Top 10 Basketball Players
As the great Kurtis Blow once said, “basketball is my favorite sport.” To me it sometimes feels like the only sport. Yes, I am an NBA fan in every version of the word. I love watching and playing the game, I love the soap opera behind the scenes, I love reading basketblogs all day and I troll the rumor forums mercilessly. I live and breathe the game when it’s on, as my infamous “playoff pushups” can attest to, and I adore reading about the sport’s legendary history (hell, I do all sorts of crazy shit with it over at my other site, NBA Sim). Just as comics and music once were, basketball is just so “me” and it now pervades every day I live. Here are the 10 of the top reasons why:

By the way, in case you’re wondering, Michael Jordan comes up at #22 on my favorite list. Sorry, but the guy was a little too perfect for me.

Top 10 Movies
Although my patented obsession shines in many things, I actually consider myself only a casual fan of movies. I love watching movies with some form of artistic merit, independent films, foreign movies and even silent pictures. I also find myself continuing to go see shitty, comic book movies and stupid, slapstick comedies (though usually not liking them). So I’m really all over the map, but I do pride myself on at least watching a ton of movies (ah, Netflix!). Here’s the cream of that crop (based on preference, not any particular other worthiness).

Top 10 Video Games
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Balance is a characteristic I’d love to possess sometime. Until then, however, I will just have to tolerate my natural see-sawing inclination. Right now I’m experiencing several parallel swings at the same time (all seemingly shifting me into more “wholesome” situations).

The first has me back on a healthy kick as I’m counting calories and starting to exercise on a regular basis. Trying to adhere to 2000 calories is a lot harder than I imagined. I figured most people have themselves fooled as to how poorly they eat but I never thought I’d be one of them (nor how badly I had myself fooled). I’m in week three of adhering to my “diet” and am already noticing differences in my appearance (goodbye gut!) and how I feel. But there’s a long way to go and the real test is sticking to the plan for several months.

At this same time I’m also finding myself suddenly super-interested with a lot of things I was into as a kid. In fact, I’ve watched 2 hours in as many days of episodes from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series. I remember watching the show sometime during the time I lived in Long Beach, California (ages 5-8). The DVD came via my mistress (Netflix) and I even received instant, vague memories of sitting in my parents’ room watching the tv when an episode called “Spider-Man Meets Dr. Noah Body” started (I dunno, I could be wrong but the name just sounded so familiar like an old joke from my past).

And finally, with the inspiration of goal-making (and goal-taking!!!!) from my calorie counting experiment, I’m slowly acclimating myself back into songwriting every day. For so long I’ve just been beating myself up for not having any energy or desire to sit and do a little recording/writing every day (as I did back in my 2000 or 2003 heyday). But then I realized I was too focused on trying to go from 0 to 60 in too quick a time and have chopped up my goals to something way more bite-sized. This week I’m just making it an absolute priority to sit down with a guitar and work on a song for 15 minutes a day. It’s such an easy goal that I know I can accomplish it, get it under my belt, and slowly build upon it. I’ll keep all of you readers (are there any left?) updated!

I don’t know why but that scene from Spaceballs has stayed with me for two decades now … it’s not even a joke (I think). But it was pretty close to how I felt when I woke up yesterday.

Two days ago it was 94 degrees outside and so humid that I was sweating in my room, wearing next to nothing (!) and having two fans set on high. I had just finished eating dinner and was getting ready to watch Game 3 of the NBA Finals when suddenly a ridiculously powerful gust of wind ripped through my room. Within seconds the temperature had dropped 10 degrees (I was happy) followed by all of the electricity in my room blinking out (I was not so happy).

I thought I could fight the inevitable, as the power couldn’t seem to make up its mind about staying on or off for the next five minutes. And then, I was left in complete darkness. I fumbled around in my walk-in … closet/room and found a flashlight. After a few minutes of discussing what was going on with my roommates, I realized that I may have a long night without electricity ahead of me and I panicked. Live without the internet or computer software for a night?! NEVER!

Luckily, my laptop was fully charged so I spent an hour or so working on music in the dark (where everything just sounds more serious) and then watched Point Blank from Netflix. Now it was after midnight, my laptop was dead, and my room was still in the mid-90′s. Relief wasn’t coming anytime soon (one of my roommates gave up and slept in the cool basement while another slept in a room on the first floor) so I resigned myself to my fate of a sweaty night (and not because I had randomly run into high school classmate, Brian Street, earlier in the day!).

Around 6 in the morning I woke up to the sound of one of my fans spinning up (we had power!) but this lasted only about 10 minutes . However, when I finally got up for real at 9 (jealous?) it was to a cool breeze wafting in through my window. The storm had finally broke the recent temperature’s fever and I arose quoting King Roland’s famous (to me) lines! Sure, electricity wouldn’t return for good until 3 PM this day, but at least I wouldn’t have to excrete a personal cooling fluid from my sweat glands waiting for it.

In fact, when I arrived home that night from work, I celebrated my returned power by turning on every god damn electrical appliance in my room. Just like any other night . Huzzah!

Oh, I think I’ll quietly mention here at the end that I just updated a Feature about my latest conquering of an NBA 2k video game. Each year, I buy the new version, create a team consisting of me and my friends, and then win the championship. It’s super-fascinating to me (hell, I made a Feature about it), but I doubt most of you will get a kick out of it. Still, it felt necessary to do this so here it is: Ballas2k7

I’ve been working so much on the site that I was worried the sheer number of updates listed below would consume the entire next post. Thus, I decided to blab about some random bullshit to save you, dear readers!

It’s been another extended weekend for me since I’m still recovering from this annoying cold. Friday I couldn’t stop coughing on the bus so I just got off 5 stops away from where I got on. Luckily, two new Netflix movies were waiting for me as I returned: Spice World (we’ll just quickly forget that I mentioned that) and Lost: Season 1 Disc 2.

When Lost first came out back in 2004, I completely ignored it. I don’t know why I wasn’t interested in the show, but I just felt I had better things to do with that time (maybe this had something to do with it). Everyone in my office would discuss their theories about these famous castaways and Howard Stern would even dedicate a good half hour of his show the morning after to the latest Lost episode and what it meant.

When I signed up for Netflix, however, I decided to finally give this series a try. Why not? I have 500 other DVDs in my queue. And now, after watching the first eight episodes, I have to admit that I’m hooked. I thought the puzzle elements to this show sounded corny when I’d overhear coworkers discuss them, but they’re actually well-done in the shows. All of the characters are interesting – their flashback stories give them depth so they don’t fall into being one-sided. And finally, the setting is beautiful. I’m not sure where it’s filmed, but it’s perfect: lush, green jungles on exactly what one thinks of when picturing “deserted island.”

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from other viewers is that if you miss an episode you feel like you’re fucked and this can lead to just giving up on the show altogether. Luckily, I think I’ve hit upon the best method by letting Netflix dole out each disc one by one. I don’t miss anything and I can take big, long breaks in between my mini Lost marathons. Ok, back to work, but enjoy perusing through all the new stuff listed below!

Netflix: it’s not just an online, movie rental service, it’s an obsession. Over the first couple of weeks after I signed up for Netflix I slowly built up my movie queue to 500 strong – which turns out is the limit! That’s right, I figured out the maximum amount allowed by Netflix.

One of the best uses of Netflix is to give a try to all those DVDs you wouldn’t want to pick up in a Blockbuster or own. The Adventures of Pete and Pete was a live-action television show I used to watch on Nickelodeon between the ages of 12-14. Now, I remember enjoying the show, but not enough to purchase the collected series nor would I waste a trip to Blockbuster (back when I actually used to do such a thing) to relive the show. However, since I am able to have 2 DVDs at a time with Netflix, I decided to check it out.

Well, it turns out the Pete and Pete was that rare gem: a show that I liked as a kid and appreciate even more as an adult. It’s witty, strange but not overly silly, and reminds me way too much of my own high school misadventures (even though I watched this before entering the hallowed halls of Tj). A stanus.butt recommended rental!

Fun Little Sidenote: I was walked in upon while using the bathroom today! Luckily, I was in the handicap stall, so there was no eye contact (in fact, the guy didn’t even step into the stall itself). Still, the door swung open and I saw a pair of shoes about to enter!! It was a very near thing.

Well, I have survived New Hampshire.

Last Friday, co-worker Al and I were notified that we had been selected to attend a training course in Nashua, New Hampshire between Tuesday October 16 to Thursday October 18. We scrambled to get travel plans in order and, come Monday afternoon, we were at La Guardia Airport braced for our flight. However, nothing could prepare me for the fact that this flight would not be taken on a jet … nay! I’ve always travelled on planes between 747 and 777 but the aircraft waiting for me was like the one from the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It fit only 35 or so people … pretty weird and fucking loud. Luckily it was only a 45 minute flight, so it wasn’t too bad.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful fare: 9am – 5pm in a training session very reminiscent of a high school computer science class, dinner at a chain restaurant (there wasn’t any other choice in Nashua), and then trying to be entertained for a couple hours before terrible sleep in a hotel room. The first night Al and I drove an hour to Boston (my first visit!) and drank in a bar. The locals were going nuts as it was Game 3 in the Red Sox-Indians series, and it was fun to be a part of the craziness. My impressions: great city. Large but feels more intimate than New York, and whereas both cities are old, Boston seems to really embrace that heritage and tradition. Too bad their beloved Celtics are going to lose to my Mavs!

The second night I was pretty tired having not slept all that well, so I took it easy and watched the first disc of the Justice League Unlimited season 1 DVD collection. It had luckily appeared at my house via Netflix the day before I left. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it, did a little reading a slept a shit load. The next night we received our degrees (certificates from the software program we learned) and headed home on an even smaller plane! This time, there were only 10 or so people on the flight so the waitress doubled up our drinks and snacks. Score!

When we landed in La Guardia I was in for the only real shock of the entire excursion: a car service was waiting for Al and I … with my name on the placard! Pretty surreal. I felt like a VIP … until the guy got pissed when I didn’t know how to get to my house via the George Washington Bridge. Whatever, I told him to take the Lincoln so he can s my d!

Ok, boring post over with, I can get onto cooler things (this one took a lot out of me to get through for some reason).

UPDATE: The image for this post is real, not photoshopped.

There must be something in the air because it seems that almost everyone in my blogging community has given up! Even stanus.butt is feeling the pressure to succumb to laziness as I am writing about subjects further and further away from when they occurred. This is in comparison to some of my blogs in the past that were written the day of or the next day after an event. Sometimes, a few days in between the subject of my post and actually writing my post seems to give me time to reflect and put my thoughts together. However, I prefer a badly written, honest, real-time response blog over a censored and organized, well-written overview blog anyday.

So, to get back on blogging schedule, I’m going to do some catching up here and touch on some subjects I had been wanting to write about but haven’t yet. With all that blog baggage gone, I feel I can begin to better stick to my blogging prinicples!

Public Pissing and the Quality of Life – back in May I had a wild night out with the roommates that ended up with me in a taxi for way too long while I was way too drunk. As soon as we came to a stop, I jumped out and hid behind a parked car and relieved myself. Unfortunately, I did a poor hiding job as I suddenly heard a police siren wail. I stopped, mid-stream, and started to walk away, but a bullhorn-amplified voice ordered me to stop. Fun ! The cops were really polite, actually, and so was I as I was quickly ticketed and then sent on my merry way.

My punishment was to arrive at Midtown Community Court on July 27th at 9:30 in the morning. The last time I had run afoul of the law was back in 2001 for some underage possession of alcohol … as I was possessing it inside my stomach (what a great country we live in). That courtroom experience was just a quick conveyor belt of names being called, pleas being stated, and sentences being doled out. Now I was in a Manhattan court, so I had to wait through a few semi-interesting real cases before finally being called up to the stand.

I was literally up for all of a second as my court-appointed counselor had me accept the typical punishment – a 20-minute class on the “quality of life.” Then, provided that I kept my nose clean, the entire incident would be wiped from my record in six months. Not a bad deal, actually. The class was quick and painless and I was out of there before noon. What a weird experience.

And, no, this was not the punishment Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza would have received from their foray into public urination in [3.06] The Parking Garage. I was alerted that back in 1991 (when this episode was released) the punsihment was nothing but a fine.

Muse at Madison Square Garden -I’ve been getting pretty hard into Muse since the beginning of this year (not really sure what inspired me to give their catalog another listen after scoffing at them back in 1999). Last month I decided to check out their website to see when they would be coming up to New York to play live and it turned out they were coming in two weeks! I quickly grabbed a ticket and asked if anyone else wanted to go, but it was way too little notice and I ended up going alone.

That, in itself, was a little weird. Add to that the fact that everone else there was in high school made it really weird. The only people in line for beers were me and the dads who brought their kids. I had no clue Muse had a huge, young kid following, but I guess they do. There’s not a whole lot to say about the concert itself: the opening act was so bad I left halfway through their show, and Muse absolutely destroyed the place. I definitely have to see them again.

Joining the Net’ – In the envelope with my Muse tickets came an advertisement for Netflix. Well, after perusing their website once again I finally decided it was a good idea to join. I selected the 1-at-a-time plan (which means I have no limit to how many I can watch in a month, but I only get one at a time) and eagerly await my first rental when I get home: Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. So far I’m really impressed with the selection on Netflix, and my queue of movies is 200-deep! I can finally start tackling that “must see movie” list I started to compile back in college.