Thursday, June 28, 2007

Eight Days Until The Tour, Crappy TV and Other Thoughts

There is nothing good or interesting on TV right now. And I mean nothing. The upside: I have more time to write and workout. The downside? Well, there's nothing to freaking watch on TV. I have no choice but to get caught up on Howard Stern TV (which rules by the way).

Of course, there is always Entourage, but I'm afraid even that is not enjoying its finest season. A "bad" Entourage is still pretty darn good but this season just appears a little ... off. Remember my prediction a few weeks ago that Medellin is going to bomb, throwing the boys into a tailspin. I am still standing by that one.

John from Cinci has totally lost me. It's to meta-something or other, the characters aren't all that interesting and the John character is annoying as hell.

Flight of the Concords isn't half bad. It's a little weird, but starting to grow on me.

Man, I am so desparate I just might give Age of Love (kittens vs, cougars is the premise) a shot. What an incredibly dopie concept. I think reality TV has officially jumped the shark.
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I need a new book. I am reading a fairly interesting one about Navy SEALS (a major obsession by the way; a dedicated post on this subject later) and I just started The Hunt for Lincoln's Killer, which is pretty good, but I am open to suggestions.

I haven't blogged at all on books, but I am a major reader and think I will start a monthly book review. Please let me know if there's anyting you recommend; nothing has really jumped out at me at the bookstore
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Eight days until the Tour de France, baby. I don't have the biggest blog audience in the world, for the record (though I love each and everyone of you), and I am fearful it's going to drop precipitously once I start with my Tour rantings. Try to bear with me. It's a spectacular sport and forget about all the drug nonsense that surrounds the sport. Sure, it's unfortunate, but I can personally care less, much as I could really care less about steroids in baseball. I just love watching both the individual effort as well as the high level of strategy involved on both an individual and team level. It's like watching a chess game with fast moving pieces.

Team Discovery announced their squad today and it is *very* interesting. The big surprise is no Tom Danielson, but he's had a crappy spring. Levi is the team leader, and Johan's prediction that they are "going for the podium" is typical Johan. Either he's playing it coy and Levi is on form or he knows Vino looked unbeatable in the Dauphine. Either way, it should be interesting. I'll be pulling for Levi in a huge way. I'm also intrigued by some of the new guys on Discovery, many of whom I don't know. Should be interesting to see how they perform. The one guy I will be keeping a keen eye on is this Alberto Contador dude, the Spanish climber. We haven't had a good Spanish guy in quite some time and they say this guy is a revelation. I also expect big things from Popo. He's had enough seasoning and it's time for him to take a stage or two.

Ok, I sense in advance I might be losing you, so to wind this down, here's my predictions for the Tour:

3. Levi
2. Menchov
1. Vino.

Let the fireworks begin.
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Couple of interesting new albums out. I'm thus far liking the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. Perry Farrrell's album is getting marginal reviews, but it is really growing on me and I think it's an 8 on a scale of 1-10. And I just go the new Velvet Revolver, which i'm really stoked about.

Dad, if you want any of the above let me know and I'll burn them for you asap.

(Ps. The decision has been made: I am sitting out tomorrow's iPhone introduction. For now, at least)

11 comments:

Crazymamaof6 said...

wow on the i phone sit out! was that the wife speaking? not that it matters! but you never stated her opinion on that subject, and for some reason i wonder these things. My hubby wanted a Wii, so I waited in line at Walmart for many hours the day it was released and scored one, and now i am totally lovin' the wii. good call on my hubby's part.
I also dig on the White Stripes.

Anonymous said...

Loving Flight of the Conchords. I think you should get into Parkour for a new activity, it seems up your alley.

Anonymous said...

"slipsliding away".zzzzzz.GS

Michael said...

i just finished "a small death in lisbon" by robert wilson.

Awesome book, highly recommended historical fiction kind of like Caleb Carr only better...

Anonymous said...

Crazy: My calll. The wife doesn't care. Gonna wait until the next generation ones come out.

Finkel: how did you know I am obsesed with parkour. Gonna write on it as soon as I can figure out how to embed some cool youtube videos

Unknown said...

Dude, you need to seriously rethink your position on all that "drug nonsense".

If you are going to blog about the struggles dealing with major health issues you might want to consider what this is doing to kids who want to emulate their freaking "heroes". Kids are seriously damaging themselves and evening dying because they want to emulate these idiots.

Steroids and doping are an absolute tragedy for sports and for the people that watch them. I enjoy both of these sports as well (well, I pretty much don't have the patience to watch baseball... I'd rather be playing it) but it is much more fun knowing the athletes aren't cheating. Fortunately, sponsors are beginning to get it and pulling the plug on team managers and coaches who turned a blind eye in the past.

So, hopefully we will all get to watch and enjoy the tour (and other events) this year knowing that they are actually capable of doing these super-human feats based on natural ability and hard training and not a bunch of shots and blood transfusions.

Anonymous said...

JEff: my position one drugs in sports in a very simple one. If they want to put their lives at risk, then they can be my guest. They are fully aware of the risks and if they choose to ignore them that is their problem. It has no impact on the fact that I enjoy watching them climb up big monster col's. I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

Anonymous said...

The fuss is about the fact that they put other people's lives at risk too. The kids that don't have the talent and dedication and try to emulate them.... and *don't* know better.

Not to mention that the point of sports is to see people climb the big hills and hit lots of home runs because of their natural ability, skill, dedication, and training. Not to watch the subset of freaks and cheats that decide to take drugs or dope to separate themselves from the others.

Funny how mediocre some of them become once they are forced to stop.

I started running, as you know, in 2002 with a 5K time of 26:40. A few weeks ago I ran a 5K in 19:20 and hope to break 19:00 this year. I know how I got there and it's taken a fair amount of effort. I'd like to think when I watch the Olympics next year that the people running it in 13 minutes are that much better, talented, and dedicated (ok, albeit younger) rather than just the ones willing to shoot up.

Perhaps the issue is that we all tolerate it too much so there is no incentive to fix it. So, I will lead by example and boycott the Tour this year and spend the extra time running and climbing hills myself and not watching or reading about it. I feel liberated already. :-)

Anonymous said...

Lookit Schultzie, gettin' all indignant about those dopers. I will say this for Jeff, he really has worked hard for his gains, and they've been very impressive.

Saying that, I'm definately watching the tour (on my imaginary TV, but oh well). The riders are all being tested, they will all have signed the ICU's anti-doping charter, so it's about as good as it gets. Will someone use drugs? Probably. Will I be able to tell. Nope. Will I enjoy the strategy and teamwork? Yes. Will I enjoy it a whole lot? Yes.

No predictions on finish, except that Howie's predictions will be wrong, and someone very unexpected will be on the podium. It's too wide open this year with all the suspensions, and normally strong teams will not be as strong. Should be a great tour because of that.

Finally, I too have decided to wait for iPhone v2.0. Too many issues with this version, not the least of which is the weak phone service. My contract with Verizon will be up in a year - perfect timing.

Book (you may have read): Places In Between, Rory Stewart.

Anonymous said...

For the record: I obviously don't condone doping, drugs, steroids, etc. That would just be plain silly. I wish they didn't existi but they do and i really believe the only ones who can ultimately stop it are the players/athletes themselves. I shoudl have been more clear but the"nonsense" I was referring to was the media hysteria surrounding this -- not the usuage of the drugs themselves!

That being said, I stand by my orignal point is that I no longer really care. If they want to bring injury upon themselves so be it.

Kind of the way I feel these days about smoking (I know, ironic, huh?) As someone who's going throug hthe hell of cancer I can't imagine why anyone would smoke and run the risk of lung cancer. That being said, I ain't prsethlyzing to them and don;t care what they do, so long as isn't in my air.

ANd -- you KNOW you are watching the TOur this year especially if Levi (who I truly believe is clean) is contending :)

Crazymamaof6 said...

it is easiest to embed youtube by getting the code, and pasting it to HTML option on the layout page. there is blogger for dummies too if you need help, google it.