Dave's Thoughts of the Day: April 9th

This month is off to a great start so far!

What a great National Championship Basketball game for the NCAA Men's Tournament!   Louisville and Michigan shooting lights out in the first half, then the passion and the excitement of the second half.  L'ville finishes with an 82-76 win at Atlanta.  Congratulations to the Cardinals.

Anyone catch Rick Pitino duck right after the loud "BLAM!" from the fireworks?  Hahahaha, that was a hoot!   Poor guy didn't see it coming!!

It's silly but I was really hoping for a good "One Shining Moment" montage this year, and boy did we get it!   About two or three years back, they tried to change it up with Jennifer Hudson or someone else signing the song, but thankfully it was back to the late Luther Vandross with the version that made it big.   Great montage!  Great job by CBS covering the tournament this year.

More excitement today as we get the last of the MLB home openers this evening.   The Padres open against the Dodgers.  The Angels open against the A's.  I'm expecting some pretty serious action tonight.

I'm really losing interest in ABC's "Splash" Reality Series.  There's no buzz for this show at all.  Ratings are dropping every week.  The events are getting a little dull.  I'm not sure if there was enough steam to space out all these dives over *several* weeks.   To put it in perspective, NBC usually only shows diving for a few minutes, two to three times a week during the Olympics.  The Dive Meet is actually very long, hours and hours of multiple rounds.  You're really only getting "highlights", if you will, on TV.   ABC did its best not to drag the diving element along but it's starting to run out of steam.

Tonight, I'm not even going to make it a point to watch the show in real time.  I'll try a full 90 minute swim tonight at UCLA, then back home to catch what's left over.  Anything I missed, I'll catch the next day at ABC.com.  It's just not putting me on the edge of my seat, the way last season's "Survivor" did.  Ah well...


It seemed like there was so much written yesterday for the blog that it was overwhelming.  I want to simplify that today and keep it short and concise.

These Spring weeks are really flying by!

The weeks aren't flying by fast enough to get me to my phone replacement date.  The DROID X2 I have is becoming a dud.  It's only partially as powerful as the top of the line Andriod phones, by design to be fair.  However, I was not prepared for the extensive delays, the reboots, and the sluggish performance.  The on screen virtual keyboard is as accurate as Jon Heyman's Trade predictions.  It's a mess.  I love the OS, but the hardware is not up to par.   This is on me -- I cheaped out trying to get a $50 Android phone.   I need to think of phones as an investment, so the next time out I'll get a much higher end model.

I have a confession to make:  I am not a huge fan of Pro Wrestling.   I don't object to it, and in fact, I have a lot of fun reading other friends make comments about the WWE and its characters over the years.  It's very well marketed and produced.   It's a whole new universe that I ran out of time to invest in.

When I was a kid, I wasn't a huge fan either.   I love some of the big names though, and still do:  Hulk Hogan, Undertaker, Macho Randy Savage (R.I.P.), Andre the Giant, Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Rock, and on and on and on.   Yet, I always felt really silly watching the actual bouts.  Almost as if, I would seem like a real geek if people saw me watching the matches at home.  Thus, I never got around to it.  I've come to find out that WWE wrestling isn't all that geeky, and it's "image" so to speak improved a lot during the "Attitude" era of the 90's.   By then, I'd already missed the boat, so I moved on to other things.

This seems like a good time for a cookie.  Where would I find the best chocolate chip cookie in Los Angeles?   In this town, we're very good at identifying the best of any kind of food.  Best Taco, Best Pizza, Best Hot Dog, Best Steak, Best Barbecue... I don't remember an entry for "Best Cookie."   Best large chocolate chip cookie in Los Angeles.  --this phrase has not been used to date in any major signage or publication.  I'll be on the lookout.

Yesterday was as uneventful a day as you could get.  I went to work, did work, went to meet my colleagues at lunch time at Main HQ, ate some Korean Fried chicken strips with the fellas, went back to work, kept working on various issues, including a breakthrough with an email attachment issue (it was related to a contact object in the person's mail forward).  Then I checked out the scores of some MLB games and went to the pool to ponder whether to swim that night.

Here's what I mean.   I was not gung-ho about Monday night's NCAA Championship game *at all.*  Time after time I had been disappointed by the lackluster quality of play in these NCAA Basketball Championship games, and with an unlikely matchup such as Louisville/Michigan, I was not expecting much.   In fact, my plan *was* to swim at 6pm through to 7, and go back home to watch the second half.

I looked at who was at the pool beforehand and that bald French dude that fills in at coach sometimes was there.  I'm going to be honest: I don't like that guy.  He rides people hard with instruction and just over-does it.   He doesn't seem like a fun guy to talk to...   He doesn't seem like that friendly a dude.   The man's always nit picking too... wasn't my scene.   Now this was a good half hour before practice time, so I punted on the night swim and just took a nearby bus home.

I'm glad I did that because in-so-doing, I got home and didn't miss a beat.  I didn't even miss the opening lineup announcements on TV.   Then America was treated to the best half of college basketball in over 12 years.  Hell, maybe even 20 years!  Could you believe how exciting that first half was?!  Nobody could miss a shot!

Now I was *really* glad I skipped swim that night!  Had I committed, I'd have missed the best basketball half in years.


Not much else going on in life... I am glad to have my health, and pretty soon, I'll be glad to have another spare night.   About a week from now I'll finally get to go to my first Dodgers game.   I can't wait to see all the new improvements at the stadium.  There were many -- completely revamped concourses, new scoreboards, other new upgrades, and better concessions.  AT LAST!

One of my bigger annoyances with baseball telecasts is when the play by play guy says "this ball's going way back, way back," etc.   How can the *ball* be going back?   The batter HIT it!  It can only go one way, forward, into the seats.  The pitcher sent it back to the hitter but the hitter is hitting it ahead, not backwards.  It was Vin Scully who always said to look at the outfielder to determine how well a ball was hit, to watch him, so as not to misjudge a fly ball.   That's why he'd always say "[xyz] fielder is going back, to the track, at the wall..." and so on.   The fielder usually faced TOWARDS the plate and he's inside the wall so yes, he's the dude going back.  Most broadcasters call this correctly... the FIELDER goes back at the track at the wall, all of that jazz, but those select few:  Jon Miller, Hawk Harrelson, and the rest, who keep saying the BALL is going way back, make me cringe.

Besides, when a Home Run ball is hit, sometimes the fans throw the ball *back* onto the field from the stands.  If you called the ball going *back* into the stands in the first place, you got some 'splaining to do!!

Oh, here's another one.  You ever hear a broadcaster after the top half of an inning say "and the inning is over?"  No it isn't!  The inning has two parts: top half and bottom half.   On the scorecard, the period between half innings is called "Middle of the [X] inning."  Very nit-picky, but it still had to be said.

Why is it called an "inning" anyway?   I think many other funny guys have asked this question.  What about a baseball game is "in" anyway?  The Game is outdoors... the pitches usually go out to the plate, the manager goes out to the mound, the fly balls go OUT... you get OUTS...  Where is the "in" part of the "inning?"  It always confused me.

I think a cookie would be very helpful to cope with these incongruencies in baseball parlance.

That's all from here, enjoy your Tuesday!