Blogroll Updates 2.20.08

Just doing a little bit of housekeeping, folks. I'm deleting two links from my blogroll. Comedian Jim Norton is gone, as his blog is no longer being updated, and my girlfriend has decided to make her blog readable by invitation only, so that link has to go as well.

With spring training starting up, I'm adding a baseball blog to the list that was passed to me by my buddy Zeb (and no, it's not a Yankee blog, either)--UmpBump.com.

Finally, I've changed my links and blogrolls section to be alphabetical rather than more-or-less-order-added. It's a timesaver when I add and delete links, since it will alphabetize automatically, versus me manually moving each new site to the bottom of the list.

All In The Family

Fidel Castro resigns as Cuba's leader

If you have Fidel in your celebrity dead pool, it's looking better and better for you. He doesn't strike me as the type of guy who'd just up and quit unless his short term health outlook was very grim indeed.

Just don't look for any big changes in the lil'est Communist dictatorship, at least in the short term. Every indication is that baby brother Raul will simply remove the "interim" from his current job title and take over as the country's leader. He's talked of reform, but it sounds pretty minor league (increasing government wages rather than overhauling the totalitarian government structure). The only saving grace in this transition is that Raul is only five years younger than Fidel--hopefully once both of the Castro Brothers are gone, Cuba can be free once more and the U.S. can lift their embargoes. I want my Cuban cigars!

Guevarobama

OK, enough sports...time for some politics!

Apparently, some of Obama's staff support a terrorist after all...just not one who's Islamic. Or alive.

This guy becomes more worrisome to me every day. I can't believe there's a candidate out there who makes Hilary Clinton the more appealing Democratic nominee.

Hat tip to Clay over at the August Knights Forums for spotting this one.

Houston, We Have A Steroid Problem

Roger says he didn't. Andy says he did. And Brian says he has the evidence to prove it.

And when it comes right down to it, Pettitte is pretty damn believable. He has admitted to his own use of HGH (for injury recovery at a time when it was allowed under MLB rules) and has nothing to gain.


McNamee, on the other hand, comes across as either a liar or an utter scumbag with his alleged physical evidence that he claims has been kept in his basement for the past eight years. If this is true, then he's been planning to turn on his friend and employer for a long, long time. That doesn't mark him as the kind of upstanding citizen who makes a reliable witness.

There are other little things that point to Clemens being a steroid user, like when he winged a piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza during the double-aught World Series--'roid rage, anyone? Then there's his giant head--other notable members of that club are Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire...hmmmm.

The whole "congressional inquiry" thing seems a bit ridiculous in sports when there's a war going on, but at least this series of hearings on grown men playing a kids' game is aimed at protecting people's health. Sen. Arlen Specter apparently feels it's the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's job to make sure no one's stealing signs, either.

Of course, the best argument to keep kids off steroids should be Roger Clemens's 2007 stats line. Combine that with a couple of months on the DL, and steroid abuse should be a thing of the past. Who wants to emulate those numbers?

Proud to Be...A Super Bowl Champion!

This video says it all.

Champs!!

I'm sitting here absolutely stunned right now. Two weeks into this season, I said to my dad, "The Giants are a 4-12 team...but I can't figure out which four teams they're going to beat." Five months later, my team is this year's champions. I couldn't have been more wrong about the game. I thought it would be an offensive shootout--somewhere along the lines of 38-35. I thought the "over" would be the safe bet--boy, was I wrong on that one. Here's some other random thoughts from the game and the season.

- Ryan Seacrest has no business on a football pregame show. If that little Nancy has ever watched a game in his life, it was to watch the linemen get into position (if you catch my drift.)

- Giants G.M. Jerry Reese is a genius. Everyone from this year's draft made a contribution, and even the guy from the preseason who made a big contribution to another team (Packers RB Ryan Grant) was traded for a pick in this year's draft.

- I was ready to fire Coughlin after a lackluster preseason and an 0-2 start. Now I think the Giants would be foolish to sign him to less than a 5-year extension. (And for the record, my girlfriend did predict that the Giants would win the Super Bowl to cheer me up after the loss to the Packers in week 2. She just didn't predict it'd be over her dad's Patriots.)

- I thought Joe Buck should be fired for calling Giants DE Justin Tuck "Jason Tuck" for the second consecutive broadcast during the game. I was even more appalled when Stuart Scott did the same thing during the SportsCenter highlights with time to prepare. Unpreparedness is, to my mind, a worse offense than trying to make a joke that comes up offensive. If Don Imus and Kelly Tilghman get punished, then Buck and Scott should be punished even more harshly for their faux pas.
- David Tyree's final catch should be replayed as often as that of Franco Harris. It truly was the Immaculate Reception for the new millenium.

- Who ever would have thought that the Mike Barnes of the NFL (that would be Randy Moss) would be more gracious in defeat than Bill Belichick, who basically got his start with the franchise that defeated him tonight? I guess that makes him the NFL's John Creese, which in turn makes Bob Kraft football's answer to Terry Silver.

- And apparently I wasn't the only naysayer who reads this blog. Check out the comments on this post.

Congratulations to the Patriots for setting the record for wins in a season, and for an excellent Super Bowl. And congratulations to MVP Eli Manning and the Giants. This truly was one for the ages, and for the next year, at least, you truly are...the best around.

(Photo from FoxSports.com.)

Easy E

Welcome back for another year at Beast's World! I'd like to start another year with congratulations to my New York Giants, especially Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin for finally winning a playoff game wearing the Big Blue. Next stop: Dallas; nothing would make me happier than for the Giants to be the team that knocks the Cowboys and the vastly overrated Tony Romo out of the playoffs.

As for the game itself, I'd give the game ball to Corey Webster, who has now shed his "bust" label in a single game with a pick and a fumble recovery. (Until yesterday, I had him pegged as Will Allen Jr., only with fewer interceptions.)

The only negative I can see out of this game is that after this, Tom Coughlin is sure to get a huge contract extension, and keep Kevin Gilbride with him. I just don't see the former as a Super Bowl winning coach, though I'd love to be wrong. As for Gilbride, let's just say that I don't think the man who brought us Ryan Leaf is the best person to be developing a mercurial talent like Eli Manning.

Of course, if the Giants do somehow manage to get to the Super Bowl, I'll have to eat that paragraph, but an NFC championship is sauce that can make crow taste oh-so-good.

(Photo from Sports Illustrated.)

This Is Not A Retraction

No, I haven't backed down on the comments I made about A-Rod in my last post merely because he re-signed with the Yankees. He really thought he could get $300 million from some sucker GM, then came back to suckle on the Yankee teat when no one was buying. Yes, I'm sure super-scumbag agent Scott Boras deserves some, or even most, of the blame, but A-Rod hasn't shown any loyalty to his team this offseason. I won't be booing you, Alex, but rest assured that my cheers are first and foremost to the uniform. The uniform, and the fact that you have the best chance at restoring legitimacy to the now-tainted career home run record.

Expired Thoughts

I had a number of things that I'd intended to be individual blog posts over the last week, but I never got around to it, and now they're well past their expiration date.  Nonetheless, take a whiff from the curdled milk carton that is my mind:

- The Giants came through their game in London without any major injuries, a minor miracle in and of itself.  Soccer is not like football, and a soccer pitch is not a good football field.  British fans don't care about football (as evidenced by the closed seating sections) and don't understand it either (as evidenced by the whistles coming from the stands and by the boos at the end of the game when the Giants killed the clock.)  Hopefully the NFL learns a lesson and leaves American football in America where it belongs.

- Joe Torre needs to look up the definition of "insult".  Hint: it's not $5 million with a $3 million incentive bonus when you haven't even won an AL title in seven years.  I just hope you don't take too much of our talent out to L.A. with you. 

-  So long, Mr. April (a.k.a. A-Rod).  I hope you end up making less money because your wife takes half of whatever contract you sign.

- Fido is a fantastic movie, recommended for fans of zombies, fans of '50s sitcoms, fans of Billy Connolly, and fans of satire.

Book Review: Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay

I'm a big fan of justice, and most of the time mere revenge is an adequate substitute. And while often times neither is possible in the real world, I love tales of justice and revenge in fiction. So it should come as no great surprise that I'm a fan of both incarnations of Dexter--the uber-graphic serial killer saga on Showtime and the series of novels that inspired it. The show is back, and appears to be diverging from the plot of the books (a good thing, since I spoiled the end of the first season for myself by reading the first novel). But the latest book in the series? Eh....not so much.

Oh, stylistically, not much has changed. Dexter is still a sharp, sarcastic, soulless sonuvabitch--Jeff Lindsay's still got the knack for writing the protagonist's inner standup comedy routine down cold. No, the problems here are all in the plot. Up until this point, the books have unfolded exclusively from Dexter's first-person narration. In the third installment, Lindsay experiments with interludes with the villain's (or is that villains' ?) from the third-person "omniscient narrator". This would work....except for the antagonist itself. Dexter has been compared to Batman before (and even refers to himself sarcastically as the Dark Knight this time around), but just like Batman, Dexter is a mere mortal, and likewise the foes he deals with. His "Dark Passenger" that drives him to kill and provides him with the insight to find the worst of society's predators for his victims, up until now treated as a mere psychotic trick of the mind, is now revealed to be something more, something supernatural and older than time, changing Dexter from a brilliant-yet-demented detective into a possessed-yet-still-in-control bystander, and moving the book's feel away from Batman and more towards a Spider-Man-with-the-symbiote-costume. All in all, a disappointing entry in the book series, recommended only to the most die-hard Dexter fans. Here's hoping Lindsay can get the series back to basics in the inevitable next volume.

Drink Review: K Cider

For the most part, I'm strictly a beer-and-Scotch guy when it comes to my drinking. I certainly enjoy a nice bottle of wine with dinner from time to time, but I wouldn't be caught dead drinking a Zima, wine cooler, or other fruity beverage (fruity referring to both their flavor and their target demographic.) But my girlfriend came to Delaware for a visit over the weekend, and since her tastes are somewhat different from mine, I thought it best to have something other than Penn Oktoberfest in my fridge. If I'd have bought a container of Seagram's wine coolers, I wouldn't have been able to show my face in my local liquor store ever again, so what to buy? Then inspiration hit me--cider! It's the one fruit-ish beverage that even I enjoy, especially this time of year, and I found a beauty of an import tucked away in the store's "girlie fridge". It's an imported hard cider from the U.K. that goes by the simple moniker of "K", and it's far superior to the American offerings on the market. The likes of Woodchuck and Hornsby are OK, but overly sweet--closer in taste to a Zima than a nice mug of spiced cider. (The beer list/guide at Monk's Cafe in Philly refers to American ciders as "sugar water".) That's not the case here--K seems to have almost no sweetness to it whatsoever, giving it a crisp, tart flavor that's not to be missed. Highest recommendation for the cider aficionado.

New Blogrolls: Hot Sauce Blog and Straight Cash Homey

I've added two new sites to my blogroll for this Monday afternoon. The first one covers a subject near and dear to my heart(burn), hot sauce and spicy foods. I've followed this one for a while because my pal Squidly is a contributor over there, but recently I've been reading the RSS feed of the Hot Sauce Blog on a daily basis, so I thought I'd throw it up there for anyone who reads my blog and hasn't heard of this wonderful site (as if such a mythical creature as a regular reader of this drivel existed.)

The second one is a fun site for spotting people who wear out-of-date or simply ridiculous sports jerseys. We're not talking about the throwback powder-blue Mike Schmidt Phillies jerseys that can be seen around C.B. Park--we're talking about the Eagles fan who bought a green Jeff Garcia jersey while McNabb was hurt last season, and is still wearing it in spite of the fact that Jeff is winning games for Tampa Bay now. And it's named after a terrific Randy Moss quote to boot--go check out Straight Cash Homey.