Mock Draft (NUBA)

Sports post, move along if you don't like it.

1&2 need no explanation, this is why im hot

1. Portland - Oden, C, OSU
2. Seattle - Durant, F, UT
3. Atlanta - Al Horford, F, UF
4. Memphis- Conley Jr., G, OSU
5. Boston - Corey Brewer, G, UF
6. Milwaukee - Joakim Noah, F, UF
7. Minnesota - Brendan Wright, F, UNC
8. Charlotte - Al Thornton, F, FSU
9. Chicago (from New York) - Yi Jianlin, F, China
10. Sacramento - Jeff Green, F, GU
11. Atlanta (from Indiana) - Acie Law IV, G, Tex A&M
12. Philadelphia - Julian Wright, F, Kansas
13. New Orleans - Nick Young, G, USC
14. L.A. Clippers - Rodney Stuckey, G, East. Wash
15. Detroit (from Orlando) - Jason Smith, C, Colorado
16. Washington - Spencer Hawes, C, Wash
17. New Jersey - Glen Davis, F, LSU
18. Golden State - Tiago Splitter, F/C, Brazil
19. L.A. Lakers - Morris Almond, G, Rice
20. Miami - Gabe Pruitt, G, USC
21. Philadelphia (from Denver) - Thaddeus Young, F, Gtech
22. Charlotte (from Toronto via Cleveland) - Marco Benilli, G, Italy
23. New York (from Chicago) - (2) -Sean Williams, C, B.C
24. Phoenix (from Cleveland via Boston) - Daquean Cook, G, OSU
25. Utah - Rudy Fernandez, G, Spain
26. Houston - Javaris Crittenton, G, Gtech
27. Detroit - Wilson Chandler, F, Depaul
28. San Antonio - Jared Dudley, F, B.C
29. Phoenix - Nick Fazekas, F, Nevada
30. Philadelphia (from Dallas via Golden State and Denver) - Demetris Nichols, G, Cuse


Let's talk about it.

White Condiments

I don't like White Condiments. At all. Zip, Zilch, None.

Fuck you Mayo. Fuck you Sour Cream.

While we are at it.....

I don't care for Mustard, not even on a hot Pastrami

I hate salad dressings, mostly cuz they defeat the purpose of eating a salad.
And I don't care if it's Russian or French or if it comes from a Ranch......

Take your Nacho Cheese and leave. Actually I'm not a cheese guy. I may fuck with a little Cheddar or Muenster but other than Mozz (which is the cheese of Jesus) I don't care for it.

I don't like Onions but like the flavor and cook with them all the time.

And I think that about does it. I'm sure I'm missing some items. If I think of anymore I'll re-post or throw them in a Beer and Meat post.

Coney Island

There are some grand plans for Coney Island, the famed Brooklyn beach that rests comfortably in New York City lore. Check out what Thor Equities have in store for the sacred spot. (they better not fuck with Nathans!)

First a little education....Coney Island.

Now here is Thor's website with loose plans to turn Coney Island into a resort town.
The Future of Coney Island

Plans of resorts and crap

It's a huge story here because even though it was a rundown piece of shit place to be it was everyone's childhood memory of an amusement park. When I was a kid we went there, when my father was a kid he went there and when his father was a kid he wished he went there!

I'm a little skeptic of course but what ca i do? I don't have 1.6 billion dollars to stop it so I can only hope they don't fuck it up.

Glad they are keeping the Cyclone running though. Gonna have to hop on that thing for old times sake. If I die on it, so be it.

Yo Soy tu Papi

Fathers day, me, my unc and cuz hit Marine Park for a little basketball. About 9am we head out and play three on three for a couple of hours. It's cool. It's like a father's day tradition. We are all pretty good at basketball so usually we win. Once in awhile we lose but that don't matter. As long as we hoopin' together.

He's tall and is a very good rebounder. My cuz is dead on from beyond the arc and a excellent passer and me, i'm fast to the hole and my jumpshot is money. And we all defend well.

I lived with my unc from 18 til i married so he's like my pops. My dad passed years ago but it's all good cuz of the fam i have. We all tight like Jessica Biel's bootay.

Anywayz we gonna try this every weekend. Sunday am, us three taking on the world. Marine Park gots some pretty good ballers so the comp is always good. There are 8 half courts or 4 full. We never run full. It's always three on three's. If it gets crowded we go four but rarely. It's mostly jews and blacks that play there. We are almost always the only white folf who aint jewish but again, the comp is good so we dont care. I love playing against the brothers anyway. It's a nice run, a good test if you will. They are the dominant in the sport no doubt so it's nice to measure up, if you will. They are fast and can jump high. You gotta body them up, can't let them just fly to the hole.

The Jews are shooters. They hit set shots and set screens all day long. Without a hand in thier face they will hit every shot. No joke. You can lose real quick to them if you ain't up in their grill. On defense they are grabbers. They grab the shit out of me cuz like i said, I'm fast to the hole. but it's all good, I never call foul so it's real rewarding when i score with a jew hangin on my back.

basketball = fun

Beer and Meat

These people are just going to fight forever

Gun-runners love the Palenstines

So I guess times have changed since I was a teen

Militaty school. Wanna blow shit up, fine, do it for the USA. Retards.

Gotta Love Ahnold

Word to your mother.

Ok, how a grown man pisses on the floor in the office bathroom he works at is mind-boggling.
And who's the guy that leaves his pubes on the urinal? I didn't know hair loss occured in the nether-regions. Fucking slobs.

I'm beyond pshyched about this movie
I like to think about myself as a Dark Knight sometimes.

This week I wiki'd the following:

Anchorage, Alaska
Las Vegas, New Mexico
Ellis Island
Raymond Burr
Toothpaste (Did you know the Romans used thier own urine as a tooth cleanser?)
Tiddlywinks
Re-purchase agreements
The Dark Knight
Vincent McMahon
Sea Cucumber

It's like I could have skipped school and just learn shit on Wikipedia. I think I am going to go this route with my firstborn. We'll see.

I'm tired.

If the I-pod was a man, I'd be gay.

The Ipod.

Revolutionized music as we know it.
Exactly how great is it?
I can sum that up for you in one sentence.

Yielding the power of having 10,000 songs in the palm of your hand.

Done and done.

My music tastes are widespread like poverty. I like mostly everything except "folk" music, certain country music, most techno and some pop. But there isn't a genre in my ipod to which I discourage.

What's better is that all of this music, is, in a word....."discounted" (*wink).

So if I catch on to a obscure band I can search the net and find thier music. I don't have to wait for the "album" to drop or for the buzz to go commercial. I can Limewire or Torrent that sumbitch faster than a pre-mature orgasm.

Sometimes I just put the I-Pod on and shuffle all 7,000 songs to see which song will pop up.

Will it be "Hello" by Lionel Richie?
Will it be "War" by Edwin Starr?
Will it be "One" by U2?
Will it be "What's Beef" by The Notorious Big?
Will it be "Hurt" by NIN?
Will it be "Summer Wind" by Fran Sinatra?

The possibilities keep my giddy.

I also like making playlists with funny titles. Titles like "Cactus" or "Tig Ol' Bitties"

I haven't purchased a CD in 3 years. I don't even have a CD player in my house (even though DVD and the XBOX can play them). All I need is my headphones, my computer, my Bose Soundock and for car rides my FM transmitter. I'm all set.

I-Pod, I heart you.

Sopranos

I've read alot of Soprano's reviews and this one to me is dead on. Props to Matthew Cerrone over at the Metsblog. I'm in agreement with him by the way. At first a little disapointment but when you think about the life of the show it was a fitting ending.

Don't expect happiness, you won't get it. Life is all a big nothing. In the end, your friends and family let you down, and you die in your own arms.” - Livia Soprano

Yes, I loved the ending. It took me a while. Initially, I was frustrated and confused, and a bit disappointed. However, I talked with a few people, read a review or two, watched the episode again, and thought about the overall series, what the writers have been telling us for years about our society and about Tony, and then it all clicked – and I was more than satisfied with what transpired in the series finale, which was perfect, brilliant and underwhelming all at the same time, much like life I suppose.

How could we ever have expected closure? We’re such fools. This show has always been about ‘life,’ and in life you don’t get closure. It just ends. Suddenly. You only get darkness.

In the first episode of Season Six, the start of show’s final arc, Agent Harris says, “No one ever went broke overestimating the taste of the American public,” and then he throws up an Italian sandwich. If that isn’t a commentary on how we, the viewing public, expect things from the show, i.e. closure, I don’t know what is. I always think of that line when I am watching this show, because it’s a clear F-U from the writers to our expectations – and those of us who though AJ would kill Tony, or that Tony would flip to the Feds, etc, should have known better.

To me, the show’s creator, David Chase, who wrote and directed this episode, is saying, “You are what you are.” You’ll never change, no matter how hard you try – and its okay, it doesn’t matter, because in the end it’s all just a faded, distant memory, like for Uncle Junior, or, if you’re lucky, it all just goes black in an instant – and everyone’s life goes on with out you. This is very sad. I actually feel very strange today, because I can’t get this idea of mortality and legacy out of my head, two concepts the show has focused a lot on during this season. I mean, is that really it? Will I end up in a chair one day, unable to remember the life behind me, like Uncle Junior, meaning it all may not have happened anyways, or, will I just be living my life and then bam, it’s over – maybe from a heart attack, or a car accident, or old age, whatever – either way does it just all go black? It’s a scary thought, and Chase is telling us what he thinks, which is that when your show ends, life simply goes on without you.

As for the episode, the idea of “I am what I am, it’s my nature, I can’t help it” which is uttered in a ton of great literature, is the essence of this final episode. Keeping this idea in mind, there actually is closure in some way.

Tony has repeatedly said there are only two options for him: Death or prison. Tony is living on borrowed time, and we know it, so that’s how the show ends. Someday, Tony will either die or go to jail. In fact, the wheels are in motion for prison, with Carlo going to the Feds. Nevertheless, we know this is Tony’s fate, he knows it’s his fate – so, do we really need to see Tony, our hero, for better or worse, have his brains spilled out on a table in a dinner - do we really want to see Tony being hauled off to jail, as a loser. I don’t. I know it’ll happen one day, but I don’t want to remember him that way, which hits on that legacy idea again. Regardless, the bell tolls for Tony, like the bell that kept ringing on the door in the restaurant at the end of the show. The bell rings, Tony looks up, and it’s over, just blackness. “You probably don't even hear it when it happens,” like Bobby Baccala says in this season’s first episode. Frankly, neither did we. All we got was silence, for a painful amount of time, much like death, I suppose. Maybe Tony didn’t get shot right there, by the guy who looked like his dad in the ‘Members Only’ jacket, but when he does, and you know he eventually will, that’s how it will go down. Bam. Blackness. “It’s all a big nothing.” So that’s Tony’s life, waiting to be arrested or whacked, always looking up at the door wondering if this is it, is this the one. That’s his hell. That’s his life. That’s our closure. Eventually it will end. Maybe Chase didn’t give us direct visual closure, but by giving us implied closure, he also protected our eternal image of Tony, with his family, “trying to remember the good times,” while eating supper as a father, which is all he ever really wanted to be – and, frankly, all we wanted him to be, as well. Either that, or Chase whacked us, and our world just went black. Or both, I suppose. Either way, life goes on, like the song from Journey said in that final shot, “Oh, the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on, Don't stop.” Cut to black, now you, the viewer, can go on with your life.

Lastly, Chase has always used this show as a way to expose Americans as being a material, self-absorbed, bargaining type culture, whose best days are behind it. It’s actually the basis of the very first conversation between him and Dr. Melfi. If you buy in to this, the writers are essentially painting Tony’s family as America. Hell, the title of the episode was “Made in America.” Each character has a chance to do good, but when faced with struggle and sacrifice they all revert back to what they know. This has happened over and over and over again on this show. They tease you with redemption, then yank each character back in to the materialistic world they are most comfortable in. We’d like to think we are capable of change, and being all philosophical, and enlightened, listening to Bob Dylan in our SUVs, but we aren’t. We are who we are. We try to change, but can only muster up cosmetic adjustments, like cute bumper stickers and weight loss diets, all while telling ourselves and others that we’re good people and still the best, even though we know the best is behind us. I suspect that Chase sees this as America’s biggest flaw going forward, and he may be right. Personally, I’ll keep ‘believing’, like the final song in the show suggested. Contrary to most people’s view of me, I’m very much an optimist, hence the Half Full shirt I like to wear.

A few random thoughts…


I truly believe the writers are leading us to believe Tony eventually gets whacked, set up by the Members Only jacket on the guy at the end, who a) looked like his dad, and b) is the name of episode when Tony got shot by Junior; also, Tony’s eating an orange earlier in the last episode, which a) is odd, because he never eats fruit, and b) is a total hat tip to the Godfather, which used oranges as a foreshadow for death. Specifically, Phil is killed in front of his wife and two grandkids, which, to me, is foreshadowing for Tony being killed in front of his wife and two kids. Regardless, in some way, Tony is already dead, at least in the eyes of his subordinates. I mean, did you see how dejected and unloyal they all acted towards him. Again, if he didn’t actually die in that final scene, which is how I like to imagine it, then he will die in that manner some day.
The scene with Tony and Paulie, at the end, outside of Satriale’s, was beautiful when viewed in contract to how that same sort of scene was filmed in years past. Once, to be out front of Satriale’s showed a large group of guys, lots of conversation, camaraderie, laughter, life, action, etc. Now, it’s just Tony, Paulie and a bunch of empty chairs, with the scene all washed out and very quiet and awkward. The mafia’s impact is essentially dead. I mean, there’s a Jamba Juice up the street from them. In addition, they drive this home in another brilliant moment, in which Butchie walks a few blocks in Little Italy, only to run out road and end up in Chinatown. The best is behind you, Butchie.

I loved AJ coming down the steps in a robe, just like Tony. Nice touch.
In therapy, with AJ’s shrink, Tony falls right in to his old pattern with Melfi, simply complaining of his mother, no effort to move forward, again, he is what he is. The look Carmella gave him was priceless. That look alone was worthy of an Emmy.
In the end, after all the stuff with Adriana, and the wire taps, etc, it’s not Tony he flips to the Feds, but, instead, Tony flips the Feds, and gets Agent Harris to dime out Phil Leotardo. This is important, too. Harris is suppose to be a good guy, like us, and yet, here he is watching and cheering on the train wreck just like us, just like the people at the Bing who gathered like a mob to see Silvio gunned down. Why are we so obsessed with these villains like Tony? Why do we live vicariously through evil?

I read some place that Chase and Co. specifically cast an Italian looking man, who looked like Tony’s dad, for that final scene. In fact, the guy isn’t even an actor, but a pizzeria owner up the street from that real restaurant who they ran in to while at lunch and asked to be in the show. Why an Italian guy? Did they want to create suspicion? Was this a final commentary on the omnipresent subject of how society views Italian-Americans as criminals, and we all just did the same? Very clever.

dont cry, dry your eye

Saw Children on Men last night....
pretty solid.

Overall I liked the idea, the concept. Infertility. No babies, no new humans, the human race could be extinct. It made for alot of goings on if you know what I'm sayin. I liked the camera work towards the end too. The blood droplets on the lens was campbell soup good.

What made it better was the Clive Owen who since Sin City has really turned in some serious stuff. I think right now only Matt Damon is better. And he's gotta bunch of shit in the works so that's good. And Bale, Bale's quality lately as well.

If anyone is a fan of Rob and Big on MTV I've commemorated the show with a tshirt. The show is hilarity.

DO WORK SON Tshirt

Ojos Update Pt. II

After yesterday's latest eye doc visit I'm proud to say that LaSiK was a success. I'm 20/20 without any glasses/contacts and I'm loving it. I have one complaint and that is my night vision is not exactly sharp. However it will get better. By sayin not exactly sharp I mean that certain lights at night seem slightly blurry but it doesn't really effect me much. I can drive at night and can see just fine. It's more like an annoyance. Other than that, perfect vision. Last time I said that I was 8.

Introducing El Padrino's Wikipedia Search of the Day

The Wikipedia Search of the Day is:

The tasmanian devil

I should create a new blog that details or links all of my Wiki searches.....they are so random.
If not then I will dedicate a day every week to highlight the searches.

your welcome.

I hate lists but this one is good, i wrote it

Top ten reasons I hate working in an office.

10. Art. Puhleeze. The shit they hang on the wall is downright wrong. Just wrong. I'm no Art-ie but for fuck's sake there were no pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge or how bout just some clouds and shit. Sceanary maannn.

9. "Building Secruity" I laugh at you, I pity you. OHHHHH, you got me! I forgot my badge at home, oh no!!! I'M SOOOOO SCARRRED.

8. To the receptionist that thinks she is the Queen of England. Sending out all this ridiculous "Urgent" emails. Bitch please. Your nothing. Order me some toner and move along.

7. The herd of people that gravitate towards any and all kinds of food. I refuse to be that person. I feel like I'm on a soup line or like I'm a pig waiting for the feed to be poured. It's usually shitty food too so I don't even get it. If it was bacon wrapped scallops ok but crushing another human for a gross tuna wrap is not my bag.

6. "Good morning", i'm not a morning person. I say maybe three words to my wife in the morning so sorry Timmy at extension 3659 if I don't say good morning to you. Eat an ass.

5. "It's Friday!" or "Hump day".... you know what. I'm 27 years old. I know what day it is. Thanks. And I also know that right after Friday, is Saturday. And after June is July. Get the picture buttknuckle?

4. The whole elevator scene freaks me out. And I've posted about this before.
"Hi, how are you" blah, blah "it's sunny outside" blah blah. Now the new thing is the Blackberry's. People get in the elevator and jog thru thier blackberry AS IF THEY DIDN'T JUST LEAVE THIER DESK!!!! Then of course there are the smokers who stink like an ashtray and the other smokers who smoke people with thier foul smelling asses. It's just an abortion. I'd rather take stairs.

3. Offensive clothing and I mean like the fat lady who dons spaghetti string tank tops offensive. And to the dude that wears light blue pants. Fucking homo, keep that lifestyle to yourself. And how about the sister patterson type with the fucking Easter hat on? Who knew you can wear hats to work? I also could do wiothout Guido chest hair in my face look, with the top 4 buttons not closed. Little much. Nice cross though, where'd you get it? The Gambino garage sale?

2. Bathroom/Kitchen situations. This is two-fold so follow me here.
Bathroom : I am not a urinal talker so please let me pee in silence. People that don't wash thier hands, you are the germs of the world. And to whoever shits on the toilet bowl I'm pretty sure if God knew you were going to do that he would have never put you on earth.
Kitchen/Pantry : Please stop putting your water bottle on the water dispenser's nipple. That's nasty. Please stop telling me my re-heated pasta smells good. And don't look at it. Please don't re-heat fish, it smells. Enough with the Cod fish lunchtimes. Clean up after yourselves. Dirty tupperware on the counter and blown up bits of alphabet soup in the microwave is gross. Slobs.

1. People. People I would never deal with unless I worked with them. That's the number one thing I hate about working in the office. The gollum, a garlic eating Polish menace. The fat ogre who oohh's and aaahhh's at the site of food. The gay manager that wears a backpack? The tiny chinese woman who smells like a sweaty taint. My boss, an overly agressive maniacal psycho.
The tall white man who screams instead of talks. The other tall whiteguy who stomps instead of walks. Basically I feel like they are all aliens and I'm the only semi-human. I could post for days on all these "people".

There you have it. My life from 9-5.