My Football Fix

I know, I know.  It's Monday.  Not Saturday.  Not Sunday.  I again missed my weekend posting window.  But, I'm no longer gonna apologize for it.  I'm doing my best to meet that self-imposed deadline.  Sometimes, I'll miss it by a few days.  Other times, hopefully less frequent times, I'll skip the week entirely.  That's just the way it is.  The other reason I'm not apologizing, because I not entirely sure how many people I'm actually apologizing to.  Am I just talking to myself?  Hello...

Anyways, this past weekend was one of my favorites of the year.  NFL Draft weekend bitches!!  I'm not one of those people who will watch all 7 rounds in their entirety.  I only do that with the 1st round, then I'll check in throughout the rest of the weekend.  This year, the 1st round was a breeze.  Until this year, each team was given 15 minutes to make their selection.  Last year, just about every team took advantage of every second of those fifteen minutes.  The first round lasted over 6 hours!  I was starting to wonder if I could continue with my tradition.  But good 'ole Roger Goodell saved my butt, literally.  After the marathon of last year, he shaved each team's selection time to 10 minutes.  Which forced those teams to act quicker &  be more decisive.  The first round in 2008, right about 3 1/2 hours.  Nice.  They did push back the start time, but it still was over with plenty of time to enjoy the rest of my day.

Now, let talk about the Raiders & their draft.  I watch very little NCAA football, so most of the names in the draft mean nothing to me. I listen to ESPN podcasts everyday, & watch PTI religiously.  Those are my main sources of knowledge.  I know, by many evaluators of talent, the Raiders got a potential stud of a Running Back.  Darren McFadden, out of the University of Arkansas.  Did they need another RB?  In my opinion, not really.  But, when you draft as high as they did (#4 pick) taking talent over need is acceptable.  The rest of the draft they addressed some of those said needs, WR being one of them.  But, like I said, I don't know any of these guys from Adam.  So, I have no idea how to grade it.  Will they help the team?  With the way the Raiders have been playing the past few years, I don't see how they could hurt 'em.  Now only 97 days until pre-season starts, 129 days until the start of the regular season, 133 days until the Raiders week one match-up against the hated Broncos & a wee 279 until Super Bowl XXLIII.  Gawd I love Foobaw!!

Big Bear Bad Movie Night!

I would've talked about this last time, but the whole "my wife is no longer employed" thing was kinda pushing everything to the side.  But, last weekend was my good friend Mike's birthday.  So, he & his wife rented a cabin up at Big Bear Lake for the weekend & invited some friends to come up, to relax & celebrate.

I got up there Saturday, just as the crew was heading off to the Alpine Slide.  And, boy am I glad I got there when I did.  The Alpine Slide is a luge track.  Ya take a ski lift to the top, grab a slide, sit your ass down & speed down the mountain!  There is no steering, mainly because there's no need.  But, you can control your speed, if ya feel ya need to.  Next stop, the arcade.  Not just any arcade though.  If you're my age, think of how the arcade was when you were growing up.  Everything cost a quarter, fifty cents at the most.  There was no physical exertion required (dancing, pedalling, etc.).  And most game consisted of a bunch of hand-eye coordinated button mashing.  That's what this arcade is all about.  Good times.

Back at the cabin, it was time to relax.  Which meant some Wii play (I hafta get one of these things now.  Damn you Andrew!!), billiards & DVDs.  The most notable DVDs, were brought by my good chum, Hillal.  He brought up 3 seasons worth of "Kenny vs. Spenny."  If you don't know who they are let me 'splain.  It's a Canadian show, about 2 life-long friends, now roommates.  The basis of the show is, they set a challenge for them both to compete in.  The loser of the challenge is subjected to "humiliation" by the victor.  Spenny is the straight-laced, naive, play by the rules guy.  Kenny is the lie, cheat & steal to win guy.  They are hilarious.  You can watch the show on Comedy Central now, or I'm sure you can NetFlix the DVDs.  If ya go the DVD route, I highly recommend the "Who Can Wear A Dead Octopus The Longest" episode.  Classic.

The weekend wrapped up with something we've been doing as a group now for about a year.  Bad Movie Night.  Basically, we take turns hosting & picking out a couple of "bad" movies to share with our friends.  Now, I'm sure some of you are asking the same question we hear all the time.  "Why would want to watch bad movies?"  Well, while these movies are "bad, they still have entertainment value.  The best way to describe these movies is like this.  Imagine your movie scale like a clock.  At the 12 position, you have the rating "Great Movie."  As you go clockwise, you hit 3 with "Good Movie." Onto 6 with, "So-So Movie" & 9 being "Bad Movie."  After that, is where these movies fall in.  They go past "Bad Movie," into the rarified air of "So Bad, It's Great Movie."  Those movies you can't believe were ever made, but yet you can't stop watching them.  Mike, being the host, treated us to the TV movie "Knight Rider 2000," starring none other that, you guessed it, David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff.  And, oh, how crap-tastic it was.

That pretty much sums it up.  May is my month to host BMN.  But, I'm not picking the movies this time.  I'm letting the person who helped start this whole thing do the honors.  Mr. Friebus.  I'll let ya know how that goes...

April Showers

I know when I started this thing, I said I would post every weekend.  Well, for those of you keeping track, & really how many of you are there(?), I missed last week.  I just really didn't have anything to post about.  And those little filler posts seemed kind of like a cheat.  So, I decided to skip it, & hope that something would come along for this week.  If I would've known what would have come, I would posted one those fucking little cheat posts.

Last post, I mentioned how good things had been in March, financially for Liz & I.  Well, April couldn't have started any more the opposite.  Liz lost her job on Friday.  It wasn't a performance thing, or anything she did.  Just like so many other places right now (including the city of Los Angeles), her company needed to cut costs.  They let go of her boss about a month ago.  And this past Friday, it was her & one the company reps that felt the axe.  But luckily, she's taking it very well.  She always knew that it was a job, not a career.  She's looking at it as a chance to improve her situation.  I'm very lucky to have someone like her in my life.  As far as how I'm taking it, it depends on when you ask me.  I'm very confident that she will have no problem finding a new job.  But, at the same time, I look at the economy & the aforementioned "so many other places," & I worry a bit.  But, if she can be positive, so can I.