So after going to Citi Field to witness firsthand the last two Phillies debacles (0 runs in two games, when's the last time that happened? August 2008), I had one notion reinforced and one established.

1) Oh boy, is that Ryan Howard contract going to kill us

I've already written an extensive post about the Ryan Howard contract. But after seeing him the past couple days, the sheer ludicrousness of the deal is even more apparent.

Here is a story that is somewhat appropriate. During our 1L year, we had this co-rec softball game against some pretty decedent upper-classmen team. We were down a run in probably the bottom of the 6th, and I came up with two outs. Axtell was on second and Zaruba was on first. I hit a fairly long fly ball to center field. Either I hit it really well or their center fielder sucked. Or both. In any event, it went over his or her head. Axtell and Zaruba scored, and I contemplated trying for home. But I stopped at third, and then saw the throw go over the catchers head into the backstop. But at that point it was too late.

The thing is, I should have gone regardless. Why? Because Akure was up next in the batting order, and there was very little chance she would be able to knock me in. So our best chance for getting another run was for me to try to score on my own hit.

So now lets think about last night. Victorino is on 2nd, 1 out, Phillies are down 2 runs. Utley lashes a single to right off of some tough lefty Japanese import the Mets snuck into their rotation. Victorino was rounding third about the time Francoeur was about to get the ball.

I understand, Francoeur has a great arm in right field. But you know who is up next? Howard. The guy who absolutely gets destroyed by left handed pitching. Victorino was held up, Howard struck out in the most pathetic manner imaginable, and then Werth wasn't able to get it done. Again, we score no runs.

The thing is, you have a guy who will be making 25 million dollars a year. He cannot hit left handers, he cannot play defense (they charged Utley with a throwing error on a ball that any high school aged female softball player could catch at first), and he's only going to get worse. And we basically are going to have to play around his deficiencies for the next million years at a billion dollars a year. This will make the Ibanez contract look like a bargain.

2) Brian Schneider sucks

All I know about this guy is that when he was on the Mets, he did a lot of annoying commercials for NYC area car dealerships. They were not funny, not entertaining, and made you hate both him and cars in general. Now he is a Phillie as Ruiz's backup.

The Mets know him well, as they ran all night on him. So we have a backup catcher who cannot throw. Can he hit? Last year he put up slash stats of .218 / .292 / .335, and this year with the Phillies (in limited time) he is hitting .143 with zero extra base hits.

AWESOME.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first.

The Pacific is no Band of Brothers.

Of course, that doesn't make it bad by any stretch of the imagination. But unfortunately it has to be compared to the best mini-series I've ever seen. And it doesn't ever threaten Band of Brothers in terms of quality or story.

My biggest issue with The Pacific is that it seems forced. We have three largely separate stories:

1) John Basilone, one of the greatest marines ever
2) Robert Leckie, a marine who almost goes crazy but doesn't
3) Eugene Sledge, an innocent looking and acting marine who turns pretty nasty by the end of his time in the war

None of these guys fought in the same battalion, and thus there is essentially no interaction between the three of them. It basically is three separate stories: Basilone and some forgettable supporting characters, Leckie and some forgettable supporting characters, and Sledge, Snafu, and some forgettable supporting characters. I understand that the best accounts we have are from the exploits of Basilone and the published memoirs of Leckie and Sledge. But that doesn't make the cutting back and forth between the various storylines any better.

One of the biggest reasons that Band of Brothers worked so well was that you felt for Easy Company as a whole. Throughout the series, members of Easy Company come and go. Webster gets hit. Winters gets promoted. Guarnere gets hit. Guarnere returns. Toye gets hit. Toy returns. Guarnere, Toye, and Buck all get hit at Bastogne. Muck gets killed. Webster returns. There are plenty of others. But despite the changing cast of characters, you care about where the company is being sent and when they're going to get taken off the line. Its just easier and more sensible than seeing Basilone nailing a movie star in America and then cutting to Sledge getting wailed on at Peleliu.

As for the "different" episodes of The Pacific, such as the infamous Part 3 that has been criticized by many, I didn't mind the change of pace. These shows don't need to have 10,000 rounds fired per episode to be interesting and authentic. It made sense to show that the Marines who wiped out the Japanese at Guadalcanal got to rest up before being shipped off to other islands. And during that time, they chased after Australian women and got drunk. I liked this episode, although of course it could have used a little less Leckie / random Australian woman love making. Along the same lines, I was fine with Part 10, which showed how Leckie and Sledge adjusted to being home. Band of Brothers never did a wrap up episode like this, although it would have been almost impossible to do so considering they would have had to do it for all the surviving members of Easy Company, as opposed to just two people.

The Pacific did do something extremely well - it depicted just how bad the campaign in The Pacific was. Constant rain and muddy conditions, intense heat, Japanese suicide attackers, and the most disturbing scene I have seen in quite some time (I'm not going to get into it here, but for those of you who watched you probably know what I'm talking about). The Pacific also did a nice job of showing how the conditions turned many marines into less than ethical individuals. These details are very true to Sledge's book, and the directors didn't pull many punches.

I don't think coming up with a number to rate The Pacific is going to be that helpful, because I keep thinking Band of Brothers is a 10 and therefore The Pacific is __. Maybe the best way to think of it is this: I rarely watched it right when it came on at 9 PM on Sundays. I tivoed it, and usually watched it later Sunday night, or Monday, or sometimes even on Tuesday. I always did get to watching it though, and I think it was worth it.

Unwatchable.

Kim is watching the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, and it started off with a very promising premise. A guy whose wife had a DNR (and was not resuscitated by the hospital) has come into the hospital and is shooting up the place. The thought of the various annoying characters of this show getting one between the eyes is enough to make me giddy. But the plot has so very many holes that I wonder if a 12 year old girl wrote the script:

1) The chief got shot through the heart but is probably going to be saved (there is like a half hour left and they are operating on him).

2) The shooter, when he is about to shoot some other doctor, gets shot by a SWAT team guy who is down the hall. The shooter falls to the ground. After the doctor runs away... the next scene is the shooter in the pediatrics department. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SWAT GUY WHO SHOT HIM???? HE JUST LET HIM WALK AWAY?

3) The cops, who are surrounding the hospital and not letting anyone in or out, somehow let two doctors in on two separate occasions.

4) Oh now the shooter has magically appeared in the operating room where they are trying to save the chief.

Just awful.

Those of you who know me are probably aware that food travels through me extremely quickly. It may be because of this that I can eat a lot for someone my size. Regardless, I don't have any problems with my super charged digestive system.

A couple nights ago, I got back from the gym and decided that it would be a good idea to have a yogurt. I remembered those commericals about muscle milk or whatever it is that Eli Manning and other people do to "finish your workout." Yogurt seemed like it would be close enough in form to do the job. So I ate one of the Activia yogurts that were in the fridge. It tasted really good. However, it was apparently a huge mistake.

From the Activia website:

Activia® is a great-tasting lowfat yogurt from Dannon® that contains Bifidus Regularis™, a natural probiotic culture that can help regulate your digestive system by helping reduce long intestinal transit time*.

So for the last few days, I've been having some "issues." My advice? If you don't have any issues with your digestive system, stay the hell away from Activia or you'll be paying for it for at least the next few days. I hope that stupid probiotic culture gets out of me as soon as possible.

This is the best fact pattern I have ever read in a published opinion:

Plaintiff, claiming breach of a "partnership agreement", asks the court for a declaratory judgment, for the imposition of a constructive trust, and for an accounting, arising out of his contention that defendant Fernandez, winner of a $2.8 million lottery prize, promised to share her winnings equally with him. The complaint consists of two causes of action. The first alleges that plaintiff, a minor, entered into an oral "partnership agreement" with Mrs. Fernandez, who, believing the youth to be deeply religious and a strong believer in "St. Eleggua", prayers to whom might help her win the prize, promised that if plaintiff took her $ 4 and purchased the tickets and selected the numbers, and any of the tickets he purchased won, they would share the prize equally. One of the tickets he claims to have purchased for her in fact did win a prize of $ 2.8 million, and plaintiff claims that the refusal to give him 50% of the proceeds constitutes a breach of contract.

Pando v. Fernandez, 127 Misc.2d 224 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1984)

For a summary, wikipedia is all over it.

This (from WWTDD) made me laugh amazingly hard:

Even judges in the WWE laugh at the incompetence of judges in LA. A WWE judge may get distracted by a sexy woman in a bikini then turn around to find one of the two parties that he was supposed to be presiding over covered in snakes, but that doesn’t mean the guy not covered in snakes is responsible for it. What it means is that Jimmy The Snake Man is the winner!

Following in the footsteps of the Momofuku fried chicken dinner, a couple weeks ago we did the Momofuku Bo Ssam dinner. It has its own FAQ as well. The bo ssam dinner consists of a whole slow cooked pork shoulder, a dozen oysters, white rice, bibb lettuce, ssäm jiang (korean bbq sauce), kimchi and ginger scallion sauce.







When they brought out the pork shoulder, I thought that the six of us would knock it out without much problem. And we started out like a house of fire.

The pork itself was very tender. It was coated with brown sugar, which made the outer pieces extra sweet and tasty. The inner pieces of the shoulder did not have any such benefit, but they were still tender, juicy, and flavorful. For those pieces, the sauces came into play. I didn't go after the kimche, but the ginger scallion and korean bbq sauces were definitely pluses, alone or in conjunction.

However, the real key, and the best bite I had, was when I discovered the sea salt. I sprinkled a bit of that on a piece (along with some of the ginger scallion and korean bbq), and holy cow that was one of the best bites of food I've had in recent memory. The salt just amplified every individual flavor in the bite, and they all complemented each other. After that point, the meal went to a whole new level.

I didn't have any oysters, but Kim thinks they were great, and she was disappointed when they were gone.

As we neared the end of the shoulder, things got difficult. The girls threw in the towel, and me and Gibbs could not count on Ben for much more. There was also a particularly fatty piece left that everyone decided I should eat. I persevered, and everyone else chipped in too. We conquered it good!



I heartily recommend this dinner. It is a minimum of six people for the reservation, and it is more expensive than the fried chicken, but it is also an easier reservation to get. This is definitely worth doing.

I will say this about New Orleans - they sure like to party down there. Or maybe it is just a bunch of tourists coming in and partying. Regardless, my body and mind are both crippled from three nights of boozing, gambling, and late night eating at Krystal and Arby's. I feel like I usually do after my yearly Vegas trip. Work on Monday is not going to be ideal.

Dinner highlight of the trip: All of us arguing that Sarah was wasted. Kim defended Sarah, claiming she was fine. Sarah then returned from the bathroom and proudly proclaiming that she went into the men's room. This took place at a fairly nice restaurant.

Gambling highlight of the trip: Sarah hitting 5 or 6 point numbers on the craps table, bringing us back to the verge of even. It wouldn't last, and Harrah's can suck it.

Hole in the wall bar highlight of the trip: Teaching random 50 year old women what lunchboxes were, and then sharing some of my drink with them.

Razzoo's highlight of the trip: At approximately 4 PM, an older couple at the bar making out WAY too aggressively, the DJ calling them out on it, and then a bouncer telling them to tone it down.

Beads highlight of the trip: Gibbs trying to get beads from people on the third story of a building, those people denying Gibbs, and then a random passerby placing beads on Gibbs outstretched arm.

Fast food highlight of the trip: Krystal chicken sandwiches. Superior to White Castle in this category, but inferior in the regular burger and fry categories.

Honorable mention fast food highlight: Gibbs and I observing Ben storming across Canal Street at 4:05 AM (after I told him Arby's closed at 4), watching Ben fail in his attempt to get in, and then laughing as he strode intently to Krystal.

Best thing I ate: Pan-Fried Rabbit Tenderloin with Creole Mustard Sauce at K-Paul's.

Best thing I drank: Hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's

Worst thing I drank: Virginia White Lightning Moonshine

Number of visits to the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum: One

Percentage of individuals in our group who booted during the trip: Fifty percent

Really wish I was at the game for this one:

Fan on Phils' field subdued with Taser

Video of the incident here. If they tasered him in the face it would have been better.

My Derby betting started off pretty badly. I bet on something called Wall Street Rebound in the 9th to win. It finished dead last.

I pulled Jesse into my web of betting for the 10th, and I decided Battle of Hastings would be our horse. Charles suggested we bet $10.66 on it to win, but I put 10 bucks on it instead. Perhaps this was the reason it failed. Either that, or the fact that we didn't get out to our seats in time and missed almost all of the very short race. Suffice to say, things were looking grim heading into the Derby.

For the Derby I placed bets on four horses to win. Big bets on Ice Box and Super Saver, and smaller bets on Backtalk and Dublin (I meant to bet on the 7 horse, but was drunk and got rattled when I got to the window and bet on 17 instead). I also made two trifectas - 2/4/16 boxed and 1/2/4 boxed.

As the Derby began, I asked Jesse for a cigarette. I felt that my horses needed extra power to come through for me. And it worked!!!! Super Saver came through and made my day profitable. I almost had the trifecta as well, which would have paid out quite handsomely. Regardless, it was pretty sweet.

There were lots of other goings on during the trip. Seeing Charles' favorite basketball player Tayshaun Prince. Then seeing Tayshaun deny Akure and Kim a picture. Kim accidentally ordering 20 White Castle burgers. A cougar going after Jesse at the bar. The cougar's friend subsequently cock-blocking Jesse. All-in-all, an awesome trip. Derby!