Last year my bracket was dead after Day 1. Let’s see if I can survive a bit longer this time around.
As you can see I have Florida, Iowa State, Creighton and Duke in the Final Four with Florida beating Duke in the Championship Game. Unlike almost everyone else including the Prez, I did not pick Michigan State to make the Final Four much less the whole thing. I guess East Lansing will be burning down in a couple of weeks.
Another note of interest: I have Cal Poly beating Wichita State becoming the first 16-seed to beat a 1-seed ever. Go SLO!
After a couple of weeks of fruitlessly trying to get my fatass up a 17% grade for about 2/3 of a mile, I finally did it. Sure my shirt was soaked in sweat, sweat dripping on my glasses, my lungs and legs aching. But I stood at the top and took a moment to bask in the achievement.
Byproduct of my accomplishment: you won’t hear from me about 17% again.
Now in a perfect world I could have connected a trail that would have taken me to the FAA radar towers at the top of the hill. But since Rolling Hills Estates cuts in on the trail and it being a gated city, it was a no go. Fucking cunts. (Although if I was feeling less pussy-ish I could have just trudged on. But I didn’t have a good feeling about doing that. So meh.)
Unlike Monday when many a shirtless sweaty guys were jogging along the Ocean Trails as I traipsed along, there was only one ornery old dude walking down the trail. I smiled, made eye contact and said hello as I usually do. He just walked past. I hope he has a heart attack.
There was a 4.4 earthquake centered in the Santa Monica Mountains between Encino and Westwood early this morning. Geologists say that it was the biggest recorded earthquake in the Santa Monica Mountains ever. Of course when an earthquake hits, your first reaction isn’t wondering where its epicenter is. It’s to not die. Like the news anchors above.
These anchors have been given a lot of shit for their reactions. But they did the right thing. If you’ve never been in a studio, you’d not know how many lights are dangling right above the anchors. They say it’s safe and the lights won’t fall, but you never know.
I was at Hulu when the 2008 Chino Hills earthquake hit, a 5.5-er. This wasn’t anything like the Northridge Quake, the Big Bear Quake, the Landers Quake. Growing up in LA in the late 80s to mid 90s, things were quite active seismically. This quake became a blip.
It first felt like a truck driving past our building shaking it. But it persisted. That’s when I knew it was an earthquake. It got stronger, but the shaking was never violent. I was cool with it, but there was one problem: I had an old school CRT tv hanging from the ceiling right above my desk. As the shaking continued, I decided I was going to value my noggin. I ducked underneath the desk until the shaking stopped.
When you have things dangling above your head, you make sure you protect yourself.
Here in the Pedro in the Manse, I didn’t wake up. Then again, I didn’t wake up for the Northridge Earthquake until the very end of it, but that’s because my mom was hollering. Bitch.
It’s pretty clear that I’ve been a bit more active recently. Trying not to be as sedentary and such. I’m trying not to be a complete cunt about it saying looking-at-me-I’m-exercising or other motivational bullshit that makes me want to kill others.
Since a heatwave was supposed to start up today, I decided to go for a jog a bit early (10 am instead of 11 am.) I put my headphones in listening to Leaether Strip (old industrially goodness from Denmark) and started. I was getting ready to cross the street, the light turned green, my walk indicator was on walk and I dashed out into the intersection.
An old lady in a Honda Civic was saw her left-turn light flashed to red, but she was determined to make it so she wouldn’t have to wait the extra minute for it to turn green again. For the first time in my life I had to make an athletic Matrix-like move to avoid being hit by her in the intersection.
“Sorry! I didn’t see you,” she yelled out to me before speeding away into the Ralphs parking lot.
“What the fuck,” I muttered as I jogged away.
I’m a hard person to miss being a pretty expansive person. It was a pretty loud reminder for me: make sure I am dead before I get old and senile. Oh yeah, and old people are evil murderous bitches.
As for my jog, it’s actually the first time I’ve jogged in quite some time. I’ve been hiking and climbing hills and such, so it was something different for my system. Hopefully next time I won’t nearly get killed by going for a jog.
Blake Griffin’s put-back jam off of a missed three-pointer by Danny Granger. (Screengrab)
After watching the Clippers dispatch the Golden State Warriors 111-98 last night, they convinced me they are championship material. Not that they will win the title, mind you. But they are one of the few teams that actually have more than a prayer of winning the final NBA game of the season.
Early in the season, they were a team in flux. Sometimes it bordered on shitty. Like how they lost at Cleveland 88-82 in December. Or how they lost in Orlando in their fifth game of the season. Or that embarrassing opening night loss against the Lakers. Their offense was off kilter with the additions of JJ Redick, Darren Collison and Jared Dudley, looking a shadow of their high-flying thrill ride from last season. And the defense promised by hiring Doc Rivers as the head coach looked like a project that would take years to build.
So even as they started piling up wins, the jarring memories of those three losses couldn’t be erased. Sure they were scoring a lot. It’s hard to ignore those Blake Griffin highlights. I know Charles Barkley has proclaimed the Clippers as the best team in the West. But the defense?
Last night in the fourth quarter, it showed up. For three quarters it was a back and forth game with 21 lead changes and 12 ties. The Warriors led by as many as seven points, and the Clippers ended the quarter with a 84-79 lead — their biggest lead of the game.
They never looked back.
There were two blocked shots and four steals. They held Golden State to 30.8% shooting. The Clippers outscored the Warriors 27-19 in the frame, and I finally bought in to what Charles has been selling.
The Clippers are a great team. They’re starting to look like what we think of a Doc Rivers team: skilled yet tough. They have incredible depth — after the trade deadline they managed to nab Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Danny Granger and Hedu Turkoglu. And they can turn misses into this:
He had arms to die for. That’s what I first noticed. He was wearing a red tank top and black running shorts as he was walking down the Portuguese Bend trail. I was heading back up to the trailhead, the sweat dripping from my brow. I saw the arms, the body of a linebacker and immediately pictured him tackling me and choking me with his cock.
But nothing like that happened. I looked up, smiled and said a quick out-of-breath “howdy.” He smiled with those killer dimples and said a much more energetic hello. It was obvious he was just getting started.
He walked past and his scent left an imprint on my psyche, the deep musk that did not have an ounce of sourness as I expected. Turning around I caught a glimpse of his ass, two mounds that begged for my face to be firmly planted between them.
I headed back to my car imagining my balls a deep shade of blue.
Here we are again, Brendan and I, with another 75 or so minutes of verbal diarrhea. I believe we’re going to settle with the B&J Podcast because, well, it’s just too easy. Each episode will have a different title provided by our friends. This one was provided by Matthew Harrison. He’s an asshole.
In this one we talk about movies, the Oscars, sex toys, Brendan’s illiteracy, 20 Feet from Stardom, The Act of Killing, the Dodgers channel, hashtags, and stupid sports fans. Well, Brendan takes up arms in support of the fans. I mainly trash them. And yes, there was more whiskey and coffee.
The songs this week we featured:
Chinese Man Ft. Tumi – Once Upon a Time
Diamanda Galas – Baby’s Insane
Lords of Acid Ft. Critter – Rough Sex (The All Night Grinder Mix)
That is, today is her birthday according to the lunar calendar. She is 85. I was shocked she had enough strength to blow out her candles and not break or strain something. She pretended to be a Japanese man during World War II so she wouldn’t become a comfort woman. She popped out seven kids and has lost two. She broke five vertebrae in 2009. She has no cartilage in her right knee and a torn tendon in the left. She has Myasthenia Gravis which is where the immune system attacks the muscles.
But through it all, she’s still kicking. I have determined I will never live as long. But happy birthday to my 할머니.
Carrying a giant Venezuelan flag, thousands of anti-government protesters march during a mass demonstraiton on March 2, 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
One of the big reasons things have come to a head in Venezuela is the scarcity of goods. I’m not even talking about luxury goods. I’m talking about staples like rice, coffee, fish, flour etc. I could go on and on.
Over the weekend I talked with Pedro, a 21-year old student who lives just outside of Caracas but attends school in Caracas. Since Saturday there been bigger rallies and more protests, Venezuelans not listening to the government to take a break for Carnival.
Pedro told me today that more people from the barrios are joining in on the protests, a direct conflict on labeling this an exclusively “middle- and upper-class movement”.
“Some western zones have protested but they’re quickly put out by colectivos and National Guards,” Pedro said. “The students’ movement comprehends every class. Most of the ‘poor’ kids you see protesting in the east do so cause they feel safer. I’ve known many kids from the west who are there with us.”
From video I’ve been watching, it looks the movement is gaining traction. Just seeing this rally below blew me away.
But not everything is going smooth. You see included in the shortages is paper stock for newspapers. Pedro told me that the more established news organizations can probably keep running until mid-month. “Approximately 16 regional newspapers have disappeared as of 2014. The most important ones have paper enough to go until March 16th.”
The government doesn’t interfere too much with internet restrictions, although some reports are there have been some restrictions on Twitter as it deals with the organization of protests. So why not just transfer everything online?
“Venezuela is a traditional country,” Pedro said. “People likes their news in physical media. That’s the issue.”
The other problem? “People in the slums get their newspapers daily and not many have internet at home.”
Like I said before, this is not as easy as left vs. right, rich vs. poor. You have to remember that this is an oil-rich OPEC nation that can’t provide goods to its citizens. And by provide, I mean to make available to purchase, not just to be made available for free. Since I’m not an economist, I don’t know what will fix this. All I know is something is really broken.
The students in Venezuela also know something is broken and they want answers and accountability. It will be interesting to see how this plays out through the month as newspapers are forced to figure out how to deal with the shortage of paper stock.
In my junior year of high school, I read about Cibo Matto in Spin and Rolling Stone magazines. The internet as we know it as a commercial enterprise was just getting going, and lord knows we didn’t even have cable in our household. They sounded interesting: two Japanese women, the singer writing songs about food because her English wasn’t so good. Hell, food is a metaphor for everything, right?
I didn’t buy Viva! La Woman then since I never heard them on the radio. I happened to catch a live performance of them on some PBS show. Then on some grainy UHF channel, I saw their video for “Know Your Chicken” and “Sugar Water”. Yet, I still didn’t buy their album. In fact it wasn’t until I was in college that I finally bought Cibo Matto.
After Stereotype A Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda went their separate ways to work on their projects. They reunited for a tsunami benefit concert in 2011, started touring and made this new album Hotel Valentine.
I did not like the new album at first. It’s a concept album about a haunted hotel, simply put. Musically it’s all over the place. But with each successive listen you get hooked into it more an more. After listening dispassionately at first, I found myself grooving to it while I was doing my Sunday cleaning. Like ghosts, the beats start haunting you until you get completely immersed in it. Next thing you know as I’m on my knees cleaning the toilet, I’m chanting along with Miho “Motherfucking Nature”.
I then realized that Viva! La Woman was the same way. There was the punk “Birthday Cake” mixed with the mournful “Artichoke” with the steel drums of “Thema” with the trip hop “Sugar Water” and the silliness of “Beef Jerky”. Hotel Valentine is similar but with more gloss thanks to nearly 20 years of technological advances in music production. “MFN” really shows that — it’s like looking back at history while moving forward at the same time.
Knowing they’re back together, it makes me wonder how we survived their 10-year hiatus.
