Woody Paige

And today's winner to pick my title of today's Blog is Ashlee. A girl that watches Around The Horn and SportsCenter for fun? Say it ain't so. Those actually exist? For those that don't watch, Woody Paige is the reason you need to watch Around The Horn on ESPN at 5:00 EST. Good title Ashlee, as Woody is the man as we all know.

Hey! First off, good comments you guys are leaving. That gives me something to check out, so keep them coming. And for those who have a Blog that I read, I’ll keep up the comments coming on your boards too. This first paragraph I’m going on the emotional road here, but we’ll get to the fun side of things after this. A lot of you guys already know, but yesterday evening, my Grandpa on my Mom’s side (Mom’s Dad) passed away. He was 92 years old and always was sharp with his mind, even at his old age. Until the past month or so, he’s been doing great, but the past few times I’ve visited him, he really went downhill, which was tough for me to see. But the good thing is that he didn’t have to suffer much, so that’s a relief. He’s straight off the boat from San Giovani, Italy. He came here in 1912 to Ellis Island, a port of New York that most of the immigrants came through to come to the States during that time. The coal mines in West Virginia is a big reason a lot of Italians came to my area, and that’s what him and all of his brothers did. All were part of the military at one time as well. Then after being here a while, my Grandpa opened a fruit market/grocery store type joint that still runs today. Even though we’re in the middle of nowhere for the most part, Joe DiMaggio and most of the Kennedy Brothers had been in the area to visit my Grandpa at his market, among a lot of other big names. Pretty wild for them to come to my area.

I have a lot else to get on the board today, so let’s pick it up. Real World was last night of course. We only have one more week left, ugh. What am I going to do on Tuesday nights now? Anyways, last night’s episode wasn’t that dramatic. Charlie (the new dude) cost the rest of the house their bonus money at work when he didn’t bother to show up for a few days. So Cam (one of my least favorite RW members evar) busts up his guitar. Some of my wrestling buddies were saying he should’ve taken the broken guitar and smashed it over Cam’s head, Jeff Jarrett style. For the non-wrestling fans, just skip that last sentence because you’ll probably be lost, but Jeff Jarrett is a wrestler who busts people up with guitars. Sounds fun huh? Other than that, not much drama was rolled into this show, which was disappointing. But what about next week you ask? It’s the finale for one, so that should be good. But our favorite character of this cast, Big Bad Brad, gets in trouble with the law once again. It doesn’t get much better Real World entertainment than Brad getting all liquored up and causing a ruckus. It’s like he’s having a roid rage. You best be watching next Tuesday to see all of that madness.

Last night we got some video game action in between me and my boy Spank. His girl Alicia came to hang as well, so we had our night planned outside of watching Real World. We broke out the Atari 2600, but that didn’t go too well. I was disappointed Spank didn’t appreciate some old school tradition, so he wanted to jump on some Def Jam Vendetta for GameCube. A quality game here and a new one will be out later this year. Def Jam rappers battling it out in a ring? You can’t go wrong with that setup. Speaking of games coming out, I’m getting chills upon reading about the new Zelda for GameCube and seeing some screenshots. If I had to give a one word description of why I’ve always been loyal to Nintendo, it would be Zelda. Bar none, nothing can compare to the Zelda series. Tecmo Bowl for Nintendo is the greatest game evarrrr (I refuse to argue this one), but Zelda has been going strong for over 15 years now.

Last night was also the NBA Expansion Draft. The Charlotte Bobcats will be a new team to the NBA next season for those in the dark on that one. Last night they had a draft just for their team. It wouldn’t be fair to give them 20 or so picks in tomorrow’s big time NBA Draft, so they have a separate entity. Where do the players come from? Each team in the league has to leave a few guys unprotected. On that list, Charlotte picked a crew last night to select, which is basically young bums with low contracts. They don’t want to have a huge debt yet, because they’ll be struggling regardless with the players the rest of the league left on the table. Who got selected? There were 19, count em 19. And the list goes as follows, in alphabetical order: Lonny Baxter, JR Bremer, Primoz Brezec, Mo Carter, Predrag Drobjnak, Desmond Ferguson, Marcus Fizer, Richie Frahm, Brandon Hunter, Jason Kapono, Zaza Pachulia, Alek Pavlovic, Jamal Sampson, Tamar Slay, Theron Smith, Jeff Trepagnier, Gerald Wallace, Jahidi White, and Loren Woods. An uneventful night and it was brutal on TV. The fans in the court didn’t give hardly any reactions, and who can blame them with these players’ names being called out? Poor Bobcats.

As far as tomorrow goes, I’m all geared up. But I have a few distractions along the way, but I can work around it. I have a massage scheduled in the mean streets of Clarksburg at 2:30. Or I did. Now I have to cancel out of that, but for good reason. The funeral home times for my Grandpa will be from 3-9 tomorrow and 1-9 on Friday. The funeral will be on Saturday. I’ll be there till 7:00 tomorrow and get home for the draft. Then on Friday, I’ll be there all day for my local boys who planned to come down while I was there at Dorsey’s. So what’s up on this exciting Wednesday night? Not too exciting actually. Just waiting around on the Special Olympic Sisters, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson. I can’t believe I’m hooked on these shows, but I admit it. There, I said it, hah. I think that’s enough for now. See you guys soon.

Quote from the Boston Sports Guy (Bill Simmons) on his latest list of NBA Player Rankings:

35. Tony Parker -- Hey, he'd certainly be higher on the list of "NBA players who must get an insane amount of, um, female companionship." The NBA thing mixed with the French thing? That reminds me, somebody needs to round up some groupies for a "One Night Stand Fantasy Draft" -- I'd love to see who would go in the first round. Make it one of those $4.95 DirecTV pay-per-views. There's not nearly enough done with NBA groupies on TV. They should at least have their own MTV reality show or something.