UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Quick hitters:

- The Los Angeles Dodgers’ magic number: ONE.

Start engraving that MVP trophy with Manny’s name on it! Sure, the Dodgers are only 28-21 since his acquisition, but do you think the Dodgers win more than 2-3 of those games without him?

And how great was it to see Rafael Furcal and—to a much lesser extent!—Jeff Kent back on the field?

(Somewhat off topic, but why do newspeople insist on raising one finger any time they say the number “one” with emphasis? I’m looking at you, FSN’s Patrick O’Neal!)

- Subject and From: field of an email I received a few days ago:

Walmart.com bought a Walmart.com Gift Card for you!‏

From: Walmart.com bought a Walmart.com Gift Card for you!‏

Spam, right? If I offered you 1:10 odds that this was spam, you’d bet the house on it, right?

Amazingly enough, it was NOT spam! You see, a couple weeks ago, Walmart.com had offered several workout machines for ridiculously low prices. Sure enough, they turned out to be pricing errors, as stated in the “kill mail” email from Walmart that immediately found its way into my trash can.

Good thing Hotmail hadn’t yet emptied my trash when the email containing the GC hit my inbox.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,039, but I haven’t yet updated it with over $500 in recent purchases.

- So you might recall that my really cool neighbors recently moved out of their condo. I’ve met two of the three new tenants in that condo; the lone female seems like a nice person, and one of the guys seems to be a grade-A jerk. There’s a third guy there, but I have yet to meet him.

Unfortunately, I have become quite acquainted with the fourth member of that condo: a super-annoying, barks-every-waking-minute dog! Of course, every time the stupid rat dog starts barking, the other dogs near us start barking away as well.

One of the dogs—a serial offender, and one I’ve probably written about before—is now so bad, there have been times where s/he has barked at 3-4AM!!!

Stupid dogs…and their stupid owners.

- Needing to use up some expiring ECBs yesterday, we swung by the Encino CVS. I was hoping to score some more FAECB body wash, deodorant, and some really cheap Propel water. I also needed eye drops, and after picking up all the items above, I went to the checkout counter, where I met my favorite cashier.

After all my coupons and ECBs, my total due was $3.00. As I reached into my wallet to pull out a $20, the cashier started giving me the death stare.

(Oh sh*t…what did I do???)

In her thick accent, she started scolding me! “Three dollars? Usually you hand me a few cents!”

I responded with “It was the darn [Propel] water…too good of a deal!”

She responded “Come on, I know you’ve got a two-dollar-something ECB in that envelope of yours.” Then she almost tossed my change back at me.

As I grabbed my bags, I told her “Does this mean I’m banned from the store now?”

She responded with “You better come back next time and spend a few cents. You’re letting me down!”

I love my CVS.

Better yet, apparently my sister forgot a bag of items, and we didn’t realize this until we got home. Upon realizing this, I instructed her to call the CVS and, to prove that it was her bag of items, I told her to identify what was in it.

She called, and while speaking to a cashier at the front, she could hear another cashier screaming “It’s all my fault! I’m so sorry!!!”

We went back, and as soon as we stepped in, the cashier screamed, “I’m SO SORRY!!! I can’t believe I did that!”

I love my CVS.

- I’m now 1-2 in both of my Fantasy leagues, no thanks in part to the injuries to Donovan McNabb and Brian Westbrook.

In my “crap” (read:  Carson f**king Palmer) league, I’m 1-2, thanks to Maurice Jones-Drew.  I now face the only winless team in the league, and unfortunately, he’s not 0-3 because he drafted Tom Brady.  Worse for me is the fact that Reggie Wayne, Dallas Clark, and Roy Williams are all off next week.

1-3 here I come!

In my other league (read:  Donovan McNabb and Brian Westbrook), I got drubbed 97-56, so it’s not like those two would have helped much.  I’m now up against a 3-0 team next week.

Fantastic!

Until next time!

Tags: barking dogs, brian westbrook, cool cashiers, cvs, donovan mcnabb, ecbs, encino, fantasy football, gift card, injuries, jerks, los angeles dodgers, magic number, manny ramirez, maurice jones-drew, neighbors, rebate-o-meter, spam, walmart.com by Peter
2 Comments »

Part 3 of the weekend blog will have to wait a night.

Quick-hitters:

- For you people that play sports—recreationally, or organized, no matter—don’t you love it when you hit “The Zone?” Nothing can go wrong: every shot you make falls, every swing you take is pure, every pass you make is on the money, every catch you make is crisp. Don’t you just love the feeling?

I wish I knew what that feeling was like

My sister and I “played” some tennis earlier today, and I use the term “play” loosely. We sucked. Bad.

I think I’ll stick to Wii Tennis.

- First, let me revisit the hot topic of a few nights ago: the Kirilenko flop (item #7). Most opinions I’ve heard insist that Kirilenko flopped, and that the call was so outrageous, the NBA should consider an “unsportsmanlike conduct” penalty on any player that flops so egregiously.

Rumor has it that Big Wilting Cactus Shaq O’Neal would be in favor of this rule change.

I’ve since seen the replay several times, and yes, Kirilenko absolutely flopped. That does NOT change the fact that Scola’s arm was extended when it made contact with Kirilenko. My point is, if illegal picks are offensive fouls, then Luis Scola committed an offensive foul. If Scola didn’t commit a foul, then what was the purpose of the extension of the arm? I find it hard to believe that Scola did not attempt to gain some advantage by the arm extension.

As far as penalizing flopping is concerned, I don’t see how the NBA could ever do this, unless they add a fourth official to the court. The three officials have enough trouble as it is with calling games (with some exceptions, of course; any time LeBron James is breathed on, that’s a foul, e.g.); how are they going to determine whether or not a player intentionally flopped?

Long story short, Houston should probably have pulled out game 2, and now they are in serious trouble.

- I took advantage of a JetBlue promotion to score LA Dodger tickets for Wednesday night’s game @ $5 each (Lower reserve, AKA one step below nosebleeds) + all of TicketMaster’s bullshit fees (more on this later).

Unfortunately, I didn’t find out until Tuesday that the Denver-Lakers game was scheduled at 7:30PM that Wednesday night. I decided that I wanted to record the game, but because I don’t have TiVo, I decided that I was going to use an ancient technology—one that my parents used!—to record the game.

You young folks may or may not have heard of this technology, but I was forced to use a VCR to record the game. What’s a VCR, you ask? Go look it up yourself

It took me twenty minutes just to set up the damn thing, plus another ten minutes to figure out how to program the VCR to record TNT.

(I’m watching the game right now, and I am crying over the fact that the recording is not in HD…)

The game itself was pretty good—Dodgers won!—but it went seriously downhill after four innings, when I’m guessing that “Couples Night” officially started. Three pairs of loudmouth couples sat in the two rows of seats almost directly in front of us, and when they started boozing up, they got even more obnoxious. They were text messaging, kissing, hugging, cursing, and generally being jerks.

Dodger fans, for the most part, ARE jerks, but it’s one thing to be jerks to the other team, and it’s completely another to be jerks to the patrons around you.

(A bit off topic…midway through the game, the scoreboard flashed the Lakers-Nuggets half time score, and the crowd gave a standing ovation at the sight of 59-49, Lakers. The roars got even louder when the final score was shown.)

- Speaking of the Dodgers, is it OK to cut a player in late April who makes $18 million a year? Seriously, I didn’t expect the Andruw Jones of old to show up when we signed him to that now-ridiculous two-year, $36 million deal. On the other hand, I wasn’t expecting Jones to hit .150, get horribly booed every time he makes an out, and get a sarcastic (or maybe not) standing ovation when he ends a hitless night with a single in his fifth at-bat.

Seriously, $36 million for a guy that should be hitting ninth? $36 million for a guy that can’t hit a fastball, and compensates by chasing pitches out of the strike zone? $36 million for a guy who I expect to make out each time he comes up, to the point where I had to beg him to just not ground into a double play? Why the hell did we sign this guy?

After his second strikeout of the game, it finally came to me: the Dodgers signed Andruw Jones to make Juan Pierre look like a viable everyday player! That HAS to be the reason, right? Sooner or later, Torre’s going to realize that Juan Pierre needs to be out there every night, right? I’d rather have Juan-for-four Pierre with 1 SB playing than Andruw “$19 million a year for a defensive stalwart in CF” Jones, that’s for sure.

Is it too late to write-off Jones’ salary as a charitable contribution from the Dodgers?

Tags: andruw jones, dodgers, flop, jerks, juan pierre, kirilenko, rude fans, tennis, the zone by Peter
No Comments »