All Bets Down

Gambling is fun. Gambling on sports is great, and gambling on the NFL is like crack. I think its the fact that pro footbal offers so many different things to bet on. More than any other sport because of the complex nature of the game itself. 

Betting on the Super Bowl takes shit to a whole new level though. I don't know if this is the seventh sign of the appocolypse or just a fun phenomenon but you can bet on anything. They call them Prop Bets and they get crazy. 

Everyone knows you can bet on the coin toss (weather it will be heads or tales and who will win). But on Bodog.com, and plenty of other places inculding sports books in Vegas, you can bet on things like team to get the first penalty (I like Pittsburg). Thats not that crazy right? How about the team to call the first time out (I like Arizona), how about will at least one quarter be scoreless (I like yes).

Oh, it gets much much better. What will the TV rating be, a Neilson over or under 42.5 (I like over, I have no fucking idea what that means). How much would you put down on: How many times will Al Michaels and John Madden refer to Ben Rothlesburger as "Big Ben", over or under 5 (I like the under, I really hope its the under, that's a wack nick name). Bare with me for two more...

What will the color of the Gatorade be that is dumped on the winning coach (I like Orange at 3/1 odds) and, my personal favorite: How long will it take Jennifer Hudson to sing the national anthom, over or under 2min 1sec (this is a tough one, I'm going over, for all the obvious reasons). 

I didn't make any of that up, seriously. You can bet real money on it. And if you do, well there are obviously better things you could be doing with your money but; Shit, its a free country. 

Take a look: Team Prop Bets (check out the individual one too).

My 360 Came Home! (and something more important)

Its Back! My Xbox made it back from Texas safe and sound. Netflix streaming, Fallout 3! All is right with the universe. I'm going to keep blogging though. I'm enjoying having this outlet and means of communication. Me, enjoying a "presence on the internet" (however slight); who knew? And on that note...

I just want to hammer the point home that this building:

 Was built in 1792 By slaves. And now, a Black man, who would have been one of those slaves, is our president. And he and his family reside in that house. I'll never get over this. It is the most amazing moment in American History. 

It Just Feels So Good

I've had this feeling since the moment Obama took The Oath. It feels wonderful. I'm a believer, I think he's going to do great things. I believe in my heart that our president is a good man, with ideals I can identify with. I never knew I could feel this way. And every time I remind myself that what we all witnessed yesterday and get to be a part of for the next 8 years (that's right, 8), I'm proud. 

It's crazy to see all of us former hard core cynics feeling this way, but I think that further shows how powerful this moment is. Congratulations everybody. We changed everything. 

Bare With Me For a Second

Ok, if your open mindedness stops where sports start, bare with me for a second...

Image your running. As fast as you can in a straight line. Now you look back because someone is about to throw you a ball. But you only look for literally a fraction of a second because you gotta keep running. When you swing your head back around, in a full sprint, you notice two guys running with you, trying to stop you from catching that ball. You ignore them. Now, about 40 yards in to your sprint, at exactly the moment you feel, or sense, or somehow know that the ball is at the perfect hight; you turn 180 degrees and leap all in one motion. There's the ball, you stretch your arms above your head and your hands meet the ball at a point in space that you predicted about 3 seconds ago when you took that peek back. Now, imagine doing that last part, with your eyes closed.

Take a close look:


This is really an amazing story and great explanation of how that shit is even possible. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123207803343289089.html

Unleashing the Stupid

So it looks like our lame duck president (I love calling him that) has decided to unleash the full force of his stupidity for all the world to see. I can't believe he ran this country for the last 8 fucking years.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Six Days Seven Nights

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

7 Days

Its seven days away and I am still overwhelmed with disbelief and joy every time I think about it. A black man will be President of the United States of America.

We did it! The smart, open minded, rational people won. We beat the racist, hate mongering, anti-intellectual fools. I know these things have been said before but I think we should constantly remind ourselves that we changed the country; or maybe showed the world what America really is. I'm still shocked, I didn't see it coming.

Don't ever forget or gloss over how big of a deal this is. To many in this country the phrase "anything is possible" has always been true and always seemed to make sense. But to black people, the phrase was incomplete. For many (really most) of us, the thought process was more along the lines of "anything is possible, for them". But that changed on Nov. 4th 2008. I know racism is still alive and well, but Obama shattered the concrete ceiling (it wasn't a glass ceiling because you can see through those) and now all the pie in the sky, you can do anything, reach for the stars corny shit doesn't seem so silly any more. Even if you're skin is black. It's still hard for me to say it but I guess its true... Anything is possible, for all of us.

Shame On You Bill

So remember way back when, in my first blog post, I mentioned that my XBox crapped out on me. Lets talk about that. How is it, that a major company, one of the biggest and most successful in the world, manufactures and sells a 100% defective product. Now I know this has been blogged about ad nauseum but, now its happened to me twice, and I'm pissed. 

And this is more than the infamous Red Ring of Death. The first time my lifeblood was taken from me, something in the hardware fucked up and after about 20 min. of game play, the screen would just go blank. So I called my boy and he said, "oh yeah, its one of the capacitors, it happened to me too". The second, and most recent time, I got one red flashing light on the red ring of death and a stupid error message so I Googled: Error Message E 74 and got 2,570,000 hits. All of these things break! All of them. I don't know anyone who is not at least on their second 360. I know one guy who is on his 5th in two years. 

Now Microsoft does admit that they continue to manufacture and sell defective machines so they extended all warranties to three years after the manufacture date of the console. Whoo fucking Hoo... So that means that when my  $300 video game system, craps out while I'm in the middle of a marathon session of a $60 game (Fallout 3 is amazing, really); all I have to do is pack it up, send it UPS (don't even fucking get me started on those morons), and hopefully, in about 4 weeks! I will have my 360 back. In case you don't know, 4 weeks is a life time to a gamer. I could play 50+ hours in that time, and I don't play as much as some. Not to mention that my 360 was also my DVD player and I just signed up for Netflix and was really enjoying streaming movies through it. 

Damn you Microsoft, this shit is inexcusable. But there is nothing we can do, for now. Right now, you have better games and a far superior online service. But in the next generation of consoles, this disregard for your faithful, money spending consumers could cost you. Maybe Sony's next gen system will be just as good is yours (the current one is actually a much more powerful machine) and maybe they will have matured on the content front. If so, I can't image too many people lining up to take this ride again. 

Happy 2009

Happy New Year everyone. Congratulations for getting through the holiday season. I, for one, hate that shit. But this one really wasn't bad. It was actually good. By the way, anyone who reads this who was at our engagement party. Thank you so much, that was great. 

And, without further ado... My 2009 resolutions (I love making lists)

1.) Break down film of The Grinch and try to improve upon his scheme.

2.) Obtain the holy grail aka the iPhone.

3.) Destroy the Auto-Tune machine.

4.) Smack a UVA grad (I think we should all do this from time to time) 

5.) Win Fantasy NASCAR. That's right, fuckin NASCAR.

6.) Will the Yankees to a championship.

7.) Focus, dedicate myself, train harder that ever before and take my Scrabble game to the next level.

9.) Continue to clown people who are on FaceBook and MySpace. (sorry, shit is wack son)

8.) Have more fun than I did last year. (This one is always hard but, I'm dedicated)