Album of the Year

Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.

If you go on Amazon you can read reviews of all these people that are disappointed that this doesn't sound like their breakthrough first album. These people are entitled to their opinions, even though they're wrong. Bands often "mature"--but this isn't that simple. It's a breakthrough in it's own right. If you want to listen to their first album, go ahead. But you'll be missing out.


Update: I'm posting an image of an Amazon review that just kills me. The fact that someone thinks they can adequately judge an album on one listen, just slays me. Tracks 7 and 8 are utterly beautiful and he passes them off as being too slow... I suppose Shawshank Redemption was too long and slow as well. He'd much rather watch a Vin Diesel movie or something. Ugh...this guy.

Cheers and Jeers: Final Four Edition

Cheers to the Big Ten for bowing out gracefully in the Sweet 16, allowing underdog conferences like Southern and C-USA a shot at the Final Four.

Jeers to the racist basketball analysts who keep insisting that Tyler Hansbrough is the best player in the country. Anyone with half a brain can see that it's Kevin Love.

Cheers to Stephen Curry for making the tourney exciting.

Jeers to Curry for not taking the last shot. If you're going to take down my Georgetown pick you had better take down Kansas too, asshole.

Jeers to the Basketball Gods for allowing Kansas and Bill Self to make it to the Final Four by beating a 16, a 8, a 12, and a 10.

Cheers for setting them up to fail so mightily against UNC, proving to their fans that they were better off with Roy Williams, only he didn't want to stay there.

my wife can rock your face off

she got a streak of 359 on "my name is jonas" - guitar hero 3 for ps2. for a total of 452 notes out of 455.

Update: she got the first 436 before missing one. i think she'll get it perfect later this week.

mon bracket update

savan is out.

If KU beats UNC, Niraj wins the bracket.

If UNC beats KU, it's down to Mark/Dave. In that scenario:

UNC beats Memphis = Mark
UNC beats UCLA = Mark
Memphis beats UCLA = Mark
UCLA beats UNC = Dave

It looks like UCLA/Memphis will be the first game, 5pm CST. I hope it comes down to UNC-UCLA, so that the bracket will come down to the title game on Monday--Mark vs Dave, as it should be.

sat bracket update

For Savan to Win: He needs Memphis in the Final Four, and he needs at least one of UNC/KU to not make it to the Final Four. He also can't have either of them in the Championship game.

For Dave to Win: I need UNC to get to the championship game and then lose. Addittionally, if Memphis advances to the Final Four, I need UCLA to win it all.

For Mark to Win: UNC takes home the title.

Anything else, and it looks like it's Burnsy's title.


Tonight the game I most need is UNC winning. Strangely enough, if UCLA loses, I can still win--I would just need Memphis to lose tomorrow. But I'm still rooting for UNC and UCLA.

Mark is rooting for UNC & Xavier.

Savan is rooting for Louisville and UCLA.

Niraj is rooting for UCLA, but is a mixed bag on the UNC/Louisville game. He gets 80 points that Savan doesn't for UNC, but he's probably better off rooting against them, since Mark and I have them going farther. So he should be rooting for Louisville and UCLA, but can still smile if UNC wins.

- - -

If I was playing Oddsmakers, I would project UNC winning at 75%, KU winning at 70%, Memphis at 60% and UCLA at 55%. But I also know that all 4 1-seeds have never advanced. And when you look at that way, every opponent seems capable. Louisville with Pitino, Davidson with Curry, Texas the way they beat up Stanford, and Xavier because they're a complete team and Wilbon likes them. Shit, UCLA might be the one to lose--perhaps not the only one.

friday bracket update

All 4 games came up Fymbo last night, even the one that I lost points on, because it hurt Savan more than me.

But now tonight my luck will be pressed. Burnsy can win all 4 games tonight, I can only get points for KU and Texas. Further complicating the matter, is that Burnsy has KU and Texas in the Final Four.

So tonight I'm rooting:

100% for Davidson. Burnsy gets 40 points for Wisconsin.

100% for Michigan State. I don't have Memphis advancing any more--Burnsy has them winning this one, Savan and Mark have them in the Final Four.

80% for Villanova. Burnsy has KU in the title game, so I need them to lose, but it doesn't hurt me if KU wins tonight. But it really hurts if KU gets to the Final Four.

80% for Stanford. Same story. I have Texas winning this game, but not getting to the Final Four.

Regardless it looks like the only way for me to win the bracket is to have UCLA beat UNC. It could happen, but I need it to fall exactly.

finding new music

So I don't listen to the radio or watch music channels on tv, and it's not that I'm not discovering enough new bands, the problem is being notified that bands that I like are making new cds.

Can't there be a notification system that I put in my artists I like, and it emails me when Jack Johnson has a new cd? Is that too hard?

Sweet 16 by Conference

Pac-10: 3 teams still alive/6 teams originally in tournament
Big East: 3/8
Big 10: 2/4
Big 12: 2/6
Southern: 1/1
C-USA: 1/1
Sun Belt: 1/2
A-10: 1/3
ACC: 1/4
SEC: 1/6

Lunardi's Crystal Ball

So I incredulously posted a year ago, April 10 2007 to be exact, that Lunardi already had his 08 Bracket filled out. Let's see how he did:

1 seeds: He nailed 3 out of the 4. The one he missed was UCLA, which he had as a 2 in the same regional. And he had Louisville which turned out to be a 3, so that wasn't too far off.

2 seeds: 0 right. He had high hopes for NC State and Georgia Tech, who didn't even make the tourney.

Other hits: He had Wash St as a 4, Gonzaga as a 7, Arizona and Davidson as 10 seeds. That's it.

7 out of 64 seeds, a year in advance.

He had plenty that were close, but plenty that were also way off.

But here's the big question? How many tourney teams did he have right?

8 in the East, 10 in the Midwest, 11 in the South, 9 in the West, by my count.

38 out of 64. I'm not that impressed.

Hmm, let's take one last look at the Big Ten.

Projected Seeds:
2 Michigan State
3 Indiana
4 Ohio State
5 Illinois
9 Wisconsin
10 Purdue

Actual Seeds:
5 Michigan State
8 Indiana
na Ohio State
na Illinois
3 Wisconsin
6 Purdue

Far be it for me to say that he really doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. I'll just stand by my original opinion that it's pointless to start Bracketology until after New Year's.

30%

After really starting on about Jan 25th, I'm 30% of the way through my first draft of my novel. Although a fair chunk of that was using passages and ideas that I had written before Jan 25th, so I'm not sure that I can claim a rate of 15% every month. Although, the last three weeks, I really didn't get much done, because I was preparing for London.

It's frustrating because I have the outline, and I'd love to wrap this thing up by June or so, but it just takes a long time.

Bracket Analysis

If UCLA wins it all:
Niraj is in the Driver's Seat. He's looking for Texas and UNC to get the Final Four, and he really needs Kansas to get to the title game.

Savan needs Tennessee to get to the Final Four and possibly the Championship, and Memphis to the Final Four.

Dave needs a lot of things to happen. It starts with Xavier winning on Thursday, Texas and Kansas not making the Final Four, and UNC making it to the Championship.

If UNC wins it all:
Mark should be the winner.

If Wisconsin wins it all:
Sakina should be the winner.

If neither of those 3 teams win it all:
too early to tell.


For the record, I. Gasparotto, is a friend named Ivo at work. He's an NBA fan who I convinced to fill out a bracket to get into March Madness for the first time. It's a shame that he picked Kent State to go to the Final Four.

London Recap

We liked London more than Paris and to date this was our best trip ever. 

The trip started off unusually with Virgin Atlantic saying the flight was overbooked. They were offering free international flight vouchers for anyone to reschedule on the next day's flight. I didn't want to do it because I was excited to get to London, we're at the airport gate with our bags checked, etc. But Brit pointed out how much 2 free international flights are worth, plus that we wanted to keep going back to Europe. (It was absolutely the right call as we still had enough time in London to do everything we wanted. We used the return flight to London a year later to go to Italy for not much.) They even upgraded us on the next day flight so here's having mimosas on a flight to London.

First attraction we did was Tower of London. Very cool.

Of course, you had to go to see the London Eye and Big Ben.

The next day we went to Shakespeare's Globe Theater. This was actually very neat, even if the photos were hard to capture it.

One thing that Brit was eagerly looking forward to was afternoon tea. I remember I had to call internationally to make reservations in advance. We had tea at The Wolseley and it was very good.

Went to Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. I liked the portraits there.

We went on the London Eye at night. I remember it was 15 pounds, which was 30 dollars. So for two it was $60 and I remember thinking that was a lot of money for a ferris wheel ride. (I just checked and it 2021 it's 27 pounds but that's only $36 dollars a person now.)

Most of my photos from the Eye were pretty blurry. This was the best shot I could get.

We rode the tube a lot.

Our hotel was close to the Russel Square station on the Piccadilly line.

We did have one big excursion booked outside of London. It started at Windsor Castle.

Got to ride on a bus through the English countryside...

And visit Bath, named after the Roman-built baths...

and Stonehenge.

I was looking forward to Stonehenge the most, but we thought Bath was the coolest part of the excursion. But would highly recommend it to anyone.

We also went to the Victoria & Albert Museum which was just okay.

Of course, we had to visit Buckingham Palace.

And Abbey Road.

We tried our best to recreate the Beatles' album cover on a rainy day. Brit clearly opting for the George Harrison color scheme.

Other things that we did that we didn't get pictures of...we took a Jack the Ripper guided walking tour that was pretty cool. We saw The Importance of Being Earnest in the West End and liked it so much that we went back later in the week to see Chicago.

We ate at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, got fish & chips, bangers & mash. One of the nights before we went to a show we had Indian food at Mela and it was very good.

Last thing we did was grab a pint from a bar operating since 1667 on Fleet Street.

Definitely a city worth coming back to.