We went into NJ this past weekend to get Kim's bowling ball drilled and pick up some supplies for our White Elephant part. At the liquor store (the same one we visited a couple weeks ago), I was casually looking at the refrigerated section when Kim suddenly smacked me pretty hard on my shoulder.

Why did you do that?!?!

She just pointed.

And in that case, on the top shelf, were cans of every flavor of Four Loko.

I made have made some sort of loud, happy noise, because the guy who was grabbing one out of the case stopped cold in his tracks. He then motioned for us to go ahead. Kim asked him which flavor was best, and he said that they're all pretty sweet. Kim declared that we needed to get a cart, and ran off to find one. I guess my job was to "protect" the case from interlopers in the meantime.

We ended up buying six cans. We probably would have bought more, but we had to carry these back to NYC (in addition to the bowling ball, a bottle of Crown, a bottle of Knob Creek, and who knows what else). And these cans are friggin heavy.

My review of Four Loko:

1) Orange is the best flavor. Fruit punch second. The blue one is the worst, which is surprising given the awesomeness of blue in other food categories (Gatorade, Jello). And according to Gibbs, the green one burns quite a bit if you accidentally spill some on your face.

2) Four Loko pong is a stupid idea.

3) Yes, it messes you up as much as you think it would. If I ever had one of these in a casino I would likely end up bankrupt or thrown out of the place.

Fantasy football semifinals.

Eagles v. Giants.

Let's do it!!!!

Last week was the first week of our league's fantasy football playoffs. We have a ten team league. The first two teams get first round byes (Ben and Miller got them this year), and the teams 3-6 duke it out to make the semifinals. Despite my team having the second most points in the year, I ended up as the three seed with this starting lineup:

QB: Michael Vick
QB: Jon Kitna
WR: Calvin Johnson
WR: Mike Williams (TB)
WR: Deion Branch
RB: Adrian Peterson
RB: LeSean McCoy
TE: Jacob Tamme
K: Mason Crosby
DEF: ?

The issue with my defense was that I had two good options. The NYG v. Minnesota, and SD v. KC. I had no idea what I was going to do. And I was in Vegas all weekend for my Mom's 70th birthday, so my access to news wasn't ideal.

KC is normally a decent team, but their QB had an emergency appendectomy during the week. That meant that something called Brodie Croyle would start for them. But KC has a strong running attack, so that would probably mean that they would just run the ball. Chances for turnovers would be low, but chances of keeping KC to a low amount of points was high.

NYG, on the other hand, was facing Tavaris Jackson and the Vikings. Jackson is pretty much a turnover machine. Also, the Vikings are in shambles. And over the weekend, their stadium followed suit, with the inflatable roof collapsing under the two feet of snow attacking that region. So the game would have to be played in Detroit, which would remove any home-field advantage the Vikings would have in the Metrodome. But of course, I had Adrian Peterson on my team as well, which would create an annoying correlation between his TDs and Giants giving up points.

I went back and forth on this move all week and all week. I had NYG in. Then SD. Then NYG before I got on the plane on Thursday night. Then I told Kim about it. She quickly got sick of hearing about it and wrote down on two pieces of paper NYG and SD. I then had to pick one out of her hands. I picked NYG.

It was far from settled.

On Sunday morning, Kim told me she had a dream the Giants won 15-0. I was unconvinced. She had me pick the pieces of paper two more times. I picked SD both times.

Ignoring those pieces of paper, I put in the Giants and got ready for our flight back.

SD, which played before NYG, shut out KC. Of course. But they only managed 4 sacks and no turnovers, so that equated to 14 points. Certainly a good day, but not earth shattering. NYG only forced 1 turnover and had a couple sacks, but only let up 3 points. It was basically a wash, and I won by 10 points, so in the end either pick would have been fine.

But now I have TWO equally difficult decisions.

WR: Mike Williams (TB)(v. Detroit) or Kenny Britt (v. Houston)
RB: Adrian Peterson (v. Chicago) or Mike Tolbert (v. SF)

I'm leaning towards Britt (the Houston defense just sucks so bad) and Peterson (I don't have the heart to take him out despite the awful QB situation in Minny). I hope it doesn't get to pieces of paper and Kim's dreams again.

Irritable Bowl Syndrome may have lost its first-ever playoff match because of terrible bowling out of Ben and Evan...

BUT CLIFF LEE IS COMING BACK TO THE PHILLIES!!!!

This past Tuesday, Irritable Bowl Syndrome faced off against the undefeated Wyld Stallyns. They are the defending champs from the previous season. With a win, IBS would make the playoffs. With a loss, IBS would likely face various tie-breaker rules that would come down to total pins, and nobody had any idea of how that would shake out. We controlled our own destiny.

We all recalled what happened last season. Going into the final regular season match, IBS needed a win and a loss from another team (which was facing the Wyld Stallyns) to make the playoffs. IBS killed a team of losers. But the Wyld Stallyns brought three girls and one guy, apparently not caring at all about the match, as they had already clinched their playoff spot. Wyld Stallyns predictably lost, and IBS was held out of the playoffs. IBS vowed revenge.

Facing the exact same scenario as the previous season, Stallyns brought 3 girls and 1 guy to face IBS. IBS took advantage and put up its highest scoring match of the season, fueled by season high games out of Gibbs (173) and Sarah (140). Ben and Kate also rolled above their averages.

On the other hand, Kim and I bowled our lowest games of the season by far. I put up the stinkiest 119 you'll ever see, with at least 4 frames of [9 -]. Absolutely inexcusable. Kim was similarly bad. It was like some hex had fallen upon the Lee household for the match. But luckily, everyone else stepped it up, and we are now the three seed for the playoffs.

And our match for the semifinals? The Wyld Stallyns, the team that we just faced. They'll almost certainly bring their A-team for the playoffs, and one of them told me that their best guy has only showed up for one match all season. Was this an attempt at intimidation? Maybe, but probably rooted in truth. They are the defending champs after all. Still, if the Lees can get out of their rut and everyone else continues to bowl like they have been, I think we have a very good spot of putting a championship on our resume.

So the internet, or at least the baseball part of it, has been abuzz with the Jayson Werth contract with the Nationals. A 31 year old right fielder who has had basically three full seasons in the majors, getting $126 million over 7 years, which is around $18 million a year.

The Nationals clearly overpaid in terms of money and years. From Jayson Stark's twitter:

The Nationals offer on Werth was so far above everyone else that Boras didn't even ask other interested teams if they wanted to match it.

When that happens you know you've overpaid. But rather than debate the merits of the contract (I think Werth is a very valuable player, not 7 years / $126 million, but his average number of pitches seen per plate appearance is amazing), let's look at it from the Phillies perspective. I think for Phillies fans the most useful part of it, aside from the compensation pick we get for offering him arbitration, is to use it as a gauge for how bad the Ryan Howard 5 year / $125 million monstrosity of an extension is.

Which contract would you rather have? The Howard deal or the Werth one?

Length of Contract

Werth is six months older than Howard. Howard's contract runs through 2016, with a $10 million buyout for 2017. Werth's new contract runs through 2017. So both contracts are essentially the same length.

Money

Howard's old contract will pay him $20 million for 2011, and then his new extension kicks in. In total, Howard will cost a minimum of $145 million, and will cost $158 million if for some god-awful reason we don't buy out that last year where he probably will not even be in baseball anymore. So Howard gets more money than Werth over the next 7 years.

Performance

What does that money get you?

Let's first get out of the way the three clear areas of advantage that Werth has over Howard.

1) Werth runs extremely well, while Howard is fairly slow.

2) Werth plays right field, a more demanding position than first base.

3) Werth plays right field fairly well, with a good arm. Howard is a butcher at first base.

At this point in the debate, most people would bring up that Howard is a better hitter than Werth. Is that really true?

AVG. / OBP. / SLG.

Howard 2010: .276 / .353 / .505
Werth 2010: .296 /. 388 / .532

If you care about more traditional stats, Howard had 4 more home runs than Werth this year. Werth, on the other hand, had TWENTY THREE MORE DOUBLES!!!! And for those of you who care about awards, Werth finished higher in the MVP voting than Howard.

So Werth had a better 2010 season than Howard. Big deal, right? Howard has a track record of goodness while Werth has 3 years of being a full time player. Well, two responses to that. First, Howard's career path is following a definite downward trend. Werth, on the other hand, has improved in each of the last three seasons.

Second, Howard's body type is not one that is going to age well. So we can expect Howard to not only get worse as he gets older, but to get worse at a rate faster than an average ballplayer. Werth, on the other hand, has a skill set (speed and plate discipline) that will likely age gracefully.

So Werth plays a tougher position than Howard, plays it better, runs better than Howard, and hits better than him too. And the Nationals significantly overpaid for Werth.

What does that say about the Howard contract?

The WSJ law blog has a story up about a couple that recently settled with Google over its "Street View" feature on Google Maps:

Zegarelli sued Google on behalf of a married couple, Aaron and Christine Boring, alleging that the search giant and increasingly frequent LB subject trespassed when it took a picture of the Boring’s house for its “Street View” service.

A federal magistrate judge in Pittsburgh on Thursday signed off on a consent judgment reached between the parties that, according to this AP story, seemed to leave both sides satisfied.

As part of the deal, Google acknowledged that it trespassed, but agreed only to pay $1 in damages.

Check out the name of the couple: The Borings! Thats amazing!

And the wife's profession?

School teacher!!!!

A comment on the post from plaintiff's counsel (probably):

Mrs. Boring, a school teacher, can now teach her students first-hand to stay in the game, and to not be pushed around by others. She can teach not to be bored or sit lazy watching TV glibly criticizing the hard work of others.

It would have been awesome to have a teacher named Mrs. Boring.

We went to the Duke v. Butler game this weekend at the Izod center. Tickets ended up being cheaper than through Ticketmaster, and there were actually a ton of empty seats in the stadium. Duke pulled away after a lackluster first half filled with random ill-advised three point attempts by Singler, Irving, and Smith.

At some point early in the first half, Ben lamented the fact that we didn't have Brian Zoubek to bet on. The last couple years, setting random lines on Zoubek was a favorite pastime of me, Ben, and Fishman. We would do fouls v. points, fouls v. rebounds (that bet changed a bit last year), etc. Fouls v. pretty much anything you could think of. I think every now and then we would just do a straight up over/under on his fouls, usually setting the line at 4.5. The over on that bet was usually a good choice.

Without Zoubek to mock, we came up with two other bets. We wanted an over/under on Ryan Kelly points. Ben offered a line of 5. I immediately requested the under. Ben replied that he wanted the under. He then moved it to 4. We both still wanted the under. I said I would take OVER 3.5. The line was set.

At the end of the first half, Ryan Kelly made one of the most awkward looking three pointers you will ever see. He got the ball and was wide open near the top of the key. He faked a pass to his right. It was somewhat unnecessary, as there wasn't anyone really near him. He then gave a pump-fake to nobody in particular. Finally, realizing that noone was coming anywhere near him (and that his manhood was in question), he took a step back and promptly buried a three.

Those were his final points of the game. I lost that bet.

But what made up for that was another bet we made at halftime.

Carquest.com was sponsoring the game. Two groups of three came out at halftime to have a free throw shooting contest. Each group was an older guy and two little kids. Normally you would think it would be families picked out of the crowd or little kids who won a contest. Nope.

The red team consisted of the Chairman of Carquest.com and a young girl and boy (I'd estimate 7-9 years old each). The blue team consisted of the President of Carquest.com and two boys (slightly older age). It was a little bit awkward - are you really going to cheer for some rich guy flaunting his position in the company? Well, I bet on the red team. Ben bet on blue. It was on.

The free throws started flying. Each family member took turns, usually shooting until they made one. Noone seemed to be keeping an official score, so at the end of the time limit there was some confusion. After a huddle, it was determined that the teams were tied. Which meant they would have a shoot off!

Immediately after they made this announcement, the president (blue team) basically shoved his two younger kids out of the way and strolled to the free throw line. He airballed the first shot, which was awesome. Then he bricked the second shot, over the objection of the announcer who told him to take only one shot.

The red team thus got two shots for the win. Who would shoot? The chairman let the youngest kid take the shots. You knew what was going to happen. The first one missed by oh so little. The second one swished! The crowd loved it as much as a crowd can love a rich little twerp making a free throw in the middle of a rematch of the previous national championship game. Ben was devastated.

I of course stood and cheered probably louder than anyone in the stadium.