only One Who Thinks Mike Piazza Sucks

Mike Piazza was placed on waivers by the Oakland A's and he passed through waivers without being claimed, which means that Oakland can now trade him to any team interested. Minnesota and the Angels briefly considered making deals for Piazza in the weeks and days leading up to the July 31 trade deadline.

We Are Few But We Are Strong

Nike came out with this map to show where each team has their most loyal fan base. The Mets portion is very small, but very densely populated, and includes Staten Island.
I think it's pretty cool and I'm not going to get into quibbling about whether the Rangers really have that big of a fan base into Oklahoma, and why the Diamondbacks don't have all of New Mexico's support.

The Concierge and I Agree, And We're Both Wrong

At TON's wedding we were talking about the song "Layla" which is really about a woman named PattIE. The Concierge and I both though she left Eric Clapton for George Harrison, which is why Clapton wrote the song. But in the truth she was Harrison's wife first. Then she became friendly with Clapton and married him after her divorce from Harrison. Funny that a week after we talked about it, there's an article in the NY Post about it.

Apparently, Clapton also wrote "Wonderful Tonight" about Pattie Boyd. But he divorced her in 1988.

Glavine Gets It

Full coverage of Tom Glavine's 300th win including a post that every Mets fan must see at the Recap.

All Work And No Play Makes Dieter a Dull Boy

German workaholics may be suffering from a lack of sex.
A survey of 32,000 men and women by researchers at the University of Goettingen found over 35 percent of those reporting unsatisfying sex lives tended to use hard work as a diversion.
Some 36 percent of men and 35 percent of women surveyed for the "Apotheken Umschau" newsletter said they were likely to put in extra time at the office and volunteer for extra assignments.
The hard work ethic was even more pronounced among those who reported having no sex -- 45 percent of men and 46 percent of women said they voluntarily took on more responsibilities.
"These findings are worrying," the leader of the study, Ragnar Beer, was quoted as saying.

I hate studies like this but I think the headline is funny.