MMBF - 3/22: RIP 2010 New York Rangers

Greetings on this most rainiest of Mondays here in the Garden State, aka the Greatest State in All the World, aka New Jersey. You'll have to excuse me for making this a Monday Afternoon Brain Fart, however, it took me the entire morning to recover from the extreme vomiting that was caused by having to look at and listen to Nancy Pelosi last night. I think I'll be ok, though my esophagus burns a bit.

How incredible has this NCAA tournament been so far? The upsets, the buzzer beaters... it's just been enthralling television. It's a good thing I was stuck at work and had to miss most of it on Thursday and Friday, right! (Excuse me while I crush this glass against my forehead. Thank you.) At least this weekend still had it's fill of big upsets for me to see. St. Mary's beat Villanova because 'Nova couldn't stop St. Mary's big man (who apparently hasn't met a cheeseburger he didn't love) and Scottie Reynolds, 'Nova's best player, was the worst player on the floor. Northern Iowa upset the number 1 overall seed, Kansas, in an incredible game that was won when Northern Iowa's Ali Farjfhnfn:DLjhglsjkngDLkj made a gutsy three with about 30 seconds left. And the Big Red of Cornell continued their Shortstop-fueled Cinderella run through the tournament with an emphatic win over Wisconsin. Ithaca, represent. I also learned from CBS and its pregame show on Saturday that it is impossible to be a big time college basketball star unless you grew up in a drug-riddled and gang-infested neighborhood and were raised by your grandmother who kept some other kids in the neighborhood straight as well by welcoming them into her home. I never stood a chance.



Last Wednesday was of course St. Patrick's Day, and aside from the usual shenanigans that occur on that day, it was always the 1 day a year where my mom would make us corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and irish soda bread. It's my favorite dinner of the year. But since I went away to college in 2002 and am now on my own, those St. Patty's Day dinners have been few and far between. Not this year, however! I was back at the crib this weekend, so my mom decided to wait to the weekend to make my favorite meal ever. Mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmm! If you haven't tried the New Jersey of dinners I highly suggest you partake. I can still taste the deliciousness. I can also still smell it. I have no friends around me right now.

I saw Up in the Air on Saturday, and I really, really liked it. I thought it was interesting, funny, quirky, emotional, well-written and well-acted - just a really great movie. I thought Dr. Doug Ross was awesome, and that Anna Kendrick was even better. I've heard a lot of people say that it's a depressing movie, and I can see where they're coming from. I don't want to give too much away for those of you who haven't seen it, so if you absolutely don't want to know anything, move on to the next paragraph. But Clooney's character was a gun-for-hire that companies brought in to fire people, basically. And most of the people he was firing were older people who thought they had no hope of finding other employment because of their age. My dad is an employed 60 year old man with a daughter in college, a mortgage, car payments, etc. He was the kind of person Clooney was firing, and he thought the movie was depressing. I totally get it, and I understand it. But seeing as I'm not in that position, and haven't experienced anything like that at this young age, I took the movie for what it was: a character study about a man who was only content when he was alone, flying from place to place, with no personal connections. He loved it. And when it was all seemingly taken away from him, he changed. Just a great movie, and one that I have decided to break out the ol' Eli Manning Face rating system for! 4 and a half out of 5!



As I said in a previous post, when baseball is back, life is good again, and it gets even better when fantasy baseball season begins, which it did for me last night. I LOVE fantasy baseball, if only because it's the time of year when you can be the GM and make your own team. We spend much of our sports seasons yelling at the TV and criticizing our teams, saying we could do a better job in putting them together. Well in fantasy, that's when you have your chance. And seeing as I won my big money league last year, I'd have to say I did a swell job of it. I also have morals when it comes to fantasy, which sometimes hurts my pursuit of victory. In baseball, I hate the Red Sox, the Mets, and the Phillies, therefore, I refuse to have any players from those teams on my fantasy team. It's reality over fantasy for me. I can't root for those sons of bitches, so I can't have them on my team. It was nice to see last year that my conviction paid off with a championship.

Life premiered on the Discovery Channel last night, and it was AWESOME. It's basically the same thing as Planet Earth, but instead of concentrating on the locales and moving around the globe in regions, Life concentrates solely on the animals, going through them one category at a time, with last night being the reptiles and amphibians. I am continuously amazed by how they get the shots that they do. They are so ridiculously close to these animals that are as big as a finger nail - it's just unreal. And it's beautiful. The only complaint I have about the whole thing is that Oprah is the narrator, and she just isn't very good. It sucks that Discovery felt like we needed to have a name like Oprah narrate it so that people would watch it, because the show itself is beautiful enough to attract a huge audience without her. Her voice just doesn't work with the nature stuff. Get me Mike Rowe!

And finally, I'd like to say a big, fat, emphatic Rest In Peace to the 2010 New York Rangers, one of the most frustrating teams I have ever had the displeasure of watching. I am diehard, so I have no choice. I have to watch, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life. But it is just getting ridiculous. How many shit years do the Rangers need to have before there is a front-office shakeup? Oh right, at least 20 more, because James Dolan is the worst owner in sports. Hands down. This is the man who kept Isiah Thomas in his job with the Knicks even though he had signed players to some of the worst contracts in history, completely ruined the franchise and alienated the fan base, AND had a sexual harassment suit filed against him. And now Dolan is keeping Glen Sather in his job as Rangers GM even though he's won a grand total of TWO playoff series in his 10 years on the job, and done all the same things that Isiah did minus the sexual harassment suit. Where is he getting this job security from? He won championships with Edmonton, as the head coach, in the 1980s. THAT'S 30 YEARS AGO. Stop giving him credit for those when they were a lifetime ago when he's in the process of burning a once-proud franchise to the ground. He has obviously demonstrated that he doesn't have what it takes to be a GM. With the Rangers 2-1 loss to Boston yesterday that puts us 5 points out of a playoff spot with 10 games to go, it will take a miracle to make it. And even if we do, we'll get slaughtered in the first round by Washington. They play with no heart, no passion, they can't score goals, the power play is atrocious, the defense sucks... how does Glen Sather still have a job?!??! I'm getting angry and starting to sweat just thinking about this, and I'm getting even angrier knowing that Sather is probably not going to be fired and will put together another overpaid, under-talented, shit roster for me to watch next year. And watch them I will. Joke's on me I guess.

Ugh. Another week of work.