Bracket Predicitons

So the NCAA Tournament selection show beings in about two hours (during which time I'll be teaching Sunday School, and that's AFTER running a 1:56 Half Marathon, but whatever...)

Anyway, I wanted to make what small predictions I could, just to prove to myself that I still have it, at least at this point... Even if I stink at actually predicting what will happen in the actual games...

Anyway, I know these are the easiest predictions to make, but sue me...

Number One Seeds:

Kansas

Syracuse

Kentucky

Duke/WVU (this is too close to call, but it SHOULD go to WVU as winners of the toughest conference in the country, but the Selection Committee is very tradition-centric, which means that it may go to Duke for not only winning a portion of the regular-season ACC title, but also steamrolling through the ACC Tournament...)

Number Two Seeds:

Duke/WVU

Ohio State

Villanova

Purdue

Yep, that's it... my only predictions... I will say this though - Georgetown is going to get hosed - they've beaten every single team in the Big East who are considered contenders to win the NCAAs, they put a crushing beating on Duke by double digits, and they made it to the Big East title game, losing to WVU by only two on a miracle last-second shot by the Mountaineers - and yet, they got their hats handed to them by some lesser teams, and that's going to hurt them and relegate them to a Three seed, with two seed capabilities, and really that's where they should be - in place of EITHER Villanova or Purdue...

I'm just saying...

Stay tuned...

All Is Not Right In Dundemifflinville

I've been going along with this, but I feel like I have to say something...

I don't like Kathy Bates on The Office -

There. I said it...

I LOVE The Office, and I LOVE Kathy Bates, but not together...

I think it's because I associate Kathy with actressing, and I know that on Office she's playing a part. She's incredible and I feel myself believing her performances at a much greater rate than most actors, but I don't buy into her wholeheartedly as part of the Office universe, but I honestly don't think that's her fault...

The fault lies with Steve, Rainn, John and Jenna, or should I say, Michael, Dwight, Jim and Pam - cause that's who they are. When I watch the Office I don't see actors, I see office workers, and the show and actors have done an incredible job of making me believe that Dunder Mifflin Scranton exists, and that these people's interactions - be they shenanigans, relationships or mundane everyday conversation - are genuine, in good humor, and above all else, real...

The supporting staff (yes, staff, not cast) and guests are even real and incredibly believable. Who thought Andy was going to come on like he did? Who thought Erin was going to be able to fill quirky

receptionist role while being her own person? The reason for all this? These are not characters, but real people, and just like real people, they are their own, and not typecast or playing off someone else - they are real people who we have the pleasure of allowing into our lives every Thursday for 30 minutes - or sometimes 60 minutes when the gods choose to bless us...

But back to my point - Kathy Bates is an actor, and no matter how good she is on the show, she'll still be associated as being an actor. Maybe she's too big of a recognizable star, done too many things before this and had us convinced every time that she was either a raging psychopathic novelist stalker or a back-country Louisiana Bayou foosball-hating mother who grilled gator and snake for her company...

I am guessing that if you took her Tallahassee-bred character from The Office and put her in a movie about a moxie-filled Southern belle business woman who was orchestrating the violent corporate takeover of a quirky Northeastern-based paper supply company, I'd buy it...

But I ain't buyin' it here...

Friday, March 12, 2010

The Fifth

A few photos from my trip this past weekend to La Quinta -

Melissa came down with me and Alyssa was able to do what I've never been able to... get Missy to sit still for a picture...

I was lucky enough to plan the trip when Oms and Ops were going to be down, so I got to hang with them, too which was nice... Here's the whole gang minus Jamus (he was feeling a little under-weatherly) after Carson's basketball game, where they were only narrowly defeated by 18...

It was also Carson's birthday while I was down - he had planned on having an airsoft gun war, so I bought one and joined in the festivities with all the 12-13 year-olds...

I didn't want to spend too much money, so I ended up buying a kit that had a single shot rifle and pistol, which were fine except that all the other kids had fully automatic weapons... And no, I could not compete... As you can see by the evidence...

I took two at close range to the chest during our last game, giving me two nubbins in addition to my regular nipples... Enjoy the pictures of pain...

And then of course came the pizza... and the contemplative pizza poses... staged and otherwise...

It was a great trip overall and I can't wait to get back - the next time you ask? That would be May 25, or as we like to call it, "Angels Garden Gnome Extravaganza!"

Monday, March 8, 2010

Andy's Second Stand-up Attempt

Yes, the title says it all - here's my second stand-up attempt at Laughs Unlimited here in Sacramento - we had considerably more people in the room this time than last time I did it, which was nice - I'm not sure you can really tell from the video, because the people were disbursed a little, but there were probably 150 people there, which is almost to capacity...

The room was tough at first, but by the time I got up they started to warm up to the comics, thank goodness (sidenote: you'll occasionally hear a loud gufaw-type laugh: that's Matt's brother Josh, who truth be told was the funniest part of the night - he laughs at everything, and loudly - he's a comics dream... I tried to film him a little but it was too dark... I'll see what I can do about that next time. Aparently he's going up himself in April... stay tuned...)

Enjoy!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Morals From Best Pictures

Okay, so I have to give credit where credit is due - usually I only post original material, but I thought these were clever enough to pass on - especially the ones about Push and Basterds -

Anyway, these quotes are from a GQ article on the Oscar Best Picture nominees given by Doug Benson, one of my favorite movie-encyclopedic comics:

Avatar

Stock up on Unobtanium

The Blind Side

When you're down and out, all you have to do is be crazy good at something useful

District 9

Someday there will be a new minority we can all hate

An Education

Married dudes are terrible boyfriends

The Hurt Locker

There are people in the world who prefer bomb defusing to grocery shopping

Inglorious Basterds

History is for sticklers

Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire

Someone named Sapphire wrote a book called "Push"

A Serious Man

Nothing to learn here

Up

Old people can get away with anything

Up In The Air

Vera Farmiga has a nice butt double

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

My Little Blue Book

So most of you know that we made this bet to do stand up comedy at an open mic night - three of us did, and the rest, well... they're chickens, and I won't accept any other explanation...

But that's not what this is about - after we made the decision, a comedian friend of Roy's told us that if we ever wanted to be real about it, we should carry a little notebook to record things that occur to us to have humorous merit (not to be confused with humerous merit, which is what you get when you drink milk...)

Now, I've done this notebook thing for most of my life (Joyce can testify) but had been lax for a while and this sparked in me a renewed effort... So today, in the spirit of another possible open mic night tomorrow, I am going to present some of the thoughts, written verbatim, from my book, and if you tell me which ones you like (assuming there are any that are worth anything) I'll try to either make them into a full blog entry or even part of a standup joke... Oh, and you may have heard a few of them before... sometimes I post these things on Facebook...

So here we go:

1. Someone threw tomatoes at Sarah Palin during her book signing - does anyone else think that's kinda disrepspectful... to the tomatoes?

2. There's a Toyota-thon going on right now - does anyone remember a time when there's NOT a Toyota-thon going on?

3. If I had a blind friend who wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, I wouldn't take him. BUT, I'm a good friend, so I WOULD tell him we were going...

4. Oh unicorn turds

5. Born with it? Learned it? Whatever, but at least a PORTION of being gay has to be a choice right, like the wearing buttless leather chaps, or being a flight attendant?

6. The short answer is no... the long answer is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

7. This cereal is so cerealy.

8. Defensive Frenchman = patriot (nope, have no idea where this came from or to what it refers)

9. There should be a label on skinny jeans: "If your butt is _______ big or if you are ______ old, please do not put these on your body."

10. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is just propaganda from the American Council of Basket Makers.

11. The guy pulled the race card and said, "Is it because I'm ASAIN?" Yeah - that's the reason, cause we're really worried about what a Stanford sophomore might have in his extra carry-on bag...

12. Why is Ke$ha singing about kicking men to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger... I guess there is such a thing as fetishizing septegenarians...

13. And while we're on Ke$ha - what would her name be in Britain?

14. A family is like a team, and a parent is only really as smart as his dumbest kid - so if Kid One wins a Nobel prize, and Kid Two gets robbed by a hooker, you've failed...

15. There's a difference between optimism and reality - eventually, the world poops on everyone - pretending it isn't poop doesn't make you an optimist, it makes you a moron.

16. A missionary companion of mine got kicked my a mule while we were in Guatemala - broke us rib and on top of that he had to get GUATEMALAN medical help, but not before he punched it in the face. My point? It's an ingrown toenail - stop whining...

17. No one cares about what your cell phone can do, so stop bragging - you bought the thing, you didn't invent it... anyone can buy the thing - so I guess you can brag about having had $200 - but that'll probably make you a DB...

Monday, March 1, 2010