Game 50 @ Miami: Heat 100, Spurs 85
A perfect way to end a perfect weekend. I've decided to fill you all in because frankly, it was far more interesting than the Heat game. I left San Diego around 9 AM and made it to San Mateo by 4:30 and immediately found myself involved in a series of four-on-four basketball games. Our team did terrible. We had two guys whose shot selection would've made Agent Zero blush, an old guy who couldn't move and me, a fat dude who had no problems collecting oodles of offensive rebounds, but couldn't make easy lay-ups afterward. Our defense was terrible, our teamwork was nonexistent and our athleticism was to be kind, lacking. Basically it was like a foursome of Fab, Fin, Horry and in-the-closet Mexican Bean Burrito. Needless to say, we got waxed every game.
Afterward Manolis and I went to this casino and played 3-6 hold `em for a couple of hours. Not only did he make quad aces to win one monster pot, but he also sucked out on me with A-6 vs. my A-J when a six hit on the river. Really I was lucky to leave the place up thirty bucks because I ended up scooping two giant pots late once when my pocket queens held up and once when Q-J was somehow good enough.
We got home, watched Earl and The Office, Manolis left and I spent the next six hours writing two articles for the school paper, neither of them up to my usual standards (though my chief editor seemed to like the serious one). I got to bed around 6:30.
I woke up around 11 Friday, my blissful sleep rudely interrupted by my cell phone on the night stand. I dicked around for a few hours on the inter-web and was so lazy that I only got about half of my Wizards blog written. Oh, around this time I had an IM chat with my friend Katie - the girl I was going to see Sarah Silverman with - and we went over when I'd be picking her up from the train station since she was coming from Santa Cruz. By 3:30 I had to leave the house to make it to Manolis' sports bar to watch the Magic game and I couldn't find my cell anywhere. I decided I'd look for it later since I wasn't expecting any calls that night anyway.
So I watched the Spurs game and we all know how that went and afterward we saw Hannibal Rising which sucked. Thomas Harris, the author of the novel, wrote the screenplay as well, but for some reason the two were needlessly different. He's basically mailed it in since Silence of the Lambs and both of his novels since have been utterly ridiculous. The guy is stealing more money than Shaq and `Toine combined, yet I'm the dummy who paid for both the book and the movie. Ugh.
Okay, here's comes the bad part where I freaked out the other day...
I got home at 1 A.M. or so and finally found my phone. I had knocked it under the bed in frustration for being woken up after so little sleep. I check it and there are like six messages from Katie on it. She called at 7:30 pm. Then 7:40. Then 7:50...
Uh-oh.
With dread, I pressed the button to listen to the messages.
Apparently she misunderstood our IM chat and thought she was supposed to take the train on Friday. She waited and waited for me to pick her up and obviously I didn't. So she called her mother to come get her.
And the two of them went to San Francisco together because of course she didn't want to waste the two tickets she'd paid for Sarah Silverman. You can imagine the look on her face when the will call person told her she had tix for Saturday...
I kept calling and calling Katie late Friday night when I realized all of this and she never answered the phone. The automatic message her cell played was very angry. A hundred awful thoughts ran through my mind. What if she figured, "Oh screw it, I dragged my poor mother all the way out here, I'll just get the ticket guy to switch my tickets" and I drove all the way up to the Bay Area for nothing.
I was upset I might miss the show, I was worried this girl would never talk to me again and the whole thing with her not answering the phone or the text messages or the e-mails I left "um, sorry for the miscommunication, but remember you were the one who told me Saturday would be better for you because you have school on Friday..." had left me so stressed out that I couldn't fall asleep until 5:30 or so.
I guess nobody came really close to guessing the right answer when I told people to come up with why I was so freaked out in the Wizards blog, but I'm going to declare Adam the winner because he had the most creative entry, figuring it had something to do with Briana the waitress. Good memory. So congratulations Adam, you get a three paragraph rant on any NBA player you want. Choose wisely.
The good news is that my fears were for naught. Katie called me Saturday morning after she had calmed down a bit and explained that the reason she didn't answer her phone the night before was because it was dead. Whatev, I think that was a total lie, but anyway she figured out what happened and listened to the messages I left or whatever and we were back on for the show Saturday night.
The drive over to the city went well enough, mainly because she was intrigued/distracted by my i-Pod. Much like my actual personality, my musical tastes have the ability to charm a lady in one moment and totally revolt one the next. Things got better once we found this restaurant called the The Stinking Rose, this garlic themed place and we spent a wonderful hour basically improv-ing since she's taking a class and I like to fancy myself as being half witty as well.
As the waitress came by, I took Katie's hands in mine and said, "Look I know we're 3rd cousins, but I still want you to keep the baby..." and things kind of took off from there without her missing a beat. She said she doesn't want a kid to get in the way of her heroin habit and I told her not to change the subject and that I was very proud of her for losing all that weight and that she's just making excuses when really she's upset I had an affair with her sister because what can I say, wheelchairs turn me on and she yelled "so my peg leg doesn't count for anything?" and on and on it went. It was probably the high point of the evening, all considered.
We got in line for the show pretty late and I thought our table would be so far in the back that we'd barely be able to see, but we got quite lucky and got a table right out front but all the way to the side instead. I told Katie that Silverman didn't have any opening acts announced, but how sweet would it be if Brian Posehn, who's on her new show also, would be this surprise guest opener. And shockingly, it happened. I swear to God, it's not like I was trying to be smooth or coy with her or anything. I had no idea at all. I even checked Posehn's website and it didn't have any information about his schedule.
The real opener - I think his name was Mark Cohen - was fucking terrible, but Posehn more than made up for it with his half hour set. I've already shared his best joke on the Magic blog, but let's just say I think he's an incredibly talented performer and I wish he wouldn't waste his time screenwriting and trying to be in random movies and TV shows and could devote his energies to being a full time stand-up instead.
Silverman on the other hand works a lot better in small doses, whether it's a new song, a five minute set on Conan, a roast or bit parts in comedies like The Aristocrats where she can steal the show. I think she writes material at a much slower rate than most comics, so it'll take a looooooong time for her to do an hour show without using stuff from a concert movie she put out two years ago. Like the one new joke I remember from the show was a five minute bit about her wanting to fuck a piece of cheese. Yikes.
But like I said in the other blog, it would've been impossible, outside of her seducing me in front of the audience, for her to live up to the hype. It was a good show, I had a good time, I'm glad I went. I just wish I didn't know all the punch lines in advance, that's all.
After the show, I figured my closing move with Katie would be to take her to a karaoke bar since she's a trained singer and I go nuts walking around with my i-Pod and in the car. Surely my stirring rendition of Blink 182's "Adam's Song" would woo the jeans right off her...eh? Alas, it was like 12:30 AM by the time we got there and the place was so busy that the DJ had enough request slips in his box to easily last until the closing time, so he wasn't taking anymore.
Long story short, much like the Spurs in the 4th quarter at Miami, the next morning, I didn't score.
Thanks to you bastards, everybody loves to karaoke now. I fucking hate you all.
Eh, the game.
You won't believe what happened! Horry didn't show up, Timmy missed a bunch of free throws, Tony repeatedly got his shots swatted in the 4th quarter, the centers sucked, Finley couldn't shoot, Barry played scared, Bowen was a complete liability at both ends of the floor and Manu kept them in it for three quarters before fading.
Also they were outrebounded by fifteen to a squad just as old and un-athletic as they are and couldn't even use the refs favoring Flash as an excuse since he only got seven attempts from the charity stripe. Basically both teams played tinyball the entire fourth quarter and their smalls hit the glass (seriously fucking Jason Kapono had 11 rebounds) while ours stood around and picked their butts. The four starters whose names don't end in "-im" combined for seven rebounds in 114 minutes. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
The only thing about the game that brought any joy to my heart at all, besides for Gonzo's sheer awesomeness, was seeing The Diesel glued to the bench in the 4th quarter, a mere spectator. Now to be fair, perhaps his coach wanted him to play but Shaq Fu just couldn't lift his gynormous ass off the seat. All I know is he contributed exactly as much to the Miami victory in the fourth as he did to their Finals triumph last June. I love how he says he intends to "honor his contract" and play `til 2009. By what, playing 15 minutes every seventh game? The man has no shame whatsoever. Dude don't you have enough fucking money? Just retire already. Doesn't Miami need a seven-foot 400 lb. crime fighter? You can wear a cape and a mask and everything, nobody will ever be able to figure it out! You can even recruit Damon Jones to be your smart talkin' sidekick.
Really the only interesting angle of the game surfaced in the final quarter when D-Wade took over and ABC could rehash the stupendously mature war of the words between Flash and that other paragon of class, Mark Cuban. The former thinks his team isn't getting enough respect for winning the title, especially from the Mavs and the latter is basically a walking talking penis. "No wonder Charles won't put you in his five" OH SNAP! You think with all that dough Cuban could hire a real joke writer. I guess that would mean having to admit he's not actually funny.
Cuban really needs to quit getting into pissing matches with anybody in the public eye because inevitably he'll come out looking worse. For the love of God, his reality show was cancelled halfway through because people found him less likable than Donald freakin' Trump. He keeps blaming the refs for Dallas choking away the Finals but won't admit that for some ridiculous odd coincidence the Mavs were getting every single call for three and a half rounds until he stupidly went on Letterman's show with a 2-0 Finals lead and trashed Steve Nash, Pat Riley and the Heat. Right after that the calls magically stopped going Dallas' way.
I'm guessing that publicly dissing an NBA superduper star on his blog won't sit too well with Mr. Stern and he'll pay Cubes back in kind come May. Hopefully we'll be "The Benefactors" this time. Eh? You like what I did there? I'm quite talented.
As for Wade, he's not blameless in all of this. I'm tired of hearing how tough he is. I'm tired of seeing his stupid commercials. His "move" is to go forward at the basket at a high rate of speed, jump into somebody and act like he's hurt until somebody blows a whistle. He's a turnover machine. And outside of shotblocking, he's a total sieve on defense. Really, he needs to get over himself. Nothing Dirk said was that inflammatory. If Wade truly thinks he earned every free throw he was awarded in the Finals, he's dumber than he looks. What he should have said, if anything, was "If Dirk feels that way, we look forward to giving him another chance to beat us this June. They're playing very well right now, but our team believes in peaking when it counts."
That my friends is the kind of statement a winner would make to a loser, needling him appropriately without resorting to personal attacks.
God I hate both of them. It'd be like watching T.O. get in a boxing match with Dick Cheney. You just want it to go forever and be as bloody as possible.
I just vomited over my keyboard
Your 3 Stars
3. Jacque Vaughn- Seriously. I thought he played pretty well in his eight minutes. I don't even have a joke or anything.
2. Tony Parker - Took over for a bit there in the 3rd, but kinda average the other three quarters. Didn't have much jumpshooting help unfortunately for his passes.
1. Manu Ginobili - Taking a few too many 3's again and his defense was spotty, but like Tony he didn't have much help out there. Should have had about six assists, but people kept blowing lay-ups and wide open jumpers.
Record: 33-18 Streak: L-2
Up Next: @ New Jersey Nets
I wrote two of these things today and I'm STILL behind. And there's a segababa with the Pistons tomorrow. Shitfuck. The Spursdynasty fellahs are gonna be treated to a super tiny post tomorrow.