Albert: Women want him. Men want to be him.

Since it’s Friday and I stayed up waaaay too late last night watching the Nuggets-Lakers game, I’m not going to be writing with a tremendous amount of structure today. Seriously, who needs proper punctuation, paragraph construction and themes anyway? Not me.

Now you may be asking yourself why I stayed up to watch a fairly meaningless game featuring two teams that I have zero vested interest in, because I love the damned NBA that’s why. Thankfully, I was rewarded for my allegiance with a closely contested ballgame that ended on yet another game winning bucket from Carmelo Anthony. Say what you want about Carmelo, but that guy is clutch. He’s already amongst the top 5 big shot makers in the league, no question.

Speaking of the NBA, Darko’s former team is in Orlando tonight to take on his current team. You can be assured that I’ll be drinking, swearing, and yelling (in Serbian, no less) while proudly wearing my Free Darko t-shirt this evening.

Before I get to some of the more recent topics that I’ve been thinking about while I should be working, I figured that I ought to tie up the loose ends from Monday night that I didn’t include in my last post.

Monday Night Leftovers:

- Is there a cooler mascot than Albert the Alligator? (say the Stanford Tree and I’ll Tony Skinn you, I swear). Seriously, name me one other mascot that has his own girlfriend? As if that wasn’t enough, now he’s kicking that doucebag Steve Erwin’s ass in the halls of ESPN. Albert and Yannick Noah must kill at the strip clubs when they go out together.

- While watching the National Championship game, I started to wonder whether Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh were watching. Beyond that, I wondered how they felt about the events of the past year. I’m sure neither is too heartbroken over their current financial situations but you have to wonder if they have some regrets about their tenure in Gainesville.

By the way, I read a stat that summed up Roberson’s inadequacies as a point guard better than any type of description of his game ever could. Roberson dished out 77 assists all of last season. Each Gator starter during this past season accounted for at least 70 assists.

I don’t want anybody to misconstrue these thoughts as a hatchet job on either Walsh or Roberson. They were both terrific players at UF who did a great job of elevating the program during their three years in Gainesville. Christian Drejer, on the other hand, can die of ass cancer for all I care.

Speaking of ass cancer, I’d rather contract that than have to walk through life everyday looking like Lorenzo Mata. He’s probably the first UCLA basketball player in history to not reap the benefits of the “groupie love” that comes with the deity like status that accompanies a basketball scholarship in Westwood.

- I failed to mention the conclusion to my NCAA pool. I came in second place. Pretty good showing for me, and not nearly as vexing as it could’ve been for two reasons. The first reason is obvious, Florida won the National Title. The second reason is that my friend Sammy and I decided to split the profits while drunk on Saturday night. The way it would’ve worked out was this: UCLA beats Florida: I win. Florida beats UCLA: Sammy wins. Sammy is a Florida graduate like myself so I naturally assumed that he would ride it out and take his chances. Luckily for me, UCLA’s performance on Saturday night (as well as a healthy does of alcohol) scared Sammy into hedging his bets. He actually approached me about splitting the winnings. I couldn’t have agreed faster. Not only did I believe that Florida would win, but now I didn’t have to have the Gators lose in order to earn some scratch. Sweet. Sammy left me this message on Tuesday morning, “I should’ve let it ride…fuck”. Thank you Sammy, and thank you Jagermeister.

- I’ve commented on the hilarity that is Corey Brewer in this space many times. Luckily for me, the National Championship celebrations have given me a number of reasons to rejoice, here are two of them:












The total package: Defense, athleticism, and good looks.




- I know that a lot of people think that CBS’s “One Shining Moment” is cheesy and overdone because, well, it is. That being said, I’m a sucker for it. When I was young I used to tape every National Title game. I wouldn’t stop recording until after the end of OSM. Something about the song always made my house a little dusty. In recent years though, CBS began to really over do it and I stopped caring about the montage/song. Of course, after the Gators won on Monday night you’d have needed a loaded sawed-off shotgun to keep me from watching that montage. I have to say, I was quite pleased. Not only did CBs cut down on the cheesy effects, they also threw in audio clips of their announcers for some of the tournament’s biggest moments (Northwestern State, Paulino’s shot, etc.). I didn’t get goosebumps like when I was 12 but I did enjoy the hell out of it.

Now, back to some topics of more recent vintage:

- I love TNT’s “Inside the NBA”. It’s as good a studio show as there is in sports. Even if it wasn’t though, I’d still watch it just for Charles Barkley. Here’s what Barkely had to say after the induction of Dominque Wilkins into the Basketball Hall of Fame was announced, “I’m just glad Dominique got in this year. I don’t know how many points he averaged this year. He must have got a lot better this year. Apparently, he was really good this past year.”

- Though it’s kind of slid under the radar, Seton Hall made a really good hire in Manhattan’s Bobby Gonzalez. He has already proved that he can build a program (Manhattan had been awful since Fran Fraschilla left) and he has a ton of ties to high school coaches within NYC and the outlying areas. With that said, he probably won't be as succesful as Mike Davis will be at UAB. Davis is a whiny bama with very questionable skills, but the competition in Conference USA is so far below that in the Big East that it's going to take a near miracle for Bobby Gonzalez to reach the level of success at Seton Hall that it'll take for the mainstream media to acknowldege him for being the kind of coach and recruiter that he is.

- I 'd like to say that I've really been enjoying the live webcast of Amen Corner over the past two days. What the hell did people do at work before computers, work?

As for the Masters themselves, I normally watch rather impartially. It's a great event on a beautiful course that also happens to give us the gift of four consecutive days of hearing Jim Nantz whisper sweet nothings in our collective ears. That's enough for me, I don't need a rooting interest. That is, until I saw Phil Mickelson's sweet ass mullet earlier this week. Now that is a reason to pull for somebody. The only way that I'd root for anybody else is if Vijay Singh showed up with activator in his hair tomorrow morning.

-I like baseball, really I do. Sure, not as much as Jerry or the guys over at Misery Loves Company but that’s what happens when you worked for slave wages in baseball for a couple of years. Despite my harrowing experiences in baseball, I love attending games in person and have zero problem watching quasi meaningless early season games (much to my girlfriend's chagrin). However, I cannot, will not watch baseball highlights. There just something about watching a single to right field that doesn’t get my blood flowing (probably b/c I’m a commie). That being said, I am extremely excited about the return of Web Gems. That’s the only five minutes of Baseball Tonight that I ever watch on purpose. The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that this is more than likely due to my constant battle with the Mendoza line throughout the entirety of my Little League career.

- Who willingly drives a bright yellow Hummer? I mean, other than the Hamburglar.

- Finally, for any rap fans out there, allow me to recommend the latest album from Ghostface Killah, entitled Fishscale. 24 tracks long, (for those of you not familiar with hip-hop math, that means 18 songs and 6 skits) it’s his best effort in quite some time (probably since Supreme Clientele) and hasn’t left my car’s CD player in over a week. Not only is Ghostface the only Wu-Tang member who consistently churns out quality albums (or albums period, for that matter), he’s also about as ridiculous a rapper as any of us are ever likely to hear. There are a lot of abstract rappers out there (MF Doom, Aesop Rock, Del ) but there isn’t another rapper alive who can put out an album of this caliber while broaching subjects such as his alcoholic mother, fucking Catwoman, and getting his kid to beat up the rude 3 year old son of the lady (at least one of them) he’s currently banging. All of that, and it’s only $6.99. As the kids say, go out and cop that.