Memorial Day Miracle

Happy late Memorial Day.

SXSW, Ron Artest and New Orleans

Things are slow at the SXSW headquarters right now. Painfully slow at times. I’d explain all the things I do during the day to make the time pass during the day, but I’m afraid somebody from work would read this blog and I’d get in trouble. We’re in a recession right now and I can’t afford to lose my job, despite how uneventful it is right now.

But on the up side, I’m not stressed and I’m sleeping and eating and doing things normal people do. So there’s that.

I’ve been watching a lot of the NBA playoffs when I’m not at work, in fact I’m watching them as I type this, and I’m frustratingly happy. I enjoy watching the NBA Playoffs, and the NBA in general. So that makes me happy.

 However, the officiating in the NBA right now is utter crap. It’s kind of like the NBA leaving a bag of flaming dog crap on our porch, ringing the doorbell, and watching from the bushes.

And Skip Bayless on First Take is the equivalent of us answering the door.

It’s not necessarily that they’re making bad calls (but they are), it’s that the calls aren’t consistent from game t0 game. A lot of times they’re not consistent from quarter to quarter. And whenever the game starts to get physical, a barrage of flagrant fouls are called. The vast majority of which aren’t anything close to being flagrant fouls.

And then Ron Artest gets thrown out.

Poor Ron-Ron, he just can’t catch a break. You run up into the stands and mistakenly beat the shit out of one douchebag in Detroit (when you meant to beat the shit out of a different douchebag), and all of a sudden everybody thinks you’re going to go ape shit whenever you commit a hard foul.

The refs just need to treat Ron-Ron like every other player on the court and call him the same. Unfortunately it looks like the NBA has created the “Artest Rules.” #FREERONARTEST

I’m going to New Orleans this weekend with the girlfriend.

I wanted to take some sort of vacation after SXSW was over, but I don’t have any money. So I decided just to take a long weekend and go somewhere not too far from Austin.

And being a young, relatively-healthy, recent college graduate, what better city to visit than New Orleans?

The answer: none.

So I scored a good deal on a hotel for the weekend and looked up some fun things to do there. I’d look up bars to go to, but I figure I’m going to end up a Bourbon Street anyway. And from there, I seriously doubt I’ll remember anything I pre-planned when it comes to bar hopping.

It’s going to be an interesting experience.

What Vegas needs to put odds on, is the amount of time I’m actually going to spend doing things after my first night at Bourbon.

Right now I’ve got stuffed planned for during the days. But I have a feeling after the first night, I’m going to wake up at 3 pm and order greasy food. Then I’ll probably take a nap until it’s time to go back to Bourbon.

As of right now, I’ve got about four things planned as daytime activities on Saturday.

Vegas has the over/under currently set at 1.5.

I’d take the under.

Quick update

I was planning on doing a running log on tonight’s NBA action and my thoughts as it goes on, but I had an idea for a project today and so I’ll be dedicating my time to that tonight.

I’ve got another post in the works that I started last week, and hopefully I’ll be able to finish it soon. As long as it’s up before the NBA Playoffs are over, I should be good.

I’ve also got another Bleacher Report article that I started and haven’t finished. I like the idea behind it, but it’s going to take a lot of work and editing to get it right.

I did fall of the wagon on my “one post per week” quest. Three out of four ain’t bad though. I’ll be back with some updates in the next few days.

Another week, another article

I’ve got another new article up on Bleacher Report about Mo Williams’ impact on the Cavaliers. I also have one from last week about the NBA’s divisions if you missed that one. And all of them are up on the Articles page of my blog.

If you’re keeping track at home, I am still on pace for my one article per week goal that I set for myself last week. I know it’s not the loftiest goal in the world, but I’ve gotta take baby steps here.

I am excited about the NBA Playoffs starting, but at the same time, I’m watching way too much TV. I watch TV all night when I get home from work and all day during the weekend. Plus I’m getting behind in my shows and the DVR is giving me the big middle finger because of it. Plus, my girlfriend is probably tired of me staying up late to watch games even though they’re blowouts.

But it’s totally worth it. April might be the best sports month of the year and I can’t get enough. I’m just happy things aren’t busy at work any more so I can handle all the extracurriculars.

Reggie Miller is inadvertently wrong

I was watching the Celtics – 76ers game last night on TNT and Marv Albert and Reggie Miller were calling the game.  When the issue of Ray Allen’s suspension from last night’s game because of elbowing Anderson Varejao in his Brazilian twig n’ berries on Sunday, Reggie Miller adamantly claimed that the suspension was wrong because it was an “inadvertent elbow.”

Now I’ve had elbows for a long time, and I’ve gotten knocked down playing basketball many times before too. But I don’t think my elbow has ever “inadvertently” fired back that quickly into someone’s groin.

Who knows, maybe Ray Allen has a nervous twitch when he goes down on all fours.

I spring train in the winter, ’round early December

I’ve got an article up at Bleacher Report about the Houston Texans and the upcoming NFL Draft. I need to get better at consistently writing sports articles as practice, so hopefully I’ll have more to post soon.

So I’m going to make the declaration here, my goal is to post one sports article to Bleacher Report or something similar at least once per week, unless I have an approved excuse.

I’m not looking to get famous just by posting articles, I just need the practice. I’ve gotta get my reps in.

Putting the Shaq & Kobe stuff to rest, for good

Obviously a ton has been made over the last few years about the Shaq and Kobe… let’s call it a disagreement. The media hype about it died down over the last few months as Kobe Byrant elevated himself to the position of the best player in the NBA (recently overtaken by Mr. LeBron James) and Shaq was just trying to hold onto some of the limelight.

But with Shaq having a productive season and the Lakers positioned at the top of the Western conference, attention has been brought back to the “disagreement.” ABC even promoted the Suns / Lakers game Sunday afternoon as a “showdown” between Shaq and Kobe.

The worst part about the drama between the two is how it all was completely overblown by the media, and then systematically shoved down our throats. To be honest, I don’t even think they hated each other as much as we were lead to believe. Sometimes people who work together don’t get along. Some people’s personalities don’t align (although I doubt many people’s personalities align with Kobe’s). And sometimes some players don’t play well together.

It’s as simple as that. Kobe and Shaq didn’t have the personalities to be best friends. And both of them wanted to be the top dog. But because they played for the Lakers and had the huge L.A. media market and played for Phil Jackson, a coach famous for allowing huge egos to co-exisst, we were subjected to report after report about how they hated each other and didn’t get along.

But the NBA knew they had something when Shaq left L.A. and Kobe took over the Lakers. They could exploit this “feud” for marketing and advertising purposes. And exploit it they did.

Although I do think Shaq took advantage of it too when it became apparent that Kobe Bryant had become the better player of the too and it appeared that Shaq’s career was winding down. That’s how we get videos like this:

The NBA then exploited the Kobe-Shaq hugfest at All-Star weekend when they played on the same team for the first time in almost five years. Watch the video of Shaq and Kobe hold up the All-Star MVP trophy, there’s no way those smiles are real. With two guys that competitive, I can’t believe they honestly were that happy to share the award.

With the economy on the fritz and the NBA struggling, marketing and advertising dollars will be more important than ever. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with more media manufactured (yay alliteration!)  fueds from the NBA machine.

South by sports films

I wanted to review the list of movies that will be screened at the South by Southwest Film festival this year and post something about the sports movies. Then I looked at the list.

Apparently I’ll have to use the term sports very loosely. So without further adieu, here are the “sports” movies showing at SXSW this year:

• Pulling John – It’s a movie about a champion arm wrestler who is getting older and has to compete with a couple young up-and-comers.
• Snowblind – Snowblind is a documentary about, Rachael Scdoris, a blind Iditarod racer. The film explains dogsled racing and some of the people who compete during last March’s Iditarod.
• Soul Power -Soul Power is a documentary about a 12 hour concert promoting the “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The film features performances from James Brown and B.B. King, among others.

So yeah, that’s it. Those are all the films featuring some essence of “sports” at South by Southwest this year. I actually wish this film was showing. Actually, who am I kidding? That movie would be awesome.

SXSW dry run

We had a networking party last night at Shangri-La as a warm up for SXSW Interactive this year. I caught up with some former classmates and a former prof. from Texas State. For better recaps than mine, you can look at the post we have up at the SXSW website, one at South by Texas State or Austin 360’s slideshow.

Testing new frontiers

Testing out Ping.fm, maybe this will help me be more consistent in blogging. Probably not though.