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| The random musings of Riverview High School's second-most famous non-football-coach alumnus, Mike Burger... (No longer most famous, not at least until I get on Oprah. (I'll get the log started) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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24 June 2003 If you think Simon is mean... At a minor league baseball game Saturday night, I was treated (read: subjected) to three singing performances (read: Geneva Convention violations). First, the National Anthem, where the singer got most of the words right but struggled mightly with key. Then, as mid-inning entertainment (read: punishment), they had a karaoke contest featuring two singers singing (read: destroying) Stop in the Name of Love. And then you had to vote with applause, which was unfair, because silence was not an option. As a Michigander, I was mortified as yet another Mowtown staple was destroyed. War should be declared. Because of their loss Monday night, the Tigers have yet again fallen below the Throneberry line (.250 winning percentage). A new Are You Entitled has been posted with the additions of the New Jersey and San Antonio championships. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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13 June 2003 Where half the kids are below average... "The school district has done some wonderful things ... but (on state tests) half the students are still below the 50th percentile. That's a problem." -- Lauren Hammond, councilwoman for Sacramento, CA. And the sad part is, fifty percent of this country isn't going to get it. I've always felt that unless your an honors student taking calculus in high school, a consumer/common sense math class should always be taught instead of Algebra 2. Instead of teaching the average high school student the quadratic formula or imaginary numbers, things they will never use in real life, you would focus on:
Well, I haven't been on ABC since 1990... Somebody has postulated on their journal that I should be on The Bachelor. Well, ABC does know better, because it would be 10 minutes of uncompelling television. I would simply walk into the room, and ask the following questions. If somebody is left standing, they win. If more than one is left standing, the highest Wunderlich score wins. If no one is left standing, my bank account wins. They can even bring out those paddles I love from The Better Sex.
Scraping the bottom... Baseballlibrary.com has a feature on their site showing the worst 63-game starts in history. As of now, they are: Team W L Pct. 1904 Washington 11 52 .175 1932 Boston (AL) 12 51 .190 1911 Boston (NL) 14 49 .222 1982 Minnesota 14 49 .222 1927 Boston (AL) 15 48 .238 2003 Detroit 16 47 .254Although that does look pretty bad, when you factor in the rest of their seasons, all hope is not lost: Team W L Pct. 1982 Minnesota 46 53 .465 1927 Boston (AL) 36 53 .364 1911 Boston (NL) 30 58 .341 1932 Boston (AL) 31 60 .341 1904 Washington 27 61 .307I'll gladly take 46-53 the rest of the way. The average winning percentage is .374, which would put the Tigers at 53-109 for the year. Of course, these are all independent events and not indicative of any trends. The 1984 Tigers after 63 games were 47-16. It's all karma. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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10 June 2003 Still more pinch-running... The Tigers were losing 7-6 on Sunday to the Giants in the top of the ninth inning. Eugene Kingsale pulled up lame on an infield single so had to be replaced with a pinch-runner. Now, the Tigers are very short on bench due to injuries. Bobby Higginson was nursing an injury, Eric Munson had already pinch-hit, so the bench was down to Warren Morris, Matt Walbeck and Kevin Witt. So, this may be a good time to use a pitcher, so Adam Benero comes trotting out to pinch-run. There's a walk, so Adam Benero is pinch-run for with Warren Morris. Why go through the trouble? Why didn't Trammell just use Morris in the first place? Painful hair cut... I had my hair cut on Friday, and it was very painful. Not because of any injury, nor did I accidentally drink barbicide. The barber was playing the Tatu CD. And enjoying it. Since he was playing a CD and lacking any video, the small reedeming quality of the duo had been eliminated, leaving only the music. I didn't have the balls to tell him he wasn't getting a tip because I had to listen to that CD, but I may consider a different barber. Interleague fun... When the Tigers play the Rockies on Friday night, they will become the first major league team to have played the other 29 teams in regular season play. Because of the first few years of divisional only play and the insistence that some teams still play other teams year after year, some teams will be left short, even after the rotational system. Because the Tigers are the only team in the last few years to switch divisions, they got two of the divisions out of the way, even with some skipping. I bring this up because you may have heard George Steinbrenner whine about how he had to go play the Cubs, Astros and Cardinals while the Red Sox got the Pirates and Brewers. He neglected to point out that the Red Sox also get the Astros and Cardinals, while the Yankees get to play the floundering Mets six times. After the current season is over, these will still be the deficits: Baltimore: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Colorado Boston: Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco New York: Milwaukee, Pittsburgh*, Los Angeles* Toronto: Houston, Milwaukee, San Diego Chicago WS: Florida, Colorado Cleveland: Atlanta*, San Francisco* Kansas City: Atlanta, Philadelphia* Minnesota: Montreal, Los Angeles Anaheim: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston Oakland: New York*, Chicago, St. Louis Seattle: Florida, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh Texas: Philadelphia *World series rematch If MLB would hire me as their scheduling guy (which they won't), they could use the following four-year rotation. This assures everybody plays each other at least once and those alleged rivalries still occur:
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5 June 2003 Will you get off the pinch-running thing... The Canadian Baseball League started their season this week. This is mostly an offshoot that the dollar situation, although improving, makes it difficult for Canadian-based clubs to be in the minor leagues, whether they be affiliated or independent. Triple-A has lost Calgary to Albuquerque, Vancouver to Sacramento and Winnipeg to Newport News-Memphis-Columbus. Vancouver has also been a stop twice for Albuquerque. So, why not have a league solely based in Canada? Well, the league has a few comical flaws. One, in order to "speed up the game", the catcher may be freely pinch-run for with two outs, with the catcher coming back in. Second, it's an eight team league with two 4-team division. Each Eastern team makes one trip to the West, while the West teams make one trip to the east. However, the East teams play the same two West teams both home and away and don't play the other two at all. So, in a 8 team with a 72 game schedule, you only play 5 distinct teams. Also, Montreal doesn't have a home field. They were expecting the Expos to not be there. So I messed up. I tried to make a parody news article and shock some friends. But, most E-mail programs saw that I sent a spoofed E-mail and corrected it. Anyway, here's the spoofed article -> NIFL declares bankruptcy. The FCC ruling, much ado about crap... Random thought on the recent FCC media consolidation thing. It won't make much of a difference. The media lost it's soul a long time ago. The news divisions of networks used to be a prestige thing between the three networks which were each controlled by a larger-than-life figure. In the late 70's, ABC figured out you could make money from news. And it's been downhill ever since. Up until the mid-80s, most stations had a 6 and 11 local news and a 6:30 national. And that was it. And, since cable penetration was low, if you wanted news, this was your only source. But, cable came into the fray, meaning you could get the news when when you wanted it. So, to compete, local stations added more newscasts. When I lived in Colorado in the early 90s, the NBC station had news at 5:30 AM, 6 AM, Today at 7 AM, another local news at 9 AM, news at noon (for an hour), 4 PM, 5 PM, the network news at 6 PM, another half-hour at 6:30, local news at 11, reran it after Later, and used CNN in the overnights. Local news was also your only source for sports scores, however, with ESPN and the Internet, that's no longer the case, so studies began to show that viewership went down significantly during the sports. So, they got shunted to the end and turned into America's Funniest Home Videos. With the national/international news hawks going to the cable networks, news programs pretty much focus on three things: sensationalist crime, pointless consumer news and weather brought out to shock you. Listen, news isn't going to get more conservative, or more liberal, with fewer companies holding the cards. It will still be what's it's been lately, crap. It's just that fewer companies will own a higher concentration of crap. TV stations would kill puppies live on the air if it made a net change of a tenth of a rating point. If I were in charge of the FCC, these would be the rules:
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19 May 2003 It's not minor to them... I spent most of this weekend in the band for the NCAA Softball Regional held at Alumni Field here in Ann Arbor. Observations:
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2 May 2003 It's higher, do you want to change that card... This gets creepy, but bear with me. About a year ago I bought a game at our local version of Cockamamie's. As I started to look through it, I sort of figured out who owned this before. I casually knew the guy when I was in college, but he had long since moved away, getting a job in Northern Virginia and had long lost touch with him. I did know his parents lived here in Ann Arbor. So, I just figured it was his parents cleaning out their basement. Now I know why. Two years ago, he was murdered by his wife. I found this out today while trying to look up info about somebody else I had lost touch with, and noticed a page with his name and the word "memorial". So, I had to do a little scrounging to figure out what happened, and I figured it out eventually, but this was just too weird. This now means I personally knew two people who have since been murdered. By personally I mean you have carried out some form of meaningful conversation with a person more than once. I wonder what the national average on this is? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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28 April 2003 It's two, two, two blowouts in one... Spent Saturday at Duck Bowl II. Stan, Amanda and company did a fine job, especially considering the curves they were thrown -- some really bad packets and a team not showing up. We (myself, Greg Sorenson, Jeremy White and Mike Philipy) went 10-0 and I actually topped the top 4 in scoring and scored a lovely container of KrazyGlue. However, I do have to complain about one thing. Emory's packet, which I assume was sent via Charlie. Dear God, that was terrible. The top 2 teams in the tournament (us and Indiana) played on that, and we scored less combined in that game than our team averaged by ourselves in a game. There were three tossups on food products, a bonus on food products, and another tossup on a drink. "Pear juice" should never be an answer in a trash tournament. Neither should how your 2004 Houston Astros are shaping up in your EA Sports Baseball game. And, in continuing the theme of blowouts, about an hour outside of Ann Arbor my tire blew out. Ended up not being a big deal, got a tow all the way back to Ann Arbor, changed the tire myself once back home, and life goes on. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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21 April 2003 The travelogue is up... The 2003 Coast-To-Coast Trip. Enjoy. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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21 March 2003 How can a 3-2 game be dull... Well, if Ohio State and Notre Dame were involved. Ohio State is coached by John Markell, who of all the various coaches I have dealt with in my time in college hockey, always seems to have an aura. No other coach, not Red Berenson, not Jackie Parker Jr.'s $100,000 Jackpot Wad, not Ron Mason, had this aura. He just seems to command respect by his presence. So, his team will play a good game of solid hockey. Notre Dame is coached by Dave Poulin, who made the Bobby Carpenter-type transition in the 1980s from 30-goal scorer to top defensive forward with the Flyers and Bruins. So, his teams play defensively too. So, the game is liking watching a New Jersey-Minnesota NHL game with Marian Gaborik and Joe Nieuwendyk having the night off. No goals in the first and only one penalty, some scoring in the second to make it 2-2, and a goal early in the third gave OSU the win as they put down the clamps tighter than, oh wait, this is a family blog. Game 2 however, wow. Michigan State coached by Rick Comley. Northern Michigan, who used to be coached by Rick Comley. Northern takes a quick 2-0 lead. MSU's goalie looks very shaky. MSU gets back 2 before the break to make it a 2-2 game after one. MSU gets an early goal in the 2nd, but Northern storms back and it's 3-3. MSU gets 19 shots in the 2nd, but only one gets past Craig Kowalski, who I will dare say is a Ko-wality goalie. MSU gets the lead at 8:19 of the 3rd. NMU ties it at 10:32 and takes the lead at 12:16. MSU reties it at 13:58 with one of the best face off plays I have ever seen. Northern takes the lead again at 16:11 with another soft goal on a point shot. I call untipped, most everybody else said that it had to have been tipped, because a weak shot from the point shouldn't score like that, but it did and my continually fading eyesight is vindicated. Northern adds an empty net goal that was reminiscent of Steve Smith in the 1989 playoffs, try to clear up ice, bank it off your own player, and in the net.
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19 March 2003 M3I1K5E1'S1 P3I1C3K5S1... Only six of you played last week, let's get more. Rules are under the 10 March entry. This week's slate (picks must be in by 8:30 EST on Friday): Tri-City at Oklahoma, Lincoln at Show Me, Austin at Beaumont, Evansville at Fort Wayne, Myrtle Beach at Houma, Tupelo at Lake Charles, Ohio Valley at Tennessee, Billings at Utah, Sioux Falls at Rapid City. While some blogs boast of 7 hours and 3 games of hockey, I will partake in no less than 13.5 hours and 6 games of hockey barring overtimes this weekend. It's the CCHA Super Six, and for the 10th time (dear God, it has been that many) I will be in the scorer's area. For those of you that are curious, here's a brief look into how it's done. We use a crew of 6: a logger, a caller (me), a shot person, a computer person and two assist people. The caller tells both the shot person and the computer person whether a shot is considered on goal, wide or blocked and who took the shot plus tells the computer person who took the faceoff and who won it. The logger keeps the official NCAA paper scoresheet plus takes the penalty information from the penalty box and relays that to the computer operator. The two assist people work in their own world, one calls every player who touches the puck and the other writes that down. When a goal is scored, they note the two people who touched the puck before the goal scorer and award them asissts as long as there is not a change in possession. During this time I will call over 700 shots and 400 faceoffs. My pay consists of stale Little Caesar's pizza and popcorn. It's event time, so time to dust off your Scrabble racks and determine your winner...
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4 March 2003 How to stop terrorism... Well, take a look at the picture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Not only is the CIA going to capture you, it's going to take a picture that puts any yearbook or driver's license picture to shame and show it to the world. It looks like Mohammed's hideout needs a visit from Bob Vila or Trading Spaces. Just to outdo Joe in the dream department, I had one last night where I was in a high school class with O.J. Simpson. Strangely, he was sitting in a car in class while I was bundling wood for a campfire. I accidentally dropped a piece of wood and scratched the juice's car. He then threatened to kill me. The car was a late 70s early 80s tan sedan. I recently received a piece of SPAM that offered me 300% off my prescription bill. Hmmm, take drugs and get $60 a month! Finally, if you care about sports and how much the cities they belong in are deserving, check out Are You Entitled, the first sports research piece I've written in some time. If you like it, I may do more. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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10 March 2003 Holiday marketing... The delays in the bus ride in this morning had me reading the kiddie page where there was information on St. Patrick's Day celebrations. Which had me thinking -- <Andy Rooney> Did you ever notice that we don't celebrate ethnic holidays unless it involves gluttony? </Andy Rooney> We go bonkers over St. Patrick's Day, parts of the country love Cinco De Mayo, while the day before Ash Wednesday either gets you Pączki day (north) or Mardi Gras (south)*. However, Canada Day, Bastille Day, Slovak Uprising Day and St Nicolas de Flüe day are all pretty much ignored. Want Earth Day to become a bigger bash? Add beer. V-E Day just not cared about anymore? Add German beer. *How come the turf at the New Orleans Superdome isn't called Mardi Grass? NIFL Pick 'em... It's that time of the year. The NIFL season is upon us and it's time to start up a NIFL pick 'em pool. Just like Craig's pool, with a twist.
Only Ohio State could do this... You are the Ohio State athletic department. You have one arena that houses your two basketball teams and your men's hockey team. The basketball teams aren't going to play there in the weekend of March 14-15. The hockey team might if they finish in the top 6 of the standings. They haven't the past three years, but you finished in 7th and you have a good senior class. What do you do? You let the Girls high school Basketball finals in your arena. So, you have now screwed your team. But, those scrappy Buckeyes have a real neat plan. Friday's game will be at the NHL arena at the normal time. However, the Bluejackets are home on Saturday, so the second game of the Buckeyes' series will be played at 1:30 PM, a mere 15.5 hours after the first game will end, as long as it doesn't go into overtime. The girls don't play on Sunday, so if there's a game three, it will be back on campus. Good thing, because the NHL arena is booked Sunday night for a Yanni concert. Frankly, the games should be moved to the road team's arena -- Nebraska-Omaha. They have good fans, and they kept the arena date open for the weekend. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4 March 2003 How to stop terrorism... Well, take a look at the picture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Not only is the CIA going to capture you, it's going to take a picture that puts any yearbook or driver's license picture to shame and show it to the world. It looks like Mohammed's hideout needs a visit from Bob Vila or Trading Spaces. Just to outdo Joe in the dream department, I had one last night where I was in a high school class with O.J. Simpson. Strangely, he was sitting in a car in class while I was bundling wood for a campfire. I accidentally dropped a piece of wood and scratched the juice's car. He then threatened to kill me. The car was a late 70s early 80s tan sedan. I recently received a piece of SPAM that offered me 300% off my prescription bill. Hmmm, take drugs and get $60 a month! Finally, if you care about sports and how much the cities they belong in are deserving, check out Are You Entitled, the first sports research piece I've written in some time. If you like it, I may do more. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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21 February 2003 I knew I forgot something...  The Nobel Committee for Movies is pleased to bestow its 2002 award to producing legend Roger Corman. Greg Sorenson will now wax nolstagic on the exploits of Mr. Corman. Since the death of the studio system, no single person has nurtured more directorial and screenwriting talent than Roger Corman. Always low-budget, yet always professional and profit-turning, Corman has over 300 credits as a producer, and about 50 as a director. Jack Nicholson, Charles Bronson, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, John Sayles, Robert Towne, and Peter Bogdanovich all got their starts apprenticing on Corman-produced films.A former engineering student, Corman sold his first screenplay, Highway Dragnet, in 1953. He used those proceeds the following year to fund his directorial debut, The Monster from the Ocean Floor, and soon began making genre films for American International Pictures. His films, aimed primarily at the drive-in market, were marked with distinct wit and quality, despite their strict economy. His best-known works from this period are The Little Shop of Horrors, famously shot in three days using leftover sets, and featuring a young Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient; and the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Masque of the Red Death, all starring Vincent Price. Corman founded New World Pictures in 1970, and along with his low-budget fare, began distributing prestigious foreign films, introducing America to Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut. New World is the admitted template for Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Pictures. While he retired from directing and screenwriting after 1990's Frankenstein Unbound, Corman is still active as a producer, releasing five direct-to-video productions in 2002 for his New Concorde studio. Corman, 76, lives in Santa Monica, California. I had a killer APBA game last night, with London defeating Hamilton 13-12 in 12 innings. Visiting Hamilton had a 10-6 lead going into the bottom of the 8th and gave up 2 in the eighth and 2 in the ninth to send it to extra innings. Each team scored single runs in the 10th and 11th but London squeaked an unearned run across in the 12th for the win. London's runs in the 10th and 11th were unearned as well. Each team used 7 pitchers and Hamilton hit 7 homers, but their four errors proved to be their undoing. Two Hamilton players (Richie Sexson and Jose Cruz Jr.) and one London player (Mark Grace) had two homers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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14 February 2003 1,200 U.S. stations and nothing on... Driving around on Sunday, I had this experience courtesy of Ann Arbor's Sports Leader, AM 1050, WTKA...
TV news is eating itself. The Federal Building for Ann Arbor is kitty[caddy]-corner from my office. Wednesday, at about 11 AM, everybody started filing out of the building. Followed by the immediate presence of TV helicopters and news vans. What was the big story? A mail handler dropped a package and a grenade came out. Except, the grenade was a phony. Still, programs were interrupted and leaving work shortly before 5 I saw two stations setting up for their 5 PM live updates. Except there was nothing to update. The story was done by 11:30. Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you must use it or it will go away. The third in an irregular series of jaw dropping real-life TV pilots that never made it to series: Title: Bobby Jo and the Big Apple Good Time Band Network: CBS Year: Aired on 31-Mar-1972 Stars: Season Hubley (Bobby Jo), Forrest Tucker (Cousin Jack), Robert Walden (Augie), John Bennett Perry (Jeff), Ed Begley, Jr. (Virgil), Michael Gray (Brian), Tom Bosley (Mayor). Summary: Nothing special here, it looks sort of like The Partridge Family. Except it's by the same people. It's one thing to have your popular show ripped off, it's another thing to do the ripping off yourself. Summary taken from Unsold Television Pilots Vol 1: 1955-1976 by Lee Goldberg, MacFarland Books, 1990, Entry #1134. One video collector I know of has it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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5 February 2003 You have one minute of my time, don't blow it... We've been having trouble finding qualified developers, so we put our ad up on a non-monstrous web site that specializes in that sort of thing. We have so far received 182 résumés since Thursday. So far, I've screened 32 of them.
Title: Charo and the Sergeant Network: ABC Year: Aired on 24-Aug-1976 Stars: Charo (Charo Palmer), Tom Lester (Sgt. Hank Palmer), Noam Pitlik (Sgt. Turkel), Dick Van Patten (Chaplain). Summary: Charo is an entertainer who marries a U.S. Marine sergeant and tries to adapt to life in Washington, D.C. Summary taken from Unsold Television Pilots Vol 1: 1955-1976 by Lee Goldberg, MacFarland Books, 1990, Entry #1304. There is not a copy of this floating around any bootleg circuits. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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31 January 2003 Random stuff...
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27 January 2003 We were always at war with Eurasia... Forget this article. Instead, believe this article. I guess getting shutout in the Senior Bowl was the final embarrassment. Alan Trammell has not managed a game yet, and he's no longer last on the coaching seniority list in Detroit. And if you count ArenaBall, Al Luginbill hasn't coached a game yet and he's already #3 in Detroit seniority. A postscript to Friday, around 12:50 the fire alarms went off. Since they continued beyond the 60-second "oops" threshhold, the powers that be decided it was a real fire and we evacuated. Amazingly, over half the company wouldn't leave until I told them over the PA system to do so. It ended up that one of the sprinkler system pipes burst. Our fire alarm is triggered if there's a change in pressure in the sprinkler system. Thankfully, the sprinklers didn't go on, that would have been a lawsuit. A saw an ad for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on Saturday. On a city bus. In Downtown Detroit. You may continue this sad-but-true joke anyway you wish. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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24 January 2003 But my nieces would have had college paid for... I was nearly run over by a moron yesterday because of any or all of these elements:
Bob didn't make it, so his 15 minutes are up, and mine can start ticking any day now... For the second time this week, the furnace was not blowing warm air in our building, it was just blowing air. When I got to my office, it was already 49 degrees inside. And, like Tuesday, I "worked" in the independently-climate controlled server room, which was a toasty-by-comparison 72 degrees, until my office crossed the 60 degree line when the heat was restored at 9:30. I may hate what I do for a living, but it occasionally has benefits. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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21 January 2003 Be careful what you ask for... I had made a consistent joke during the weekend that I wouldn't mind that if I went to bed on Saturday night if I got up on Tuesday. Well, I nearly pulled it off. Going to bed at 11:30 on Sunday, I got up at 10. Ate breakfast, caught up on some TiVo, was feeling a little dizzy, so I went to lay down at 12:30. Next thing I know, it's 4:30 and I have a screaming headache. I take a pill and lay back down. It's now 6 PM. I managed to sleep 16 hours. I guess I was tired. Of course, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep to get back into a normal pattern, but I think I'll survive. On dream patrol, the only one I can remember is the one where I was assisting Jessica Fletcher on an interesting case where an illegal airline had one of its planes crash. Bob [see below] survived Episode #2. My office is now 55 degress, up from the 52 had bottomed out at 30 minutes ago. I've been in this building 4 years. In that time, there's been 2 fires that caused 3 days off, another day off when the air couldn't kick on during a 95 degree day. Can't wait to move in August. Saw the Toledo Storm take on the Lexington Men O'War in my first ever ECHL game. God that place is a dump. Plus they had a shootout, which I see the ECHL pretty much realizes it has to do even if everybody hates it. It went 16 shots and it took about 10 minutes, with the officials having the next puck down at center within seconds of the previous shot. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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9 January 2003 I may no longer be the most famous alum... Meet Bob. Bob is 6-3, 235, 31 years old and a manager at Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corporation. Bob is a graduate of Riverview High School. What's so special about Bob? He's appearing on The Bachelorette. And he survived yesterday's cut. I don't know whether to root for him or against him.  The Nobel Committee for Sports is proud to present it's 2002 Award to John Wooden. As much as everybody points out to the '79 championship between Magic and Bird as the pivotal breakthrough game that brought NCAA basketball to the forefront, it was really Wooden. 88 straight victories. 4 undefeated seasons. 7 NCAA championships. Plus he handled Bill Walton. That alone should give him the award, but he was more. Basically, I liked the way he coached. He didn't bark at refs, he didn't call billions of timeouts. He let the players play, and he believed in positive reinforcement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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20 December 2002 I'm going to finish this, really...  The Nobel Committee for Geek is proud to present it's 2002 Award to Stan Lee. The less said the better. I could use some movie and sports nominees. I have a couple of ideas, otherwise I'm stumped.Mike Burger's Day Off I had specifically set aside this past Wednesday (the 18th) to do Christmas shopping. One day, which I took of from work, to go through shopping centers without the usual riff raff. Maybe even sleep in a little bit. However, I arise to see that Ann Arbor closed the schools for the day. Two feet of snow? Nope. Day of mourning because the Superintendent resigned (which she had done the day before)? Nope. It was icy. A little icy. As in just enough of a layer to turn this town into an ice rink, but not enough that as soon as a few cars drove over it, it would melt. In fact, it was pretty much gone by 9:30. So, there goes unclogged mall day, gone before it even started. Also, I started to develop this massive headache throughout the day, which was only aggravated by 1-not finding the things I wanted to buy, 2-my doctor's appointment moving from a nice, easy to get to clinic to the University Hospital, not knowing this until I arrived at the clinic (already late), 3-the general state of Ann Arbor traffic if everything isn't perfect.  This summed up the day perfectly -- my trek from the mall in the lower center of town to the Toys 'я' Us on the east side. There's the route. According to MapQuest, this 4 mile trek should have taken 8 minutes. It took 58 minutes. After my encounter with Geoffrey, I went home and straight to bed. I didn't get up until 9:30 the next morning --> a 13 hour sleep.I later found out that there was an overturned modular home on US-23 near the scale on the map to the right. This caused northbound traffic to be slow. Of course, this was too exciting to let just the northbound lane enjoy, so the southbound lane had a 3-car accident just to even things out. Of course, with the main north-south artery clogged tighter than Comic Book Guy in Spandex, traffic begins to back up just because it's too hard to get on that freeway. It took me 25 minutes just to go 1/10th of a mile at one point. I know many of you enjoy my travelouges, so maybe you should read one from who I stole most of his ideas. Walt going to New Zealand is another fascinating tale. Of course, he went to this conference on the taxpayer's dime to hear people talk about ice. And he only needed 11 years of college to do this. Flipping the dial the other day, I came across the The 5th Annual Sears Soul Train Christmas Starfest! It had a long opening "special appearence by" spiel worthy of either the Oscars or an SCTV skit. However, two names caused me to laugh, cry and wretch at the same time. The two token caucasians were -- Kenny G and Kenny Loggins. On Soul Train. Was the requirement to find the two most unfunky caucasians possible or the two most unfunky people named Kenny possible? Is Soul Train now run by Amtrak? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
