Maverick - 1, Iceman - 0

We've been playing sandvolleyball on Sunday nights at a horribly named restaurant/bar/sandvolleyball court named Geeters.

You might know Tim McGee (formerly of your Cincinnati Bengals) is "Geeter" (see what he did there?)

He has this cool place that a bunch of our friends hang out at...we take the kids ($1.95 gets a kid's meal) and then play really bad volleyball on really nice sand.  Win Win.

The reason I bring this up is that Groupon has a pretty great deal today.  For $10 you can get $20 worth of food and drinks at Geeters (that's 10 kids meals or 4 adults meals or one kid's meal and an incredibly generous tip).  The deal expires at midnight, so if you're interested...check it out...

More is more?

The National Football League wants to go to 18 regular season games a year.

I'm not sure that I approve. (little known fact:  I have to approve of all moves made by the NFL before they're "official" - you can thank me for those lines that show up on your tv and let you know if they've made the first down).

I sometimes wonder if I'd care about baseball if they played 20 games a year.  I watch 1-2 games each year in person and 0-0 games on television.  I think if there were only 20, I'd probably watch 5-10.  Each game would be worth 5% of a seaon...instead of losing a three game homestand and having it only affect 2% of your season.  I don't have time to care about grown men playing a kid's game for that long of a season.

More does not equal more in sports.  More teams making it to the postseason just waters it down and makes it less spectacular. That's why it's a bigger deal in baseball & football than it is in hockey.  Also in the hockey playoffs you have to watch hockey...so there's that.

For the record - not a fan of more people in the NCAA tournament.
Not a fan of more regular season games in football.
I am a fan of less pre-season games.
I am a fan of The Office.
I am not a fan of any show with "dance" in the title...

it's been too long to not revisit this...

super weird

I'm on a social network named "Facebook".  I know it's a funny name...it's a book of faces?  Or it's a face that looks like a book?  Doesn't matter, it'll never last.

Having said that, I'm on it and I have some Facebook "friends".  In fact I have a ton of friends (2,000 pounds...it's actually not hard.  You get 10 big guys and you're there).
Also, like many people who attend a large church, I have a bunch of these "friends" that I don't necessarily hang out with every day.  Occasionally I'll even receive a friend request from someone I don't really know that well.  Typically I'll click the button that says something like "mutual friends".  If it's a bunch of people I know, I figure I know this person and I'll hit "accept".
It's just who I am.

The other day I received a request from a name I didn't recognize.  I looked for mutual friends and we didn't have any.  I clicked on their name and it turns out they only had three friends.  Even if these friends were huge, there was almost no chance she had a ton of facebook friends.

Would you like to know the three friends?
Sure you would
Sean Michael Murphy
Sean Michael Murphy
& a guy named Sean Michael Murphy

I would have been the fourth.
This tells me a couple of things.
1.  I was her fourth pick of Sean Michael Murphys in this world
2.  I'm fairly certain this is how a cereal killer would find out info before appearing at your house with a flamethrower and a well worn copy of Catcher in the Rye.

how great are they?

Why is Chipotle the best?
2 things - they have a burrito that couldn't improve even with bacon.

-they're dining room has the feel of an underground bunker/fightclub

now let me tell you a story...

I was hanging out bench pressing and helping old ladies cross the street when I got a call.

Hello

Hello, is this Sean Michael Murphy?

Yup

Sean, you won our fishbowl drawing at Chipotle

excellent, what does that mean?

It means you are a lucky s.o.b. Sean

by s.o.b. do you mean Student of Bob Saget?

Umm...no

and what do I get?

You get four free burritos

excellent

And so I ordered four burritos, two bags of chips with salsa and three large cheese quesadillas (I was hungry) (and we were having friends over) (and quit judging my order)

So in theory I only have to pay for the non-burrito items, right?

Wrong - Chipotle doesn't play like that...it was all free.

Free like the air you breathe and the six pack ring holder things that come with your diet dr pepper and eventually choke dolphins...

and I love them...

Batman is weird...

This could be great...in fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that it will be great.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 7:30 there will be comedy performed by people standing up at Go Bananas Comedy Club .
Yup.
$5

Young Mat Thornburg will be one of the people telling jokes whildst standing.  How great would it be to be one of the people sitting and listening...and then laughing at those very jokes?
I'll tell you.
Really great

This is the semi-finals of the Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest.  They'll have a bunch of comedians perform, we all vote for Mat...and then a headliner performs and we all go home having beta-endorphins coursing through our veins.
Win-Win.

So let's all go and laugh a bit...what could be better?
8410 Market Place Lane

Montgomery, OH 45242-5332
Tel: (513) 984-9288

Predictions

I predict that Lebron James will be Florida's all time greatest basketball player named Lebron.

I predict that Dan Gilbert will feel a little stupid every time he's reminded of the open letter he wrote about the guy who used to work for him who decided to work for someone else.  Speaking of that...have you ever left a job for a new one and been branded a coward?  Seems like an odd thing to call someone who decides they'd rather work for someone else.   I'm one of those crazy people who thinks it's ok to choose what city you want to live in and who you want to work for.  I also think it's ok to want to work with my friends.  Seems like a pretty ok thing...that's just me though.

I predict we'll go metric, but alter it just a bit to make it more American.

I predict Tiger will get more coverage at the British Open than Frank Lickliter.

I predict Al Gore will be the next Bachelor.

I predict predictions are going to become the new "It" thing for weblogs in late 2010.

Best Seat in the House

The Excellence in Sports Programming Network Magazine recently determined that seat 16 in row 17 in section 113 in the HP Pavilion was the ultimate sports seat.

They factored in things like ticket price, elbow room, view, success of the team and access to things like bathrooms and beers.

There are a few problems with their numbers.
-the seat wasn't at a Steeler's game
-it was a set at a hockey arena
-it was a lone seat.  There was no other seat in that row...which was the elbow room plus.  Who wants to go to a game and sit by themself? 

I've determined that just about any seat in Prasko park(Home of the Spikes) is the best seat in sports.  In fact, I've recently been told that Monday, July 12th is Chick Fil-A night at the park.  That means free chicken sandwiches and free baseball.  Win Win.

I've determined that the right side of our loveseat in the living room or family room (I don't know which is which) is the best seat in air conditioned sports.
-Access to a 27 inch old school television set. (not flat, which makes it harder to steal)
-conditioned air flowing from beneath the loveseat
-7 feet from fridge
-13 feet from a fully functioning bathroom
-21 feet from offstreet parking (free)

Just something to keep in mind for the next Super Bowl...

Hey Now

There are several reasons I think the Major League Baseball All Star team is silly.
Number one on that list is that I decide who makes the teams.

It's not just me, but I get to vote.  People get mad when "the best singer" gets voted off American Idol and it turns from a karaoke show into a popularity contest.  An all star team decided by fans like me (full disclosure - I'm not really fanatical about baseball) is that much worse. 

What do we know about baseball?  Don't most people just vote for their favorite players from their team?

Baseball people say that it's the little things that win in baseball....like pitching and defense.  Nobody really cares about defense when they're voting for All Stars.  We just pick the guy with the highest batting average or the most home runs.  We don't know defense any better than we understand the balk rule.  It's easy to talk numbers, but we don't know how many errors Mark Lemke has (zero). 

We're dumb when it comes to the sport...and we're the deciders of who is worthy to be named an All Star?
It's silly really...
almost as silly as me spending 4 minutes writing this...but I'm on vacation, so what else am I going to do?

Postscript - did you know that Evan Meek has a .96 Earned Run Average?
Post-Postscript - did you know that the Cincinnait Spikes have a game today at 6:30?
Post-Post-Postscript - yesterday I bought a few Florence Freedom tickets through groupon.  I'm rapidly becoming fanatical about the Freedom and also groupon as well...

The Greatest Place in the World

I went to a Cincinnati Spikes game yesterday (sortta...turned out it was two visiting teams...doesn't matter).

I didn't really know there was such a thing, but there is this beautiful baseball park with all the normal stuff - manicured field, jumbotron next to the scoreboard, concession stand....everything...right there in beautiful downtown Mason, Ohio.

It was free to get tickets.  In fact there were no tickets...you just sit wherever you like.  We went front row...and then bumped it back a couple just because we could.

this one was like a t-ball, but the ball floated as if an Angel was holding it...

Before we even went into the park the kids played on the giant inflatables that were out in the parking lot.

Those were free too.

It was a warm day, so the natural thing to do is to wander over to the ice cream truck.  This isn't the airbrushed truck you see with the guy that looks like Jerry Garcia's twin brother, the one that was too strung out on crack to hang with those uptight guys in his brother's band, and smells like wet garbage and freezer burn.  This was more like the ice cream truck of your childhood.  The only difference is that the ice cream that fills it is all free.

Yup - free ice cream truck.

Then you go into the game and sit in the front row to enjoy baseball on a beautiful down.

If you've ever taken kids to a game you know that they enjoy about a minute and a half of the game before they want you to buy them a miniature bat and an oversized pretzel.

Pretzels that were slightly larger than Brad's hats cost fifty cents.  If they made you thirsty you could get a bottled water for a quarter, or a Diet Coke for fifty cents.

Our kids loved the ringpops...so we'd toss them a quarter and tell them to keep the change...they were ten cents...

We were living like the Huxtables yo

odd, but true

I'm applying toothpaste to my spectacles right now.
I just lied a little...how could I possibly type and apply toothpaste to eyeglasses?
Who starts a weblog with a lie?
Who says eyeglasses...or spectacles for that matter?
It's sort of like when someone references an ink pen...

Not really the point.  As many of you may know, toothpaste takes skips and scratches out of digital video discs, compact discs.  If you don't know that, you don't know churchpunk.  If you do know churchpunk, why do you think he's keeping all his knowledge to himself?

Anyhow, I'd post a picture of how scratched my glasses were pre-toothpaste...but I can't go back in time.
If I could go back in time I wouldn't post the pic either...I'd take my video camera and photograph historical events like the Kennedy assassination and today someone would say, "in the Zapruder film you can clearly see..." only to be interrupted by someone saying, "yes, but the Murphy film is in high def and has a commentary from John Belushi".

Either way - if you're keeping score at home it's
toothpaste - 1
scratches - 0
USA Soccer - not really sure...they lost, right?