Friday, April 01, 2005

Anything & Everything: The Big Post

Last Sunday was the annual #basketball fantasy baseball league, more commonly dubbed as A#BL. I won’t go into huge detail on how our draft went, but I will at least give you my Opening Day roster before we move onto a slew of other topics. As you see these 20 players, the first 5 players are keepers, meaning that we keep 5 players at the end of each season. The other 15 on our team we welcome as new members to the team. This is an 18-man league by the way. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here is YOUR 2005 St. Paul Apostles:



1. Johan Santana: SP (MIN)
2. Frankie Rodriguez: RP (ANA)
3. Hideki Matsui: OF (NYY)
4. Jorge Posada: C (NYY)
5. Marcus Giles: 2B (ATL)
6. David Wright: 3B (NYM)
7. Khalil Greene: SS (SD)
8. Lew Ford: OF (MIN)
9. Rodrigo Lopez: SP (BAL)
10. Bobby Madritsch: SP (SEA)
11. Carlos Pena: 1B (DET)
12. Jeremy Reed: OF (SEA)
13. Ty Wigginton: 3B (PIT)
14. Clint Barmes: SS (COL)
15. Chris Capuano: SP (MIL)
16. D’Angelo Jiminez: 2B (CIN)
17. David Bush: SP (TOR)
18. David DeJesus: OF (KC)
19. Ryan Madson: RP (PHI)
20. Hee Seop Choi: 1B (LA)

Sunday night is our first game of the season and that pits heated rivals Yankees against the Red Sox. To me, this isn’t the real Opening Day. I know my boys are playing and the world will be watching. I understand that. But baseball just doesn’t have the same feel to me if it “opens” up at 8:00 at night. Monday is the real Opening “Day” as games then begin during the actual day. Wow, that’s something creative. I like watching baseball under the lights as much as the next guy and know that the majority of games are played at night, but give me some old school daytime baseball anyday of the week over night games. I am absolutely stoked to get the baseball season underway though. Although it can’t compare to the NBA, the MLB ranks a fairly close second in my list of sports. Sorry football fans, basketball and baseball own you as far as my personal likings. You just got p0wned! I’ll talk a lot more throughout the season on both the St. Paul Apostles and the Yankees, so stay tuned.

In what used to be a regular tradition, the #basketball crew got together last weekend to battle it out. Battle it out in what you ask? None other than Yahoo Graffiti. This is basically Win, Lose, Or Draw or Pictionary if you will. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but this stuff is addicting. Funny how a game like this can keep a group of guys pushing 30 years old to make it out to be competitive with some trash talk. Most of us are horrible drawers, which makes it even better just to see what some of us draw. This past weekend’s champion was the familiar DerekHood, so big props there to him.

Also in something that catches on with the #basketball crowd, we battle in Texas Hold Em Poker quite a bit too, or used to anyways. We did that the same night and that’s usually a good time as well. I stumbled across a new Poker host (not that I don’t already have enough the way it is) while watching BET late at night like I normally would do called World Poker Exchange. You can hit that up at http://www.worldpx.com. All of these hosts are pretty much the same thing, but I have that, Pacific Poker, PokerStars, and Party Poker.



The new Ashanti video, whew.. just when I think she can’t look any better.

Layzie Bone & Bizzy Bone: Bone Brothers. This might possibly be my favorite album of the year so far. That’s giving it a lot of hype, and with as many CDs as I listen to in due time, that’s some respect. I didn’t expect a whole lot from this one, but it straight up delivers the goodies. I was VERY impressed.

Lil Flip & Z-Ro: Kings Of The South. Another very good one here and I’m not just saying this to start a trend. Both of these guys bash T.I. hard throughout their tracks. They also give a lot of respect to DJ Screw in this as well.

Omarion: O. Let’s go 3-3 and keep hitting. After the hard rap, it was time to get into the pimpin’ mood to lay the flow down. I didn’t think Omarion’s first solo project would be worth anything, but once again, I had to eat my words. Omarion has matured a lot in this one and even touches on the situation with B2K, being honest with that on one of his songs.

2Pac: Ready 2 Die. Seriously now, when is enough? I’m a big 2Pac guy and all, but he can’t possibly have this much “old” stuff just laying around to make album after album. What’s going on here? I haven’t checked this one out though to give a review, but there’s a video already out for this one. Weird.

WrestleMania XXI on Sunday! This is the Super Bowl of wrestling and a must get for all wrestling fans. If you don’t buy a Pay Per View all year, you should save up and wait for this one if nothing else and chuck in the $50. I’ll give a quick rundown, even if I’ve already posted my predictions in the mecca known as Lobstah. And since I’m lazy and already wasting a lot of your time, I’ll just paste my predictions. 8 matches are announced for the big show, and here is what is scheduled:



Triple H (C) vs. Batista. World Heavyweight Title Match. (Batista) I almost want to take Triple H here, but I guess with all of the hype, I go for HHH to lose the title to his boy.

Bradshaw (C) vs. John Cena. WWE Title Match. (Bradshaw) I'm going for this out of the fact that Vince is in love with Bradshaw. He's bound to lose that title sooner or later though, but is Cena ready for that?

Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels. (Shawn Michaels) I can't wait for this match! This match here will be worth the $50 price alone. Hopefully it tears the roof off the place. Angle went out to even say that he'll steal the show that night, so we better watch.

Undertaker vs. Randy Orton. (Undertaker) I look for him to continue his undefeated WrestleMania streak.

Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin vs. Edge vs. Jericho vs. Benoit vs. Kane. Money In The Bank Ladder Match. (Jericho) I don’t really have a reasoning for picking Y2J here. I’d like to see Christian get a big push, but doubt that happens, even though he can work the mic with the best of them and has nice ring skills to match. Please, anyone but Kane.

Trish Stratus (C) vs. Christy Hemme. Women's Title Match. (Christy Hemme) I can't believe I'm picking her since she's not a wrestler, ugh. At least it'll be awesome to see Trish bouncing around and Hemme doing the same can't be a bad thing.

Big Show vs. Akebono. Sumo Match. (Big Show) This will be the bathroom break.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. (Eddie) Another one I can't wait for. This one has potential to rival the HBK/Angle match.

The best ice cream flavor possibly of all time? Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. This is vanilla ice cream with cherries and chunks of chocolate in it. It’s similar to the new Dairy Queen Blizzard, except that one has strawberries instead of cherries. I went off eating this stuff during the week, but it’s expensive. I paid like $3.50 or more for a pint and that’s not good, but since it’s quality stuff, I had to shell out to get some quality. If you haven’t checked this out yet, you need to get caught up with the game.

I’m not much of a TV flipper outside of my regular channels. I was checking out A&E the other day, something I rarely do, but found a few shows that I might have to start watching more often. The first is Dog: The Bounty Hunter. Like everyone else, I got tired of seeing the same cop shows over and over and didn’t think they could do anything new with them. Anyways, apparently the first season is over and the next season starts next Tuesday. This guy is marketed as a tough dude, and he is I guess, who you guessed it, goes out and busts crime. He has a team setup of his chick, his son, his brother, and their nephew. This is a rough looking dude and the whole crew is actually. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but it’s quality stuff. One episode had the crew break up into two teams and they each had a fugitive to go after. They had a game to see who could find their thug first. The funny part of it is that “Dog” doesn’t really have an outfit. He’s a Harley type dude with tats all over him and wears his badge around his neck and is strapped. He did time in prison in the 1970s, but now he’s turned things around. I can’t believe I just typed a full paragraph on this show, but I think it’s worth checking out if you haven’t yet. Or I could be easily amused, who knows.



Another A&E show that I liked upon seeing is Growing Up Gotti. When the previews for this came out when they first started showing this series, I didn’t think much of it. But basically you have a reality show (imagine that concept these days on TV) of John Gotti’s daughter and her three sons. Just think of it as The Osbournes go Mafia. Victoria Gotti is a hottie MILF. The kids make the show though, as these guys are just straight up punks, but they’re hilarious. Everytime I hear a Gotti story, I always crack up at how “Donnie Brasco” for the Italian locals said he used to live by John Gotti himself. Who knows on that one. It’s a madhouse though, but it’s definitely entertaining.

The fishing trip was a good time, but the water conditions weren’t to our favor. A ton of rain went down before we got there, so that got the streams crazy high and all muddy. Take my word for it, you won’t catch in those conditions. We did some lake fishing on the first day and did ok and then the next few days we finally got to hit up the streams, which I like better anyways. We did ok in the catching department, but didn’t slay them this time. That happens. How about all of the animals I saw in the “mountains” as we call them around here. I was about 2 hours away from home all week and we rented a nice house that was loaded up good. It’s just something my parents and I have done for 20 years straight or so and nice to get away from the mean streets of Shinnston just to relax. I did take the GameCube along though and played a ton of MVP Baseball 2005. I’ve started up yet another dynasty and this one is with my Yanks. Hopefully I can stay with this one as all is going well so far. Check out all of the animals I saw all week up there though: Deer, sheep, beavers, geese, cows, horses, dogs, cats, fish of course, vultures, cardinals, and I’m sure I’m missing a few others. Wild kingdom up there, good to see.

I better start to wrap things up. I had to reserve gold earlier this week and went to pick it up. How’d I get my hands on gold you ask? It’s the 2004-05 Official NBA Guide. The definitive source you need if you’re a true hardcore NBA fan, which there’s only a handful of anyways. I could look at this book all day and never get tired of it. It has every single player and every single roster of all time in there and stats on anything you can imagine, short of how many chicks they slept with. You want to know who made All-NBA 2nd Team in 1958? It’s in there. How about how many All Star Games that Jerry Sloan played in? Most fouls in a 3-game series? Lowest percentage of games disqualified? Any kind of weird stat you can think of, it’s there. 750 pages worth! You need this bad boy, so please donate $18.95 to The Sporting News to support the greatest organization ever, the NBA.

3 Quick Thangs:



1. Running commercials on BET is Jamster ads that you can get Mike Jones ringtones. I need a cell phone just for that. Who? Mike Jones! One is Still Tippin’ and the other has him screaming his catchphrase over and over. And I’m now officially jealous that DerekHood is seeing him in concert this June.

2. Ok.. We didn’t need minute-by-minute updates of when Schiavo and The Pope were dying. I understand it’s big news and all, but it’s not a baseball game to where we need stats. Good Ol’ Jim Ross should’ve provided commentary. They weren’t far off from doing that.

3. June 10th at the ECW Arena in Philly! I better stop now before I go into a seizure. More on this later. http://www.hardcorehomecoming.com/#

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