April 9, 2009

- I'll start off, regrettably, with the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four this past weekend. For the second year in a row, we've had our monthly HPA tournament on the Saturday night and I've essentially missed the games. I'm hoping the HPA event gets moved to the second weekend of the month next year. Are you listening, Jeremy? North Carolina was clearly the best team in the tournament (and most of you know how much that pains me to say), so it's not a travesty that they won, but it was so disappointing to see how poorly Michigan State played. When you're playing what is essentially a home game for the National Championship in front of over 70,000 people, you would think you wouldn't come out as flat as they did. Trailing 31-11 after ten minutes is a pretty big hole to dig out of, but they came out strong in the second half. Clark Kellogg said it best to start the second half that they needed to break the game into four-minute segments and win each segment, which they were on pace to do for the first 8 minutes of the game. Then I saw one of the most disappointing things I've ever seen in a big game like that. After cutting the lead to 16 points, MSU stole the ball and had a 3-on-1 break. Instead of a smart pass or two, they tried for an alley-oop dunk. Who showboats on an attempted alley-oop dunk when you're trailing that much??? What a poor decision. Of course, it was a turnover, one of 21 on the game for MSU, and it typified what was a pretty weak effort. I'm surprised I didn't see Tom Izzo blowing a gasket at the bad decisions his team was making. It's almost as if he had resigned himself to the fact that they would lose before they even started. Very uncharacteristic.
- I've had quite a bit of response to my Bobby Flay post from last weekend. The hits on the blog went skyrocketing thanks to Wizened-Cynic, who has a blog on Live Journal, and posted a link to my encounter with the Iron Chef. It seems Wizened-Cynic is not a fan of Mrs. Throwdown, Stephanie March. Whatever the reason, thanks for the increased traffic.
- Speaking of the Iron Chef, I've been watching The Next Iron Chef on the Food Network, a reality show that aired last year to pick a new Iron Chef for the show. The show itself is enjoyable, and the challenges are great to watch, even if I already know that Michael Symon is the winner. But here's the odd thing, the Food Network is showing it on Sunday nights, and the show on immediately before it is....yep, you guessed it...Iron Chef America. So, when you're watching Michael Symon competing on Iron Chef at 9 pm, then watching him compete to try and become an Iron Chef at 10 pm, well, I guess some of the suspense is gone, isn't it?
- I recently discovered Kings of Leon and I'm really enjoying their music. I'm disappointed I didn't discover them sooner.
- Now Snow Patrol is opening for Coldplay too? Too funny!
- I went to Guelph on Sunday night for a blast from the past as I watched Wrestlemania with the old crew from years ago. Nice to hang out with the gang again, even if Jeff still is that little bit crazy. (Jeff, what on earth were you talking about?) The show wasn't great, and I don't really understand why 8 matches needed to be stretched out over four hours, but it was still a fun night. I can't believe how many close calls there were in the matches, though, in terms of people almost getting seriously injured. There were some big misses where I was sure someone broke their neck. Very sloppy. The highlight was definitely the horrible Kid Rock performance that tanked. The best part was where he was singing Bawitdaba and threw out the mike towards the audience for them to sing part of the song, and you could hear total silence. Awesome!
- WNP last night was another good tournament. Sorry I woke up with JJ in my big blind, Dave. I finished 3rd, but was hoping to go heads-up with either Marco or Gord again since I played both of them heads up at the end of a tournament in the past year. Congrats Gord, good tournament. Great gesture with regards to the WAF as well, so if I had to lose to someone, I'm glad it was you on that night.
- Josh Wolk has a hilarious new blog post up about an encounter he had at an airport with regards to his missing 'baggage'. You can click the link to his blog on the sidebar, or the direct link to the post here.
- Thursday night is rapidly becoming the busiest TV night of the week for me, with Survivor, CSI, 30 Rock, and Hell's Kitchen all on the same night. Now Amy Poehler's new show Parks and Recreation premieres tonight, and I'll have to check that out too since it looks pretty funny. If it's good, it will be nice to watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on NBC together again, kind of like a Weekend Update flashback from SNL.
- New episode of Survivor tonight, and I generally don't make predictions, but I will predict that Joe gets eliminated from the game due to his infected leg. I think there was a reason they made a point of showing it last week, so that's what I think will happen. Maybe it's just my optimistic and hopeful prediction since if he does get eliminated, then I win my bet with Becki (double leg dinner at Swiss Chalet, baby!). I have Brendan, and I still think he's going to win. Tonight is the merge, and I think the secret alliance of Brendan, Sierra, Taj, and Stephen will control the game from here on out (with or without J.T.) Here's why: despite being down 6-4 in numbers, if the majority of 6 wants to vote one of them out, they simply use the idol and vote out whoever they want with 4 votes. Even if the group of six split their votes 3-3, they would be outvoted 4-3. This could happen two weeks in a row to bring it down to 8 players, and that's the worst-case scenario. So, considering the have J.T., it's a no-brainer that these 5 should be cruising to the end.

JENN STOP READING

- I've mentioned it numerous times before, but again, I highly recommend Doc Jensen's EW.com video show Totally Lost with Dan Snierson. Here is a link to this week's episode which features them talking to Sterling Beaumon who plays creepy young Ben, who took a bullet in the chest from Sayid two weeks ago.
- This week's episode was downright mind-blowing. I thought the scene at the end with Ben and the Smoke Monster was fantastic, even if a lot of fans are considering it a tad cheesy. I've read a lot of theories that John Locke is actually dead and that the Smoke Monster is appearing in his form. I don't buy it, and I think the episode title, Dead is Dead, is intended to mislead the theorists. The scene on the dock at the marina was tense, and it was great to see Desmond come to the rescue. All season long, the producers have been telling us that two main characters are dying by the end of the season, and in that final scene in the Temple, I was starting to become very concerned that Ben was about to die, which would have shocked the whole Lost Universe. Definitely a lot to take in from last night's episode. I think it deserves a second viewing.

JENN, YOU CAN CONTINUE READING NOW

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- Happy Easter. Enjoy your weekend.