Dave's Thoughts of the Day: March 11th

There's nothing in life like a 2 day work week!

My vacation begins on Wednesday.  As a matter of fact, I was tempted to go all out and take Monday and Tuesday off too.  Odd otherwise, right?  However, it's usually easiest to go this route because you fall way less behind if you at least get in Monday.  Tuesday was just one of those deals where I said I don't even leave until Wednesday, so no point in wasting a vacation day for nothing.


Ok, there's no doubt about it: I'm pumped up.  I wrote off the Kings after the first week of the season.  I wrote the Lakers off the face of the Earth after that Knicks game in December!   Would you believe both teams roared back to prove me wrong?

The Kings are the Kings, and I wasn't bothered so much by their bad start, so I shrugged and said "all right, let's see this play out and they won the Cup last year anyway so no big deal."  Suddenly, Jeff Carter goes bonkers and does hat tricks and scores in every single game.   Unbelievable!  The Kings had and *are having* a monster home stand to make up for the enormous road schedule they had last month.  It's been nuts.  They went from 11th, maybe 13th, to 4th, but one loss will dump them all the way back to 15th again.   The short season keeps all the teams on their toes.

Now..... how about those Lakers!  COTDAYUMN!!  I'M HAPPY ABOUT THIS TEAM!   I can't believe it!

Let's be honest... they've been beating some bad teams during most of this run, and the one good team they played, OKC, ran them out of the gym.  I think the Lakers are burnt toast against any young/athletic team in the West, which is, effectively, the upper half of the Western Conference.  LAL has no chance against the Thunder, zero.  None against Denver.  None against even the Clippers.  Well, that's almost four teams!  However, the fact that they fought so hard and played so well defensively to get to 8th place is tremendous.  Now to see if they can parlay that into a playoff berth.  We'll see.

Very dull weekend for yours truly.   I was home for 90% of the weekend.   Crazy story on Friday though.  I was driving to Culver City to attempt to get a cheap ticket to the Lakers game that night.  It rained the whole day in Los Angeles, so I thought the tickets would go down a lot in the open market, but it never happened.  But I did see it go down to 30-35 bones.  That would have been all right for me.  Even so it wasn't a slam dunk.  Nonetheless, I was in the car driving down to Culver to hit the train stop to Staples and L.A. Live.   I'm only half a mile from Sony when no other than my friend calls me on the telephone.

She was stranded!  She locked the keys in her car and needed a ride home... so, seeing my fortuitous timing, I happened to be only blocks from her workplace.... Sony Studios!   So I explained where I was and went right over to pick her up.   Boy was she ever grateful... so we're driving back to her apartment and in the meanwhile I check stubhub on the phone to see if the tickets went down much.  My friend had a rough day so she was in no mood to go to a Lakers game... I dropped her off for the moment while she got her spare key at her pad.   She comes back, and since we needed to get her back to her car, we drove back to Culver.

Then, we had the idea to go to the nearby sports bar called "Rush Street."  Now I don't want to disappoint Chicagoans here, but Rush Street has almost nothing to do with Chicago.  No Chicago Styled pizza, no Vienna Sausages, no mentions of the Cubbies or Harry Caray.  They had a great oak flame broiled hamburger though, do the dance.

So here in Culver we had a meal at "Rush Street" and I got to see the Lakers anyway on the many flat screen TVs.   BY THE WAY, on the way in, there was this Vegan Restaurant called Lyfe Kitchen or something and there was a huge stage and bright lights and over 500 people there.  We were like "what on earth was this?!"  We had our dinner -- she ordered a fig pizza, which is a lot better than it sounds, it was tremendous.  I offered her my fries, she offered a slice of her pizza, I thought it was a good trade.  We ate -- then scoped twitter to get the scoop on the Vegan Restaurant next door.  Turns out both Janet Evans and Troy Polamalu were on site to welcome everyone to the grand opening that night.

After dinner, we both went over to Lyfe to see if Janet Evans was still there.  Deep in the back of my mind I hoped my boy Troy was in there too.  Hey, he's an SC *and* a Steelers great.  Why not?  We went into the new restaurant, and by then, the bright lights were off and the stage was taken down.   The place was still packed though.  Scoped the restaurant, no sign of Janet Evans... that was disappointing but expected.  Expected, it was, because it was about 90 minutes into the Grand Opening Gala, so I figured, ah well.

The two of us were in the back just to get one last look and still no Evans.  BUT... in the back next to some buddies of his:  Troy Polamalu!   Now *that* was cool...   I am a clown... you'd never guess I was this shy but I was and even for a gentle dude like Polamalu I couldn't get the nerve to say hello, and he looked exasperated anyway, chatting with his homies.  So I quickly looked over and moved on.

That was still pretty cool -- got to see one of the better all time Safeties in Steeler History in person.  I took my friend home and that was that.

What a fun Friday night!  Now, just imagine what would happen if some other jokers I knew saw Polamalu in the back of a Vegan restaurant.  I couldn't even think of it... haha!

I bit the inside of my lip about a week ago, but the wound won't go away.  I wish I knew of some ointment or other solution that can ease the pain or heal it more quickly.  It's better than it was in the beginning but its a bit of a nag.

My teeth are prone to these problems.  I made the bonehead move many years ago not to get braces.  I didn't want to get made fun of in school, and I didn't want to weigh my parents down w/ the expenses, but it was stupid.  My teeth aren't a trainwreck or anything, but there are a couple of them that are subtly out of place and it lends to occasional biting of the lips or tongue when I'm asleep.

You know, if it's any help, to those of you out there who didn't get braces, Marv Albert, Jewel, and I'm betting you Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, never made the move to get braces and they're very good presences in the media.  All is not lost.

Speaking of Marv Albert, I was going through Lakers clips all weekend on the computer and I came upon the clip of Robert Horry's buzzer-beating 3 in game 4 of the 2002 West Finals.  He actually tried to keep talking but the crowd at Staples that day was so loud that after the game winning shot, his voice was totally drowned out.   Staples was a real powder keg during that series... those were good days.

Marvelous is still doing a great job for TNT doing those NBA games.  Hopefully he'll be able to do playoff games that are as good as those.


Weather is really picking up in Los Angeles!  I love it... here's to warmer days and longer afternoons.

Congratulations to Tiger Woods for winning the WGC Golf tournament at Doral in Miami.   Great performance and so many birdies!

Boston folded.  Chicago folded.  The Knicks folded to OKC.  We might as well just award the Heat the Eastern Conference trophy.   Don't you all think they could pull a fo' fo' fo' sort of deal as Moses Malone predicted for his Sixers in '83?  That would only put the Heat in the Finals, and they'd be in for a better series there.

I wanted to go check out some event at the old Forum, but I forgot that MSG bought the place and started extensive rennovations of it, so no dice.

You see that?  You want to get a stadium together, you can get it done for just about any stadium out there, but not the NFL.  JUST STOP IT WITH THE ENDLESS STIRRING OF THE POT.  Enough!   I'm sick of all the bull-bleep rumors about some exciting NFL stadium being built in Los Angeles.  Even *with* the proper referendum, some joker decides to drop the ball.

Read me loud and clear Los Angeles, City Council, and prospective NFL owners coast to coast:  Los Angeles Pro Football will *NEVER* happen.  It hasn't happened, there have been nearly a dozen proposals, and this endless foreplay is a joke.  Just stop.  Sam Farmer, go find something else to write about.  If the Cow has made this proclamation 12 years running and it still hasn't changed, pretty much *nothing* is going to bring an NFL team here.  SO LET'S MOVE ON ALREADY!

It makes me upset because the media continues to buy into this story every time we see it.  They all go after the cheese like hapless mice.  This dog and pony show frustrates me to no end.  Will America never learn?

Two things I did learn last night:  1.  Take the Pledge.  2. Make the Switch.

...and as Jim Valvano said twenty years ago, if you do those two things -- you've had a pretty good day!

That's all from here.  I'm so glad to have you all as readers and hope things are well.   Take care for now!