Ten "sweet nothings"

I don't understand "xoxo." A hug followed by a kiss is cool. But a hug followed by a kiss, followed by another hug and a kiss? Creepy.

I went to Benihana's yesterday and ordered takeout. I saw through the bullshit.

I assume a single girl who is constantly getting flowers is constantly getting flowers with even-numbered petals. He loves me ..... he loves me not. Damn!

Happy person: Ahh, it doesn't get any better than this.

English major: Wow, that's cynical.

There are few things shittier than stepping in dog shit.

A realistic motivational speaker once said, "You are the master of your own fate! Except when things aren't meant to be."

From the cutting room floor at Hallmark: Happy Father's Day, motherfucker!

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

-- some rapist, I'm guessing.

A butterfly is just a more physically attractive fly who spends its life hanging out in exotic locations rather than the dark, putrid places a fly usually finds itself in. A butterfly is adored, whereas a fly spends its entire life just trying not to die or be killed. I watched "The Wire." This all makes sense to me.

They say laughter is the best medicine. I put this theory to the test the last time I got really sick and almost died laughing.

Hella random, yo

A few random, pointless, utterly useless thoughts I've jotted down in my dingy notebook over the last two years of blogging inactivity. What can I say -- I've missed you, my invisible, anonymous, nonexistent readers:

The holy trinity of backhands – Pete Sampras, Superfly, and the word “actually”: You got the job done! You actually got the job done! Wow, you look nice today. Wow, you actually look nice today.

They should make a version of the movie “Sideways” where the two friends drink whiskey instead of wine and call it “Facedown.”

A memoir is just a douchey way of saying diary. It’s also poor marketing. I wouldn’t read Churchill’s memoirs, but if the cover said “Churchill’s Diary” (in glitter and with the i’s dotted with a heart), maybe I would.

An excerpt from Snoop Doggs’ memoirs: “6:15 in the morn. Freaks still gettin’ it on in my living room. Thought they was leavin’ 15 minutes ago.”

Adulthood is when you realize nobody wants to read your stupid poems, and when you begin to think people want to hear your stupid poker and fantasy baseball stories. I'm somewhere in between.

You ever wonder why the word "fatherfucker" never caught on?

In some ways I wish coffee were an illegal drug. I'd have some incredible adventure stories to share, and this tattoo of a French Press on my right biceps would suddenly seem bad ass.

Shouldn't a fireman be called a waterman? They put out fires. Let's start calling the police "murdermen" or doctors "diseasemen" then.

There's a thin line between love and hate. Uh, yeah, it's called "like."

White underwear makes about as much sense as one-ply toilet paper.

Phew. I got whacked really hard in the head today, but it’s all good – it only damaged the 90 percent of my brain that I don't use anyway.

Jay-Z feels bad for me because I'm having girl problems, but you wanna know who I feel bad for? Jay-Z. Because he has 99 problems. Go see a shrink, you trainwreck.

Adulthood is when your dreams finally seem attainable. I used to dream that I could fly. Last night I dreamed I waited in line for coffee. Dreams do come true.

Say what you will about the Industrial Revolution . . . . .

I like that only pretentious people use the word "pretentious." Yes, your vocabulary is mighty impressive.

If wearing sunglasses indoors is douchey, what about wearing reading glasses when you're not reading?

Uggs -- Ed Hardy for girls.

I feel a strange connection to people who are antisocial, but for some reason we never get along.

Oh, Dallas

Here's a pretty good sign that I've been oblivious to my surroundings since I moved to Dallas a couple of years ago.

That picture of Dallas in the previous entry? Seriously, it was the exact picture that was used in a trivia night at this bar a few friends and I went to while I was in LA last month. It was part of a line of questions where you had to identify the skylines of various world cities, and I couldn't identify it -- it being the city I've lived in for the last 28 months.

That picture features buildings that are literally one or two blocks from where I work. So I'm either oblivious or in the advanced stages of senility.

To be fair, none of the other guys knew what it was either. Neither did our waitress. We tried to sneak a few answers out of her, not because she was bright or anything but because she looked like Pam from "The Office," cardigan, white sneakers, wavy hair and all. She told us to write down Beijing. She also told us to write down Singapore for what actually turned out to be the New Orleans skyline. Right.

The weird thing is, I actually recognized the septor-shaped tower in the skyline -- that's the Reunion Tower, which is adjacent to the hotel I stayed at while I interviewed for my job here. When I first moved here, I'd mention that tower whenever people asked me where I worked -- "in Downtown Dallas ... you know, like, next to that tower that's shaped like a septor?" Nobody, not even the people who've lived here forever, knew what I was talking about. It's not a major landmark or anything. In fact, I think it's just a tower that has a rotating restaurant and bar up top. Not exactly the Empire State Building.

Not that it matters -- we weren't winning anyway because we arrived late and missed the first round -- but I probably should have been able to identify that skyline. Maybe I just didn't believe a city like Dallas deserved to be called a "major world city." New York, sure. San Francisco, sure. Chicago, Tokyo and Toronto, yeah, OK. But Dallas? It's probably the 40th or 50th city I'd name if you asked me to name a world city.

And I live here.

Viva Las Dallas

I'll be here in a month.

I'm here right now.

Dallas doesn't really seem that different from Las Vegas when you shrink the pictures to thumbnail size. The people, the scenery, the food, the utter lack of mountains and hills and bodies of water and In N Outs. If I visualize them as thumbnails, it'll be all good in the hood.

Look out below.

They say if a tree falls and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound. That means the result of this latest update -- one that's, what, a good 16 months overdue? -- should be silence.

Total silence. Right?

Testing.

Caaaaaaan anyonnnnneeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrr meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?

(Echo.)

I always knew the death of this blog would be my laziness. I suppose that's better than having a blog die because you were too proactive, which would mean people didn't like what you had to say or that they could only stand you in doses. Too much of you at one time was a bad thing.

In that case, I guess I'm relieved my blog died because I'm a fat lard who lost interest in telling people -- some friends, some former friends, some eternal enemies, some absolute strangers -- about the random, meaningless events of my day on an internet journal.

Some of you might have actually liked my blogs in a weird, detached, "I'll read about what's on your mind, I might even say hello to you in the comments, but I probably won't call you to see what's on your mind or say hello" kind of way. And to those of you, I want to say thank you, because you're the ones who make updating this blog every 16 months totally worth it.

In fact, it's people like you who've semi-driven me out of semi-retirement. I liked those impersonal hellos. I liked that writing on this blog felt like talking to a wall, only the wall sometimes responded in vague, quickly forgettable, inconsequential terms.

Call me a hopeless romantic, but I had this crazy idea that personal interactions were more meaningful than the ones that occurred through e-mail or the internet. That's what slowly pulled me away from the blogosphere. I'd actually resolved to put that credo into action ..... but, as you know, my laziness was the death of that.

Hence, I've come to accept that impersonal pleasantries are just part of a life cycle in reverse. Babies literally cling to people. Adolescents hold hands. Young adults give daps. Adults use instant messenger.

By the time I'm in my 40's, I fully expect to ignore everyone I know.

Until then, I shall communicate with you all -- eternal enemies and absolute strangers alike -- through cyberspace. Some people will call it a barrier. We'll call it the vessel that's keeping our familiarity with each other from fading into oblivion.

At least until we're 40.

The other day while I was cleaning my apartment, I found a box of old photos of me and some of my friends in high school, back when my weight actually matched the number on my driver's license. Besides the clothes I was wearing, I was pretty startled by how tiny I appeared back then, how narrow my neck and shoulders were and how small my head appeared.

It's a simple fact, one that should be easily accepted, that I've gotten bigger (or fatter, if you want to be a jerk about it) as I've gotten older, as most of the human population does from high school to the mid-20's, or the mid-20's to the late 30's.

I like to call this process "biology."

Critics of Barry Bonds like to call it "proof of steroids use."

I wish I could use steroids as an excuse for how much bigger I've gotten since high school. It'd be more exciting than "I got older." But the truth of the matter is that I just got older. I'm bigger now because I discovered beer and I lived next to two of the best pizza places in the world when I was in college and I realized that I liked not exercising a lot more than exercising.

Most of you share this description, perhaps with slightly different reasons. For example, some of you may like exercising, or you simply just exercise, and you're much bigger and thicker and more muscular today than you were six or seven years ago.

People get bigger as they get older. That's just human nature. It's biological.

Compare yourself to pictures from 5, 10 years ago, and I'll bet you a dollar you were much tinier back then than you are today.

Try this with anyone. A celebrity. An athlete.

Anyone.

I'll throw out a random name.

How about Magic Johnson:








































The photo on the top is from the 80's, when Magic was in his mid-20's. The photo on the bottom is from the 90's, when Magic was in his late 30's.

Observe, if you will, the difference in the size of 80's Magic's head and 90's Magic's head. It's the first thing that stands out to the naked eye. 90's Magic has a fairly gigantic melon, one that is held up by a barely visible neck. 80's Magic's head is much smaller, and you can see his neck. Also observe how much broader 90's Magic's shoulders are compared to 80's Magic. And those biceps. 90's Magic has much bigger biceps than 80's Magic.

My first thought is that Magic just got fat in the 90's. He went from being a point guard who was tall enough to play power forward, to a power forward who was fat enough to play center. Honestly, how much do you think Magic weighs in that picture on the bottom? 350? 370?

He got bigger as he got older. It seems a simple enough explanation. The same is true of Michael Jordan, Andruw Jones, my friend Uttam, my little brother David, my mom, my dad, Beyonce. Basically everyone except Jared from the Subway commercials.

It's foolish to point to a picture from 1987 and expect someone to look exactly the same 15 years later. This is true for ANYBODY, but especially for a world-class athlete, whose job it is to get stronger and faster and keep his body in peak physical condition.

I'm not saying Bonds didn't use steroids. What I'm saying is I won't believe it until I see better proof than a damn picture from 15 years ago. If that's all that's required to prove someone used steroids -- showing how much bigger he's gotten over the years -- hell, I probably took steroids, too. Guilty as charged. I'm way bigger than I was in high school.

So are you, tubby.

I feel like the old guy at the club, and it's seriously affecting my ability to blog.

You may have noticed -- or not -- that I've been pretty terrible at updating this blog for the last two or three years, which leads me to wonder why in the hell you've even visited this Web site today in the first place. As someone who used to care about increasing my blog readership, I know as well as anyone that inactivity is among the best ways to ensure that your blog dies a slow death. You don't fill it with new material, and it'll lead to apathy, and eventually people will forget they used to surf through your Web site everyday when they were bored at work and at one point or another kind of sort of liked reading your stuff.

I stopped reading Mitch Albom's column, for example, when he decided it might be cool to write whenever he felt like it, which if I recall was roughly once every three or four weeks, in between vacations and a handful of 100-page, made-for-TV books that earned him millions. Of course, the difference between me and Mitch is that Mitch still has his 500,000 to 600,000 loyal readers who are willing to check in and out of his section at the Detroit Free Press Web site until they see a new column. I've lost all five of my loyal readers because they found other, better maintained blogs on the World Wide Web.

Also, I moved to Dallas, so they've forgotten about me.

Assholes.

I have an easy explanation for why I've lost my love of the blog, and it gets to the heart of why I felt compelled to update today, like, five months after my previous one.

Some of you might know that I haven't written or reported for a living since 2003. I took a break from it for a while because I wanted to try some other things, like magazine work and editing, and basically my career path has taken me in a different direction. Virtually all of my experience over the last four years is in magazines and editing, and now it's almost like I don't have a choice. There's no turning back. Reporting isn't even an option for me anymore -- I mean, unless I want to get paid $25 a story doing freelance work in Sioux City, Iowa, or something.

Not that there's anything wrong with Sioux City, Iowa.

It's not what I envisioned when I first got into sports journalism, but I'm finding that there's plenty of opportunities to affect the sort of material that gets published if you're on the editing side. In some cases, the opportunities are better and allow you to be more influential. Plus, most reporters are hacks who eat nachos for dinner, and I don't intend to be one of those guys for a living.

This might be counter-intuitive, but now that I'm not a writer, I'm a lot more conscious and selective about what I want to publish on the Web. Back when I first started blogging, at the tender age of 21, I basically wrote about whatever idea popped up in my head whenever it popped up in my head. Most of the ideas were random -- hence the title of the blog -- but some were personal, and I can honestly say that I spent more time on some of my blogs than I did
with some of my college classes (OK, only the useless ones, like IDS 130 and Political Science 1B).

It's different now. I have a copy editor's mentality. Less is more. Every word has to be there for a reason. I look back at some of the stuff I wrote when I was young, and it elicits the same feeling I get when I look at some of my college pictures.

Burn it.

Beyond that, I've begun to grasp just what exactly this World Wide Web business means. It means anyone in the world can read what you publish. That's an exciting idea, but it's also a disturbing one. By that, I mean it's great to have the freedom to write about whatever you want, uncensored, but that comes at the expense of choosing WHO you want to share your ideas with. Maybe this is the kind of change a man goes through when he lives by himself for nearly four years, but I value most of my thoughts enough that I only share them with a few, select people.

I may not have cherished that idea before, but I do now. That's probably the biggest difference between me before and me now.

You know, I never understood how a newspaper or magazine reader could feel so strongly about an article that he would write a letter to the editor.

Who ARE these people?

When I read an article that I like, I tell my friend that I just read an article that I liked. Or better yet, I think to myself that I just read an article that I liked, and I chuckle. I don't pull out a pen and paper and write a letter to the publication saying that I liked the article.

Normal people do not do this, I thought.

But then it hit me tonight.

BECAUSE I JUST WATCHED THE SEASON PREMIERE OF ENTOURAGE AND IT'S THE GREATEST FREAKING SHOW EVER! IT MAKES ME REMINISCE ABOUT THE GOOD TIMES THAT I HAD WITH MY FRIENDS BACK IN LA. IT ELICITS SO MANY GREAT MEMORIES THAT I FEEL COMPELLED TO FLY BACK TO LA AND ORGANIZE A BOOZE CRUISE THAT IS SPONSORED BY SKYY VODKA AND VICTORIA'S SECRET.

KUDOS TO THE WRITERS FOR PUTTING TOGETHER A GREAT SEASON PREMIERE!

Daniel Kim
Dallas, TX

My last experience in New York.

I asked this lady at the airport if I could use her phone because I just realized I'd left mine inside the Super Shuttle that had dropped me off. She asked a woman standing next to her -- her friend, I'm guessing -- what I'd just said to her, then she looked back at me and nodded and handed me her phone.

Predictably, when I called Super Shuttle and filled the operator in on my predicament, I was placed on hold for about five minutes. The lady was justifiably becoming annoyed by this. She was waiting in a long line with me to check in our luggage, so she wasn't going anywhere, but of course it's an uneasy feeling when a stranger who's asked to use your phone ends up using the phone for more than 20 seconds.

She began cursing in a foreign language. I can't be sure if she was cursing, actually, but the sharpness of the words made them sound like F bombs. She stuck her hand out by my right ear, where I'd placed her phone, and began forcing out those sharp words again. She was looking straight at me now. I put my hand up to let her know that it would only be a little while longer, I was waiting for the operator to let me know that he'd gotten a hold of the shuttle driver. But she wasn't having any of it.

Or was she?

This is what she started saying to me: "No, no. It's okayyyyy. It's okayyyyyy."

I relaxed a bit after she said this, thinking everything was okayyyyyy. But then she grabbed my arm.

"Ma'am, I'm really sorry. It'll only be another minute. I'd really, really appreciate it," I said.

She repeated her words, only more sharply: "No, no. It's okayyyyyy. It's okayyyyyy."

I was confused and desperate, and the only thing comforting me was the sound of an REO Speedwagon song on the other line. I soon realized that the lady didn't really mean to tell me that it was okayyyyyy for me to use her phone, because she began squeezing my arm. Her nails dug into my bicep.

"Wait, didn't you just say it was okay?"

She looked pissed. "No, no, noooo. It's okayyyy. It's okayyyy."

She snatched the phone away from me and turned to her friend and began cursing those sharp curse words again.

I finally put the pieces together and realized that the lady couldn't speak English. She didn't mean it's okayyyyy. She meant get the hell off the phone, you little son of a bitch. Apparently in her native tongue, approval, strictly translated, is a negative thing.

I wish I could attach some significance to this experience, being that it was my last in New York. But really, the only connection I can make is that a foreigner who couldn't speak English was yelling at me in broken words. That happened to me a lot on cab rides home on Friday nights.

I write to you tonight from a hotel in north Dallas, Texas, in a region the local folk call Addison.

All of the stories you've heard about Texans are, indeed, true. Everyone has kind eyes and smiles when you walk by. The men here wear cowboys hats as if they were fashionable, and not a prop or costume. When you ask people about the city and its culture, they invariably throw in the phrase "we do it big." And best of all, nobody generalizes the characteristics of cities after they've spent two days there.

I'm learning to correct that tendency.

One of the first things I discovered -- and became excessively giddy -- about Dallas is that they have a Sonic here. You've probably seen commercials for it when you've watched basketball games on TNT. Sonic is a fast-food restaurant that, I assume, is like a southern version of Jack In The Box: In other words, it's a Jack In The Box that does things bigger. The menu has items such as Toaster Sandwiches (hamburgers with Texas toast), Coneys (chili-cheese hot dogs), the Sonic-Blast (basically a Dairy Queen Blizzard), and other foods people eat when they want to punish their bodies. I can't remember if it was Houston or Dallas that was the fattest city in America, but either way, I'm sure Sonic contributed heavily to that honor.

Get it? Contributed HEAVILY?

I'm trying to motivate myself to wake up tomorrow at 8 a.m., which I haven't done in roughly seven years. They're serving continental breakfast downstairs from 7 to 9 a.m., but that's not a good enough reason. Besides, Sonic serves breakfast all day.

Today's look-alike is not a look-alike at all. In fact, they are the same person. The pictures below represent a before-and-after of John Clayton, the guy from ESPN who writes those "1st and 10" columns for the Web site. He must have used Propecia. Or was it Levitra? I always get those two confused.







(Actually, it's not John Clayton. The guy on the left is the teacher from Saved By The Bell who had the monotone voice. The guy on the left is Hal Gunderson, a postal worker from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Their faces are interchangeable, really. You just need to picture the teacher from Saved By The Bell with a hairpiece.)

I read a report today that Ronnie Brown may be sidelined for a few weeks after having surgery on his injured hand this weekend. The timing of this, of course, is consistent with the timing of everything else that has happened in my life lately, which is to say that it sucks balls. I'm one game out of the eighth and final playoff spot in my fantasy league, and there are only two weeks left before the seedings are decided. Great time to lose my No. 1 pick. GREAT time.

Only a team managed by me could possibly have something this screwed up happen during such a critical part of the season. You may think that the Lions defense was responsible for injuring Ronnie Brown on Thursday, but you'd be mistaken. I'M responsible. I'M the reason this kind of stuff happens to good, hard-working people like Ronnie Brown. It's because these people are on my fantasy teams, and the fantasy gods take pleasure in batting my fantasy teams around like a cheap toy that talented athletes full of promise get hurt. Ronnie Brown's power meter would be at 100-percent today if he were on someone else's team. Alas, he is on my team, and so he has a broken hand.

To douse Tabasco sauce on the wound, the abundance of injuries on my team this season forced me to exhaust the maximum 20 free-agent acquisitions by Week 9, so I couldn't even pick up Ronnie Brown's back-up, Sammy Morris. In fact, the team I'm playing next week picked Morris up.

Yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun -- getting to watch a player that should be on MY freakin' team, a player that I, by all rights, should be entitled to own, rack up points against me. It'll be like having my opponent grab my arm and use it to punch me in the face, while uttering, "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"

I know it's only Sammy Morris, but then again, it's only my fantasy team that he's going to be playing against next week. That's as good as seeing an eagle clutching a serpent in its talons. . . . you know, a sign from Apollo that Sammy Morris will have a great victory. (Didn't you watch "Troy"?) Basically, Sammy Morris is going to go Al Bundy on me -- pencil him in for 4 touchdowns in Week 13.

Hey, here's an idea. Let's stop referring to that play in the Dodgers-Mets game as "The Play." We all know what "The Play" is. There can't be two plays that go down in history as "The Play." There's only one "The Play." Why don't we refer to the Dodgers-Mets play as "The Double Play?" It's just as catchy, provides a clearer depiction of that play, and more importantly, it doesn't rip off the name of a play that was so memorable, so transcendent, so fan-freakin-tastic that it's known to all as simply "The Play."

It is settled. From this moment forth, we shall refer to that play as "The Double Play." Dodger fans are permitted to refer to that play as simply "That Play." Dodger fans who are in denial and would rather pooh-pooh that play are permitted to remove the quotation marks and bring the 'T' and 'P' down, as demonstrated in the example below.

Example: A big reason why the Dodgers lost Game 1 is because of that play.

I’m back!

Due to popular demand, Eva Longoria was named Maxim Magazine’s hottest woman in the world for the second straight year. The lack of popular demand has spawned my Jose Canseco-like return to the plate.

(Yes, it has been that long.)

There is much to report from my absence from the blogosphere.

I had a craving for an iced coffee this weekend, so I walked to a Starbucks on 60th and 1st. It was a solid walk, about 10 minutes, so I was pretty upset when I got there and realized that I’d left my wallet at home. Broken and defeated, I stared at my feet for a few seconds, when I spotted a newspaper that someone had left at a table. I sat down and read it and thought about how great it would be if I could afford an iced coffee.

Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you had wings? I have. I’ve concluded that my life wouldn’t be that much different. I have legs, and I hate walking. If I had wings, I’d probably hate flying.

A few nights ago I had a dream that I was walking along the streets of Manhattan with Elvin and his girlfriend, Jane. We noticed an overweight girl walking not far ahead of us, and she was wearing a shirt that was tight enough and jeans that were low enough to reveal a round mound of side fat oozing over her jeans.

“Whoa, she has a muffin top,” Elvin said.

“What’s a muffin top?” Jane asked.

“It’s when a girl who’s wearing a tight shirt and jeans has the fat from her sides ooze over her jeans, so it looks like the top of a muffin,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

Then I woke up.

My dreams have followed this uneventful pattern for the past year or so. I no longer have the fantastic dreams I used to have when I was young, like flying a jet or sparring with Mike Tyson or doing the cha-cha-cha with Madeline from the Wonder Years. I now have dreams that are mundane and realistic enough to make me wonder whether they really happened. Some have happened, or in some cases, some actually end up happening days later. Like the other week, I had a dream that one of my co-workers asked me if I wanted an Altoid. I said no. A few days later, that co-worker actually did ask me if I wanted an Altoid. I hesitated before saying yes and taking one, not because I wanted it, but because I remembered what Agatha the Precog said in Minority Report: "You can change your future if you want to." So true.

I sometimes like to watch the Food Network when I get hungry late at night. $40 a Day is a good one to watch. So is Iron Chef America. It’s such a letdown, though, when you flip to the Food Channel, and Good Eats is on. It’s like, “Ah man, they don’t even cook on this show.”

I hate that it’s suddenly endearing to be self-deprecating. Self-deprecation is a horrible thing. It should be discouraged.

I think it’s interesting that “kindergartener” is the hardest grade level to spell.

I'm really bad at chit-chatting with people. I think it's because I never perfected the art of ending a conversation tactfully when it starts to fizzle out -- that moment when I have nothing more to say and no longer want to listen to what the other person has to say -- so I try to avoid chit-chat sessions altogether so I won't have to confront that situation. . . . . you know what I'm saying? I mean. It's kind of like. I don't know. Anyways.

Man, I'm so emotional right now. I just realized the bottle of cologne my brother got me for my birthday is empty. What the hell, man. It's just gone. All gone. In five months. I didn't even know I wore cologne.

Also, Jim finally tells Pam that he's in love with her in the season finale of "The Office." She reacts by pulling the "I'm sorry if you misinterpreted things" card, they part ways, and then Jim finds her again at the end of the show and kisses her. So incredibly dramatic.

Actually, maybe that's why I'm emotional now, because the show was dramatic. Yeah, that makes sense. It makes more sense than being emotional because I ran out of cologne.

Ladies. Gentlemen. Fans of drunken former Cy Young Award winners who make an ass of themselves on television.

And I know you're out there!

Go check this out right now.

RIGHT NOW.

Not tomorrow, not after breakfast.

RIGHT NOW.

(In the link, click "sutcliffe.mp3")

If you thought the Joe Namath "I want to kiss you" episode with Suzy Kolber couldn't be topped -- you're right. It can't be topped, and perhaps it never will be. But this comes pretty darn close. Apparently Rick Sutcliffe got a little sauced up before he stumbled into the booth during a local television broadcast of a San Diego Padres game, and, well, let's just say he went Frank the Tank on the announcers while the cameras were rolling.

And thank the Lord the cameras were rolling.

I'm not sure this even counts as unintentional comedy, because you actually feel embarrassed for the guy after a while. . . . . so I guess it does count as unintentional comedy. I would've totally lost it if the sound byte ended with Sutcliffe saying, "Do you think KFC is still open?"

Anyways, click the link. It's pretty freakin hilarious.

The quote of the night, as I'm sure you'll all read about tomorrow morning, comes from Kobe Bryant, in response to a question about how the Lakers are going to keep from dwelling on the mistakes they made in Game 6.

"Well, you just put it behind you. There ain't nothing you can do about it, you know what I mean? After you go to the bathroom, you don't stand there and look at what you just dropped in there. At some point you gotta flush it, man."

What an amazing game. Every possession was intense, and both teams did a clever job of exploiting matchups in halfcourt sets: the Suns worked the screen-and-roll to perfection with Steve Nash and Boris Diaw, mostly getting the desired switch of Nash on Kwame Brown or Diaw on Smush Parker; and the Lakers used their size advantage in the frontcourt to work Lamar Odom down low on Shawn Marion (whom Odom has abused all series) or Brown on Diaw, although they really strayed from this strategy in the final minutes of the 4th quarter and in overtime. This is what's made the series -- the uniqueness of the Suns' lineup, and the strategies that've been employed around it by Phil Jackson and Mike D'Antoni. I can't wait to see the types of adjustments that are made for Game 7. . .

It seemed to me that Raja Bell's absence from Game 6 had a pretty minor impact on the game. Kobe got a few easy buckets in the paint because he was able to overpower Barbosa, but for the most part, the size disparity between the two didn't seem to matter, since the Suns' defensive strategy on Kobe for 80% of the series has been to double him. Besides that, Kobe mainly settled for jumpers and only took six free-throw shots in Game 6, so I don't think the one-on-one matchup really meant anything in regard to Kobe's performance. Kobe took 35 shots from the field tonight because this was the fastest-paced game of the series and because the game went to overtime, not because of the defensive decline between Bell and Barbosa.

It should also be noted that Barbosa scored 22 points on 7 of 9 shooting, basically equaling Bell's top performance of the series, 23 points on 8 of 15 shooting in Game 2.

Well, it appears the lariat/take-down that "The Nature Boy" Raja Bell executed on Kobe in Game 5 was the result of a long-running feud boiling over, one that I actually didn't know existed before last week. Apparently the two have been feuding for a while now, since Bell's rookie season in 2001, when the Lakers and Sixers met in the NBA Finals.

I don't know about you, but I'm enjoying every minute of this. I'm enjoying it so much that I'm rooting for the Suns to win tonight and extend the series so that this feud will be able to reach its climax in Game 7. It's only fitting that this happens. That game will be the stage for one of those truly great sports moments, the kind we'll look back on when we're older and say to ourselves, "I was there. I was there."

Below, just a few of the many highly entertaining run-ins between Kobe and Raja during the 2005-06 NBA season.

Suns at Lakers, Nov. 3, 2005
With 1:21 remaining in the 1st quarter and the Suns leading 26-21, Kobe draws a technical foul for elbowing Bell in the mouth and shoving him after Bell fouls him hard on a drive.

Lakers at Suns, Jan. 20, 2006
Responding to a reporter's question about Bell's tough defense in the game, in which Kobe scored 37 points on 12 of 33 shooting (9 for 9 FT), Kobe says, "Oh, come on. You've got to be kidding me, man. I had good looks, I missed them. It's as simple as that."
Says Raja: "He was settling for some shots I thought. As a defender, you hope he does that."

Lakers at Suns, April 7, 2006
Kobe is called for two fouls on Bell in the first half, one after lowering his shoulder and knocking Bell down in the 1st quarter and the other after pushing Bell aside while chasing a loose ball in the 2nd quarter.
With 1:31 remaining in the 3rd quarter and the Suns leading 79-75, Kobe draws a technical foul after making a comment to Bell. Jackson defends Kobe after the game, saying it was a "ridiculous" technical foul, and that Kobe "didn't say anything."
Kobe finishes the game with 51 points on 19 of 33 shooting (8 for 10 FT), but the Suns win 107-96. When asked about Bell after the game, Kobe tells reporters, "I don’t even think about Raja. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. You’ve got to be kidding me."

Suns at Lakers, April 16, 2006
The Suns rest Bell because of a thigh injury.
LA Times reporter Lonnie White talks to Kobe about his feud with Bell. Said Kobe: "I respect players in the league who play hard. There's a respect level there. But I don't know the guy. How can I not like the guy when I don't even know him? That doesn't make sense."

April 24, 2006 (day after Game 1 of West Quarterfinals)
LA Times reporter Mike Bresnahan talks to Bell about his feud with Kobe. Bell recalls an altercation he had with Kobe on the sidelines during a game a few years ago: "Basically, I said, 'Don't be mistaken that because you can put a ball in a basket that you're a bigger man.' I really think that in his mind, I'm inferior to him. Not talking basketball — as a man. And for me, basketball is basketball. But you're not going to walk on me as a man, or we can take it right to the parking lot."

May 4, 2006 (day after Bell receives a one-game suspension for his flagrant-2 foul on Kobe)
Bell offers his thoughts on the suspension and Kobe to Arizona Republic reporter Paul Coro. Among Bell's comments:
-- "We don't need an octagon. There's plenty of space and opportunity right out here (on the court), man. So he can talk all the (stuff) he wants to talk."
--"I don't hate him and I don't respect him."
--"I have no respect for him. Because I think he's a pompous, arrogant individual"

May 4, 2006
Kobe retorts: "I don't know this kid. I don't need to know this kid. I don't want to. Maybe he wasn't hugged enough as a kid. I look at him a little bit and he gets a little insecure about something. I don't know."

(Memo to readers: Kobe is 27, Raja is 29. It's juvenile, I know, but I thought it was hilarious that Kobe referred to Raja as "this kid" when he's the one who's younger. Oh that Kobe. He sure has a rapist's wit.)

One other note on this. The guys on TNT and ESPN commented on how Bell's assault on Kobe wasn't consistent with his character, and that he's a good guy, a class act, etc. Like Kobe, I don't know Raja Bell, but I do know that hard fouls and flagrant fouls are his cup of tea.

2003-04
Technical fouls: 15
Flagrant fouls: 5 (led NBA)

2004-05
Technical fouls: 10
Flagrant fouls: 2

2005-06
Technical fouls: 7
Flagrant fouls: 2

"We don't really go a lot by what the experts say. If it's interpreted as a reach, that's fine."
-- Marv Levy, general manager of the Buffalo Bills

You know, I think Levy could have benefited from reading my blog on fantasy baseball and the importance of knowing when players are expected to be drafted, because he completely misses the point here. I can understand if he rated Donte Whitner and John McCargo higher than the draft experts did, and who knows, maybe he's the one who's right about their futures in the NFL. The problem, of course, is that Levy is the only one who had this opinion, so it wasn't necessary for him to reach. If Buffalo was the only one who had Whitner rated this high, that means, obviously, that the other NFL teams had other players rated higher. So put 2 and 2 together: Levy could have traded down, picked up some extra draft picks, AND taken Whitner, anyway, because no one else was going to take him.

I love Marv Levy, but I think he really showed his age yesterday. You get the feeling that if he was more ambitious, more aggressive, and had a little more savvy, he would have been able to use Buffalo's position in the 1st round to his advantage. His failure to do so is especially upsetting in light of how the first seven picks of the draft panned out. There were a lot of great players who were still on the board, players who were coveted by teams lower in the draft -- in particular, Matt Leinart was still on the board, and the Cardinals wanted him; Brodrick Bunkley was still on the board, and the Eagles reportedly REALLY wanted him. Knowing this, the Bills were in a powerful position with the 8th pick, and yet they chose not to exploit it. To me, that's a sign of a weak front office, a team that's unable to take that extra step to put itself in a better position.

Again, it's not the picks that I'm upset with. It's the inability to take advantage of something that seemingly was handed to the Bills on a platter.

For those of you interested in reading about year-end awards in the NBA, here is what I believe to be the clear-cut winner in the field of "Line of the Year."

The recipient: Mark Madsen, for his drugged-out, who-gives-a-flying-f**k performance in Minnesota's final game of the season, Wednesday, April 19, vs. Memphis.

Minutes: 30
Field goals: 1 for 15
3-point: 0 for 7
Free throws: 0 for 2
Rebounds: 4 (Offensive Reb: 1)
Assists: 1
Turnovers: 1
Steals: 0
Blocks: 0
Personal fouls: 3
Points: 2

This was a man on a mission, my friends. It didn't matter what team he was playing, who was guarding him, what the score was, whether his team was down by 1 or 100. Mark Madsen was going to do everything in his power to hoist as many 3-pointers as he could and ensure that his team would fail in its season finale.

And by golly, he did it -- 102-92, Memphis.

One of the more inspired NBA performances in quite some time.

LOOK-ALIKE OF THE WEEK










President Satan Logan













Dolphins coach Nick Saban

I'm prone to overreacting after my fantasy drafts -- or, I'm prone to overreacting -- so it should come as no surprise to most of you that I'm ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC about the one I just had for my office league. I've got that old-fashioned feeling again, folks, that feeling where you just know you're going to wreak havoc on all the land.

(I'm following El's fantasy logic that when you've got the goods, there's no need to be modest for fear of jinxing yourself; sometimes it's better to just be a jerk about it and hurt some feelings along the way.

Congratulations on the fantasy basketball title, by the way, El. I won't soon forget this comment you made to me during the playoffs: "Hey, your team only has 11 blocks this week. Isn't that not a lot?" The pain struck deep into the pits of my soul. I hope it was worth it, Elvin. I hope it was worth it.)

It was just a great night from the get-go. I sank my first jumper when I was able to land Mark Teixeira with the 8th overall pick. Then I got Miguel Cabrera (17th) and Miguel Tejada (32nd) in the second and third rounds. That's when I turned to the guy next to me and shrugged, a la Jordan vs. the Blazers in the 1992 NBA Finals.

I really did that, by the way.

Not to sound like a prick , but I honestly feel this is the best fantasy team I've ever had, and it couldn't have come at a better time, since this is also the priciest fantasy league I've ever played in.

Anyways, now that I've jinxed the hell out of myself, here's how my team looks. And yes, this is a 12-man league.

HITTERS
C Victor Martinez (4th round)
1B Mark Teixeira (1st)
2B Rickie Weeks (9th)
SS Miguel Tejada (3rd)
3B Eric Chavez (7th)
OF Barry Bonds (6th)
OF Miguel Cabrera (2nd)
OF Jim Edmonds (10th)
Util Jason Giambi (12th)
Bench: J.D. Drew (14th), Chris Shelton (17th), Ian Kinsler (18th), Justin Morneau (19th)

PITCHERS
SP Felix Hernandez (5th)
SP John Lackey (8th)
RP Armando Benitez (16th)
RP Ambiorix Burgos (20th)
P Javier Vazquez (11th)
P Zach Duke (13th)
P Matt Clement (15th)
Bench: Justin Verlander (21st)

Reconnaisance is an extremely underrated aspect of pre-draft preparation. Knowing when a player is expected to be taken in your league is almost as important as knowing the player's season projections.

Pretty much all the guys in my league told me before the draft that they hope Barry Bonds burns in hell, a general sentiment that's been shared among the guys at the office for the last, oh, say, six or seven years, according to our newsroom historian. So I was reasonably certain that he wouldn't be drafted within the first four rounds. Actually, I might have been able to get away with waiting a couple of more rounds before snatching him up, but impatience and paranoia got the best of me in the sixth round and I decided not to push it any further. He was the one guy I had to have on my team, and I knew it would have ruined my week if I'd passed him up to draft someone like Vernon Wells or Jermaine Dye. I still think getting him in the sixth was a steal.

As you can probably tell, I don't think very much of relief pitchers in fantasy baseball. They contribute only one statistic to which a good starting pitcher couldn't contribute more -- the save -- and quite honestly, you're really not that screwed if you have to pick from the dregs of the closer lot toward the end of the draft. My draft strategy has always been to stock up on positions where the talent and production level is clearly different from the early rounds to the later rounds. That's just not the case with closers. Hell, every year you can find one or two 30-save guys through free agency, Ryan Dempster and Joe Borowski being a couple of recent examples.

Using a high draft pick on a closer is the equivalent of using a high draft pick on a one-trick pony like Willy Taveras or Scott Podsednik, who can get you stolen bases in bunches, but at the expense of murdering you in the five other hitting categories. That's something I've never been willing to do. Losing saves (and stolen bases) just isn't very important to me if I can dominate my opponent in everything else. It's an especially effective strategy in head-to-head leagues, where you start with a clean slate every week and don't have to worry about being buried by the cumulative rankings of each stat category.

Still, I have to admit, it is sort of ugly to have guys like Armando Benitez and Ambiorix Burgos on my roster. My plan, eventually, will likely be to replace them with a starting pitcher who also has relief eligibility.

So I'm watching the Knicks-Cavs game tonight, and they show a promo for this charity auction that's going to be put on by basketball living legend Dikembe Mutombo. Some of the items that are going to be auctioned off include two courtside seats to a Knicks game, an autographed basketball, and -- Sweet Eli Whitney's nose -- lunch with Dikembe Mutombo.

The ad said that the fair-market value for lunch with Dikembe Mutombo was $166. I mean -- wow. I don't know about you, but that seems like one HELL of a bargain to me. I can't think of another athlete I'd want to have lunch with more than Dikembe Mutombo. Can't think of another celebrity, period. I'm being dead serious. Maybe Ozzy Osbourne.

My friend Mike's pushing me to bid on this, and I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go for it, guys. I'm gonna go for it.