I know when a team is in a free-fall, chemistry issues tend to come up. I’ve seen players get into fights with managers, but has anyone ever heard of an instance in which a player decided to practice judo on a GM? Chacon is currently signed to a one-year $2 million contract with the ’stros, and I’m willing to bet he’ll never pitch again the majors given his poor performance and tendency to pile-drive GMs. As a friend of mine once said, “This is more fucked than a box full of hangers.” We’ll see what happens in the coming days.

Though I have to wonder if Chacon said,”Wadey, tell me how the floor tastes!” before he decided to go Greco-Roman on him. (I’m hoping that joke never gets old.)

One of the strange things I picked up during my time in Nashville was an affinity for hockey. Don’t get me wrong, I still have no idea what’s going on other than the vague idea that some guys on skates are trying to get some black thing into a net thing using sticks. However I certainly appreciate it more than I did before Nashville. That all being said, I’m greatly concerned about the news of ESPN’s mullet-wearing, gaudy suit sporting (not pictured), and no-doubt Camaro driving Barry Melrose becoming the new coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

On the hockey level, a quick glance at Melrose’s Wikipedia page reveals that he hasn’t coached since the 1994-1995 season. Before that, he only coached in the NHL starting with the 1992-1993 season. To those counting, that’s a grand total of 3 seasons of NHL coaching experience followed by 13 seasons of being an analyst for ESPN. I may not know much about hockey, but it doesn’t take Brian Bellows (NSFW Language) to tell you that that’s a bad idea. (For the record, I desperately need his jersey.)

More importantly, at a media level Barry has been the proverbial “mourner desperately swinging a shovel preventing a rabid group of undertakers from putting the final nail in the coffin” of hockey since the recent lock out. (Proverbialness not guaranteed.) As far as I can tell, he was the only Hockey analyst that ESPN even had. So where the hell do they go from here? Unless they can lure Don Cherry and his unbeatably-ridiculous-so-don’t-even-try collection of suits away from the CBC, then I fear that hockey will become Canada’s soccer.

One of the interesting phenomenons of the past decade or so is the explosion of eBay and the appearance of idiots who try and sell random junk to make money. I’ve bought many an item of eBay, but nothing like the apple core on which Tiger Woods was munching at the 12th tee during the 2008 U.S. Open. That would be weird enough, but some other genius put Tiger’s apple remains from the 16th on eBay as well! We’ve all seen morons trying to exploit get rich schemes in our own towns, but eBay has given them a medium to reach the world. I think my favorite part of the whole thing is the description of the 12th tee core:

I never touched the core, Scooped it up in a empty beer cup, as not to disrupt the DNA, Ive got lots of witness’…all moneys go to my daughters college fund

Thanks guy. The best thing about eBay is that it’s a great place to buy random, obscure items that you can’t find in your home town, and the worst thing about eBay is that it’s a great place to buy random, obscure items that you can’t find in your home town.

I’m sure most folks have read the accounts of Javon Walker being found unconcsious, robbed, and with a caved-in dome on the Las Vegas strip. (Yes, that Javon Walker.) Javon had earlier been in a Las Vegas club spraying 15 large worth of Dom Perignon over a crowd, and the immediate thought by most was that he pissed off some posse that was also in the club. However the immediate question is, where was Javon’s entourage? Why was he found alone one the strip at 6 in the morning? It’s being reported today that Javon explained:

I was just back at my room, and at about 5:30 in the morning, I got a knock at the door. I opened it, and three guys with guns were there. They cracked me in the head a few times, knocking me unconscious. They then robbed me of everything I had; my watch, money, everything. Somehow they got me to a car and dropped me off in the street. That’s what happened.

At first glance I thought, “Wow, this guy was just the victim of a planned robbery.” But after pausing for a second to think about the implications of this statement, I quickly came to the realization that he’s probably stretching the truth a bit.
Let’s think about this for a second. Firstly, who opens a hotel door at 5:30 in the morning to anyone? And more importantly, who opens the door to a bunch of menacing looking dudes? It certainly wasn’t housekeeping coming in at 5:30 in the morning. Let’s assume for a second that Javon didn’t look out the peep-hole and just blindly opened the door. These dudes beat him up, take his gear, and haul him out to their car. Now let’s pause here for a second. Firstly, what criminal kidnaps a dude to dump him on a street after knocking him unconcious and then taking all his gear? You’ve got everything already. However more important that all of these little hiccups, this was in THE BELLAGIO. That’s right, that Bellagio. Assuming these dudes could even get up to Javon’s suite, don’t you think there would have been some footage of this supposed kidnapping? I’m willing to bet every square foot of that casino has around 9 cameras trained on it, so I’d be a bit surprised that a bunch of dudes hauling a body through the floor of a casino would go unnoticed. Did they dress him up “Weekend at Bernie’s” style and just haul him through the floor? Did they stuff him in a duffle bag and drag him through the casino? Did they bake him in a cake and wheel him out? Essentially, I argue it’s IMPOSSIBLE to drag a body through a casino without looking suspicious.

So Javon, what actually happened?

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Led Zeppelin. I do feel that they might be overplayed to a level of absolute insanity, and there is no better example than the line of Cadillac commercials that ran earlier this decade that featured this “Dead to Me” song:

This may not be the best example as the song is only featured at the end of the commercial, but it’s a good indicator of how commercials can absolutely murder a good song. I can’t even listen to it anymore because I just feel like I’m getting worked. Plus, what about Led Zeppelin is embodied in Cadillac? I understand the company is trying to revamp their image, but could they please not take the greats of rock down with them? They had another great example of a misguided ad choice in their 2007 ad that featured the Teddybears’ “Punk Rocker.” But you hear that in the background? That would be Iggy Pop. (The same Iggy Pop signed off on allowing his iconic drum intro to “Lust for Life” to be featured in featured in a Royal Carribean Cruise Line ad campaign that was mercifully shortlived enough to avoid being added to my “Dead to Me” list)  But I digress, Cadillac murdered “Rock and Roll” for me, and I’ll never forgive them for it.

One of the tenets of modern sport is the existence of set rules of play. All sports including existing competitive martial arts like jujitsu, boxing, and kick boxing have established rules and styles. People aren’t simply free to do whatever they want, and the adaptation of players to excel within the defined rules that makes sport impressive. Take basketball for example. The fundamental rule of dribble movement makes the sport fundamentally more complicated as it forces people to adapt their style of play to fit the rules. Basketball would be out of business if it just consisted of people running up and down the floor carrying the rock and shooting Js. However these rules don’t seem to apply in MMA. The sport largely consists of setting two guys in a polygon wailing on each other with whatever style they so please, and half the time it involves both fighters locked up grappling on the floor. If I wanted to see this garbage, I’d go to my local sketchy bar and watch late-night brawls.

It is often argued that these MMA fighters are tremendously skilled athletes who train relentlessly to perfect their craft. This may be true, however in general the more people have to describe to me how much skill and athleticism is involved in a given sport, the more suspicious I get. I should be able to detect these skills on my own, and watching a couple of dudes grappling on a mat isn’t convincing me.

Couldn’t You Have Found a Better Way to Say This?

The first leg of our trip was spent in Boston, and after we had settled into our hotel, we decided to stroll around the Beacon Hill and downtown areas. While wandering by the Massachusetts State House, my brother noticed this sign. Really Massachusetts? That’s the best way you could think to say this?

However the mystery deepens. I first assumed that there was an entrance on a “Hooker St” nearby, but a quick glance at Google Maps reveals that there is no such street near the State House. What in the hell does this sign mean then? Is there some local term I’m just missing? (Also notice that whatever was written below the line in question was taped over.  I guess it was potentially offensive.)

Have the Yankees Learned Anything About Security?

The three of you that read my rants are well aware that I’m not the biggest fan of the new national obsession with security. With this in mind, I’m guessing you can predict how I’d react when the security officers at Yankee Stadium would not allow me to bring my bag in with me to the stadium. In order to attend the game, I would have to check my satchel across the street at some bar and then go back through security. Now normally this would be the point of the write-up in which I would launch into a tirade, but I’m actually alright with this. I can get with the fact that some potential “targets” are of higher profile than others, and as I much as it pains me to say it, I can agree that New York is likely the potential bullseye in many an international malcontent’s grand schemes. So I admittedly was cool.

So why do I include this little observation in here if I myself had no problem with it? Well I met up with my mother inside the stadium, and she had no problem bring in her bag. It turns out females can bring in bags and backpacks as normal, and they only get the casual bag search that is normally to be expected at a sporting event. So let me get this straight, men can’t bring in bags, but women can? Better hope the next big extremist movement isn’t exclusively female.

The New Nationals Stadium Blew It

Earlier in the summer I caught at baseball game in Pittsburgh, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the stadium. The seats had a wide panoramic view of the many bridges that cross the Allegheny River. All of this was set in the imposing shadow of downtown Pittsburgh. The team may suck, but they’ve got an incredible stadium.

With that in mind, I figured that the new Nationals stadium would make use of views of the iconic landmarks in DC in placing their stadium. I understand space is tight in the city, but it would make sense to at least be able to see the Washington Monument or the Capitol Building off in the distance. And from what I read back in the early stages of its development, the organizers had done such that. The stadium was to be situated in the southern portion of the city and was planned to have a nice, albeit distant, view of these landmarks. However after sitting in our seats, all I could see where crappy office buildings and parking garages. It turns out the city didn’t zone the area outside of the stadium as a no-build zone to preserve the view. Now the view is a wasteland of office parks. FAIL

The Playing of Queen at Sporting Events

I’ve mentioned many of my irrational hatreds on this website, but I remembered one that I haven’t mentioned: Playing Queen at sporting events. Let me qualify this here, I actually like some Queen songs, I just hate HATE HATE hearing “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You” at sporting events. This is probably the most played out trend at arenas of all time, and I want it to die.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered why crowds basically only use the same three clapping routines during cheers. (I.e. “O-ver-ated! Clap Clap Clap-Clap-Clap”) Might I suggest a new one? The Terminator 2 clap. (Just the intro little bit.)

While I certainly dislike many popular musicians today, there are some “artists” out there that have elevated themselves from “disliked” to “despised” in my eyes. One bright, shining example of a band that made this transition is Nickelback. I’m not entirely sure when they became popular, but it seems like every time I hear their lead singer’s voice, (I refuse to look up his name) I want to jab the nearest sharp object into my ears.

Their 2006 single “Rockstar” really encapsulates why I despise them so much. The lyrics describe how people’s dreams should be the desire for extravageance and excess, and it’s precisely this mentality that has helped America achieve such a poor standing in the world today. Say what you will about the global socio-economic realties of today, but if I’m living in a cave in a desert with only a short-wave radio and underwear full of sand, I’m going to be awfully pissed at a country that desires, flaunts, and celebrates extravagance. Whenever I wonder to myself, “Why do the terrorists hate us?”, I generally only have to wait a millisecond before remembering this horrendous song and the mentality its promoting. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly enjoy the luxuries we have in this country, I just loathe people who abuse the privileges we have. I’m a big fan of the line that says something to the effect of,”I want a credit card with no limit.” Ummm…didn’t most Americans try that already? How’s that working out now? I mean don’t you idiots get it? We have everything already, and it’s this relentless desire for more and more that has gotten the world so pissed at us and wrecked the global economy.

In a way, the song is actually kind of brilliant I guess. Nickelback managed to encapsulate why many foreign countries hate American culture in one song. (They’re Canadian too!) Perhaps they’re in the process of some sort of weird Albert Camus-esque experiment in which they generate millions of fans and then suddenly turn on them and lecture them on how the values expressed in their song were designed to expose the flaws in western culture. (I doubt it.)

The fact that this song is so popular really seems to be indicative of why America is held in such poor standing today. And as a bonus, check out the yahoos that appear in the video as well! For the most part, it’s the “Mount Rushmore of The Aspects of American Culture I Hate.”  Perhaps I should start a new series of blog entries on this site: “How To Tell if Someone is an Idiot.” I think that liking this song would be way up there on that list.

During the deluge of NHL Playoff, NBA Playoff, and MLB regular season games I’ve been watching, I’ve noticed this Mike’s Hard Lemonade commercial come on more than its fair share of times. It basically says that putting soy into drinks is for wusses and Mike’s Hard Lemonade is for manly men. Really, Mike? Your overly sweet, wine-cooler-esque product is manly? Whenever I see someone order a Mike’s Hard Lemonade I ridicule them mercilessly for being a pussy. While I might agree that “In a world gone soft, someone’s got to be hard,” I can safely guarantee that that “someone” has never, ever bought Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

I noticed a couple of days ago that Bronco’s quarterback and Vanderbilt alum Jay Cutler was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. It’s also been reported that his condition affected his performance in 2007. However I don’t believe either of these revelations. This is clearly an attempt by Cutler’s camp to make the QB seem mortal. He’s actually such a good quarterback that the league couldn’t possibly comprehend his greatness should he willfully compete at full strength. He and his posse are well aware that should a quarterback show up and throw a touchdown pass on every snap, every other team in the league would likely disband. As a response to his greatness and his growing exhaustion with his daily struggle to appear like a normal person, they concocted this little “diabetic” story. Sure he had a lot of incomplete passes and interceptions last year, but you have to understand, Jay cutler doesn’t miss passes, he decides the receiver isn’t worthy and places the ball in a place where he knows he won’t catch it. This could even be a pass right in the numbers. He’s just keeping down so the league doesn’t fold. This whole “diabetic” thing is clearly just a cover to help him appear like a regular person. Now he doesn’t have to try so hard every day to appear fallible.

I stopped by a local sporting goods store today to pick up an air mattress, and while browsing the racks, I noticed a particularly disturbing selection. Coleman has apparently created an air mattress with “mp3 speakers” built in. That’s right, you can hook up your iPod to your air mattress. You see that shitty little cord coming out of the black rectangle on the edge of the mattress? That’s your iPod/mp3 player hookup, and it connects to an unlistenable speaker as well! This is a crossover so hopelessly misguided that I had to stop and stare to make sure I was reading it correctly. You know the mp3 revolution is getting tired when it starts being featured in mattresses.

I made a tirade a few weeks ago about how much I dislike the “one-and-done” aspects of college basketball, and I wrote that I thought the rule made a mockery of the collegiate process. However while I certainly dislike the rule, I certainly don’t think the current “student-athlete” academic experience is one ripe with the pursuit of knowledge. Take University of Buffalo point guard Andy Robinson who tried to get someone to write a paper for him by posting this ad on Facebook:

I am paying anybody who have read the book ‘there are no children here’ by Alex Kotlowitz $30-40 which in some classes you have to read at UB (even more money if you have to read the book a little more!!) to write a 3-4 page paper, on a couple questions which was assigned.

That’s right, he placed this ad on Facebook, a service designed to allow the world to see your posts. The blinding stupidity of Robinson posting an ad on Facebook to assist in cheating is only rivaled by his command of the English language. He’s has been done suspended indefinately from team.

I’ve always had a sort of strange fascination with urban design in other world cultures. That combined with an (un)healthy obsession with Google Earth has allowed me to explore the Ryugyoung Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, one of my favorite urban disasters, in much greater detail. I’d like to try and project some of my horror/amazement onto you.

The Ryungyong Hotel was originally designed to be a 1,083 ft, 5 star, mega luxury hotel in the capital city of the DPRK. The 3.9 million square foot hotel was to feature over 3,000 rooms, 7 rotating restaurants at its peak, and 6 more stationary floors above that. The original thought by the DPRK was that this hotel with 75 degree sloping sides would serve as a springboard to allow foreign investors to toss money into the country. However one might immediately notice that this entire paragraph was composed in the past tense.

Construction on the tower was started in 1987 by Baekdu Mountain Architects & Engineers (read: Kim Il-Sung), but it was abandoned in 1992. The building consists only of its concrete shell and a looming tower crane at it’s peak that serves as a reminder of its desertion. The hotel features no lighting, no plumbing, no electricity, and certainly no guests. Even in it’s uncompleted state, it’s taller than most buildings in the United States and would have been the 7th largest building in the world at the time of its completion. (Currently it’s the 22nd tallest building in the world.) It’s by far the tallest building in North Korea, and it can be clearly seen from most parts of Pyongyang.

The building itself is a national embarrassment. However for reasons of either pride or cost, the structure has yet to be demolished. However perhaps the DPRK is simply waiting for nature to take its course. It’s widely believed that the cement in the concrete of the building is defective. What few reports there are of the building indicate that it’s crumbling and is destined to collapse.

Architecturally the building is simply horrendous as well. It’s clearly the result of some DPRK ministry unfamiliar with building design and not that of an architect. It looks almost like a sort of North Korean response to brutalist buildings that were popular in decades past. I’ve never liked brutalism, but at least past examples have some sort of architectural thought behind them as opposed to this sand castle-esque pile of concrete. Esquire went so far as to call the building as the “The Worst Building in the History of Mankind.”

Obviously the building was a financial disaster as well. While no financial records have even been released, it has been estimated by Japanese newspapers that the final cost of the hotel would have been around $750 million, or two percent of North Korea’s GDP. This extravagant spending combined with a stagnating economy at the time is believed to have helped worsen the mass famine in the country during the 1990s.

The country’s “solution” to the failed hotel is also uniquely North Korean. The country has a national eyesore that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, is easily seen throughout the city, and is a complete and total failure. So what’s the solution? Pretend it doesn’t exist. You’ll find the building on no maps, no guides, and no pictures of the city. Additionally, residents are very hesitant to even mention its existence even though they can clearly see it from wherever they are in the city.

However, in many ways the building serves as a metaphor for life in the DPRK. It’s a failure that no one talks about, it’s a crumbling shell, a financial disaster, not in-touch with the outside world, under construction, abandoned, etc. The connections just go on and on. However perhaps this mass of metaphors may make the building an architectural landmark. It might inadvertently have become the only honest, symbolic structure in the entire DPRK. Maybe that’s why I like it so much, it’s just ironic.

And I’m not the only one who has a strange fascination with this building as well. German architects Richard Dank and Andreas Gruber have started a conceptual website at www.ryungyong.org that allows visitors to explore and “claim” their own space in the structure. Additionally, an Italian design firm named Extraneo (makers of this disturbing-on-many-levels iPod skin) created this video below entitled “Demolition S How.” Your guess is as good as mine as to what it means, however both of these links show my amazement is not unique.

Though I have to wonder. If it falls down, how long will it be before anyone outside of Pyongyang figures it out?

I usually have a fairly high faith in the goodness of humanity. Maybe it’s because I’m not as cynical or jaded as I should be, or maybe I’m just stupid. However I see a story like this and I just have to stop and sob for a bit.

It seems like these folding camping chairs started appearing around 15 years ago or so (who knows how long they’ve been around), so whoever invented it is probably not dead, but his achievement should definitely be recognized. As an avid tailgater, griller, drinker, and sitter, I use these things just about every weekend. They’re easy to figure out, easy to use, highly functional, easily transportable, inexpensive, and above all else, comfortable. The dude who came up with these things was truly inspired when he (or she, but these things just scream “dude invention”) came up with it. I feel like shaking the inventor’s hand is not enough. He should probably be deified.

I feel like this post is more appropriate for a many-page essay, but here I go with a short blog-burst.

I think most folks are well aware we’re in an energy crunch. Sure we’re a country obsessed with energy consumption, but right now I’m really not that worried about the future. Alternative fuels are booming, and while there are certainly drawbacks to current methods, the fact of the matter is that these are new, unexplored energy distribution systems and they still need to be developed.

Ethanol is the most widely hyped example of these burgeoning new energy sources, and I myself use ethanol in my Tahoe. However many people point to it as being both inefficient and one of the main contributing factors of the increase of global food prices because of its use of corn and subsequent disruption of the food chain.  And frankly, they’re correct. However I’m disappointed in the fact that all of these predictions of failure are based on current, corn-based production methods.

The current method of ethanol production is highly disruptive and inefficient, but rest assured that most of the powers-that-be are well aware of this. The end goal of ethanol production is to create cellulosic ethanol that can be generated from the cellulose in cell walls organic waste and non-food based crops as opposed to complex sugars in corn, and these new methods should both be more efficient and have less of an impact on global food prices. There’s even a startup now that claims it can produce ethanol from municipal waste at $1/gallon. It’s the closest thing we’re going to get to the cold fusion reactor on the back of the DeLorian in Back to the Future 2 in which you could cram trash and get 1.21 gigawatts in return.

In the long run, it’s important to understand that Ethanol is not the solution. It’s widely been argued that it’s not the best bet for our next-generation transportation fuels. Until we figure out how to efficiently harness the wireless nuclear power plant at the center of our solar system, Hydrogen fuel appears to be our best bet, but Ethanol could serve as a great bridge on the road to the solution. Ethanol is at best a Band-Aid, and it’s very important for both lawmakers and consumers to understand this.

However we need to stay on the path of finding clean, renewable energy sources. Oil prices might actually begin to drop in the near future, as it turns out there might not really be any regular gasoline shortage, just way too many jittery speculators. (Which I think deep-down we all knew.) I worry that however that this new predicted drop in oil prices will be a mirror of the price drop that happened after the 1970s oil crisis in which OPEC simply increased production and crushed oil prices. After that, the 1970s search for alternative fuels died out with the re-emergence of cheap gas, and I worry that the same thing might be getting ready to happen again! (On an unrelated note, this reminds of me a quote from a history lecture I took in college: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.”)

Perhaps I’m exposing some Libertarian leanings, but at the end of the day the energy business is just that, a business. And there’s nothing worse for profits that annihilating the planet on which your customers live. There have been many desperate pleas and cries for new energy sources, and if there’s a buck to be made out there in these new markets, you better believe there are many, many people out there trying to cash in. We’re going to be all right people.

P.S. Did anyone catch Charles Barkley on the Jim Rome Show challenging Skip Bayless and Jay Mariotti (who apparently is so widely hated that his Wikipedia page is locked) to a 2-0n-Chuck fight?