Group A: United States vs. Norway 3:00 (USA - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, ItG: Pierre McGuire)
Group A: Switzerland vs. Canada 7:30 (CNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk)
Group B: Slovakia vs. Russia 12:00 AM (CNBC - Kenny Albert and Joe Micheletti)
USA, Canada, and Russia are all in action again today and once again, the most compelling game is in late night. But the big question of the night has to be: will NBC improve their hockey coverage or will the incompetent and irrational morons at NBC once again prevent us from seeing a 1st period of hockey at 7:30 PM ET?
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Mike Boone Discusses Comparing Flyers To Nazis; Fields Question From Yours Truly
I posted a story the other day about Montreal Gazette writer Mike Boone who compared the Flyers to Nazis. Well, the Flyers blog for SB Nation, Broad Street Hockey, got in contact with Mike Boone and conducted an interview for their podcast, Broad Street Hockey Radio.
They discussed Boone's comments in an interview as Boone tries to give some context to his quotes and tries to elaborate what he meant by his comment when he wrote, "
There's not a franchise in sports I hate more than the Philadlphia Flyers. [....] No, you'd have to have an Olympic Games flashback to 1936 and watch the pride of Hitler's Germany marching into the Berlin stadium to match the feeling of revulsion I experience every time I see the Flyers play."
If the story interested you at all, then it is definitely worth a listen as he does not back down from the questions and he defends the comments. Now whether or not you think his defenses are legitimate or complete B.S., well, that will be your call.
Now we do this blogging as a way to express our opinions on matters in sports, but let's be realistic, a lot of our intended audiences never read what we write. Actually, I'd be shocked and stunned if an Eagle ever read some of my Andy Reid criticisms or if NBC actually read all of our comments regarding NBC and their terrible coverage of the Olympics.
But when it came to Mike Boone and his Nazi-hating ways, BSH Radio gave us the opportunity to leave him a pre-recorded message for him respond to over the air on the podcast. Well, I called and left my message and what do you know, it got played over the air on the most anticipated BSH Radio Podcast yet. I'm sure we've all dreamed about letting some of the people that we write about personally know how we feel, well, I was given that chance with Mike Boone and a small part of this podcast is the result of it.
The interview is right at the beginning and is approximately 19 minutes long (they discuss more topics aside from Boone and Nazis after the interview so that is why the thing at the end says 41 minutes) so sit back, relax, and enjoy! If you don't have time to sit back and relax but still want to listen to me, I come in at the 13:45 mark, however, if you do have time, I would recommend giving the whole interview a listen.
They discussed Boone's comments in an interview as Boone tries to give some context to his quotes and tries to elaborate what he meant by his comment when he wrote, "
There's not a franchise in sports I hate more than the Philadlphia Flyers. [....] No, you'd have to have an Olympic Games flashback to 1936 and watch the pride of Hitler's Germany marching into the Berlin stadium to match the feeling of revulsion I experience every time I see the Flyers play."
If the story interested you at all, then it is definitely worth a listen as he does not back down from the questions and he defends the comments. Now whether or not you think his defenses are legitimate or complete B.S., well, that will be your call.
Now we do this blogging as a way to express our opinions on matters in sports, but let's be realistic, a lot of our intended audiences never read what we write. Actually, I'd be shocked and stunned if an Eagle ever read some of my Andy Reid criticisms or if NBC actually read all of our comments regarding NBC and their terrible coverage of the Olympics.
But when it came to Mike Boone and his Nazi-hating ways, BSH Radio gave us the opportunity to leave him a pre-recorded message for him respond to over the air on the podcast. Well, I called and left my message and what do you know, it got played over the air on the most anticipated BSH Radio Podcast yet. I'm sure we've all dreamed about letting some of the people that we write about personally know how we feel, well, I was given that chance with Mike Boone and a small part of this podcast is the result of it.
The interview is right at the beginning and is approximately 19 minutes long (they discuss more topics aside from Boone and Nazis after the interview so that is why the thing at the end says 41 minutes) so sit back, relax, and enjoy! If you don't have time to sit back and relax but still want to listen to me, I come in at the 13:45 mark, however, if you do have time, I would recommend giving the whole interview a listen.
2010 Winter Olympics Day 6 Men's Ice Hockey Open Thread
Group C: Finland vs. Belarus 3:00 (MSNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk)
Group C: Sweden vs. Germany 7:30 (CNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk)
Group B: Czech Republic vs. Slovakia 12:00 AM (CNBC - Kenny Albert and Joe Micheletti)
Who's ready for more hockey fun?
Group C: Sweden vs. Germany 7:30 (CNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk)
Group B: Czech Republic vs. Slovakia 12:00 AM (CNBC - Kenny Albert and Joe Micheletti)
Who's ready for more hockey fun?
NBC's "Boss Button" Fail And General Commentary On Their Horrendous Vancouver Performance Thus Far
It is well documented how awesome CBS incorporates the "Boss Button" when it comes to their NCAA March Madness coverage. The pie charts are exceptional and while I don't know how it looks to your boss if you are not supposed to be looking at a pie chart or your job does not involve pie charts or how your boss will follow up on you once they see the pie chart, it still beats the heck out of what NBC is legitimately giving you with their boss button for their Winter Olympics coverage.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, NBC's attempt to deceive your boss!
Ugh.........wow.
Let's dissect this now. It's a screenshot on Windows 7 of a blank Excel spreadsheet that is only covering a 3rd of the screen. Can you count the number of things wrong in that last statement?
First of all, how many offices have Windows 7? Secondly, doesn't a BLANK spreadsheet sort of defeat the purpose of the intention of the boss button, which is to, oh, you know, make you look like you are doing something productive! And lastly, the spreadsheet taking up a 3rd of the screen does a great job in highlighting the Windows 7 that your boss and company may or may not have. Sure if you are really savvy enough you can pass it off as Vista, but how many people even use Vista? It sucked monkey testicles so much that people in Vista's heyday, people were paying extra money to downgrade to Windows XP!
Alas, that NBC would throw up such a half-assed boss button is hardly describing. If I were to describe NBC's coverage in only one word.............DreadfullyPainstakinglyUnprofessionallyAwful.
From showing the death of Nodar Kumaritišvili over and over again in slow-mo in primetime the day that he died to spoiling its own events on Twitter before they are aired (even on the east coast) to the all-around awful announcers they hired to somehow thinking that we care about the words and reports of Cris Collinsworth on the Winter Olympics to only streaming hockey and curling on NBCOlympics.com while CTV is trying to stream every single and minute event to the complete debacle of their schedule (more on that in a bit), it has just been a complete disaster. An indefensible disaster.
Take last night for example. At 7:30 PM ET, the Canada-Norway hockey game was supposed to start on CNBC, however, a close women's curling match between the United States and Japan was going on. Now I understand not wanting to cut away from a close curling match featuring the United States and I am not going to complain about that. Too bad that was the only thing NBC did right in handling the situation.
I forget what USA was running at the time, but on MSNBC at the time of Canada's faceoff with Norway was a women's hockey game between the USA and Russia. Now, again, normally I would say don't cutaway from a U.S. hockey game, but when it is in the 2nd half of the 3rd period and the score is 13-0 USA, I think it is a safe assumption to make that a very small portion of the population will be pissed off if you cutaway from that blowout to show the men's Team Canada hockey team in action for the first time in the 2010 Olympics. You know, the same Team Canada team that was mentioned more during the U.S.-Switzerland game than the U.S. and Switzerland were combined.
Okay, so no TV channels available for them at faceoff. Even though it would be an inconvenience to some, NBC can just go directly to streaming the game online at NBCOlympics.com until the games on MSNBC or CNBC concludes, right? Well either they had technical difficulties with the system or the feed, the technology itself is bad (and I find that highly doubtful with Microsoft Silverlight), or the people at NBC are just incompetent morons, but whatever the answer is, NBC did not have a stream up until at least 5 minutes after the puck was dropped.
Now the U.S. women's ice hockey blowout is over and MSNBC does temporarily flip to the Canada-Norway game. At 7:58 PM ET, Mike Emrick announces that the game can now be seen on its originally schedules channel, CNBC. Thus the first thought that pops into my mind is that curling is over and CNBC is now showing the game.
Wrong. Some studio guy was still talking about the curling on CNBC followed by an extended 5-minute commercial break.
Does MSNBC stick with the hockey game until CNBC is finished with their required advertising (despite the fact that the time after a curling match and before you JIP a hockey match is never a good time for an extended commercial)? Of course not! This is NBC we are talking about people and you know what 8:00 on MSNBC means, don't you? It's Countdown with Keith Olbermann's Overblown Ego! Whoopee!
Whose decision this was, I have no idea. Is it possible that Keith Olbermann's ego got in the way and asked that his show not be preempted for 5 minutes so that MSNBC can satisfy a greater audience by airing a Team Canada men's ice hockey game? Absolutely, it is possible. Is it possible that it is somehow in his contract that his show is more important than the Olympics? Just as possible. Could it have just been awful communicating between the sister stations, MSNBC and CNBC? Probably the most likely of events, yes, but regardless, NBC morons made sure that it's television audience missed another 5 minutes of hockey in addition to the beginning of the game that was cutoff just in case the Russian women make one of those ever common 13-goal comebacks that you read about everyday in the papers.
Eventually with 2 minutes left in the 1st period, CNBC started airing Canada vs. Norway.
Again, I am not going to fault CNBC for sticking with a close curling match involving the USA, but something does need to be done about this. For the summer Olympics they had separate channels dedicated to just soccer and baseball, why not do the same here? Why not dedicate a channel just to hockey or a channel just to curling? That way you avoid compressing too much into too small a time frame and thus you risk having to join-in-progress pretty much every sporting event on cable which is what NBC-U did last night. It was just bad. And they even cutoff the first 2 minutes of the Russia-Latvia game for the conclusion of Finland-China women's ice hockey game. Get another channel, have the IOC space out games more, change something because this is the kind of Olympics coverage I would expect with a bunch of high schoolers running the show, not a major American broadcast network, even if it is NBC. This has been pathetic even for them.
What's my overall point in this post? Basically that NBC is a disgrace and should, by law, never be allowed to cover the Olympics again.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, NBC's attempt to deceive your boss!
Ugh.........wow.Let's dissect this now. It's a screenshot on Windows 7 of a blank Excel spreadsheet that is only covering a 3rd of the screen. Can you count the number of things wrong in that last statement?
First of all, how many offices have Windows 7? Secondly, doesn't a BLANK spreadsheet sort of defeat the purpose of the intention of the boss button, which is to, oh, you know, make you look like you are doing something productive! And lastly, the spreadsheet taking up a 3rd of the screen does a great job in highlighting the Windows 7 that your boss and company may or may not have. Sure if you are really savvy enough you can pass it off as Vista, but how many people even use Vista? It sucked monkey testicles so much that people in Vista's heyday, people were paying extra money to downgrade to Windows XP!
Alas, that NBC would throw up such a half-assed boss button is hardly describing. If I were to describe NBC's coverage in only one word.............DreadfullyPainstakinglyUnprofessionallyAwful.
From showing the death of Nodar Kumaritišvili over and over again in slow-mo in primetime the day that he died to spoiling its own events on Twitter before they are aired (even on the east coast) to the all-around awful announcers they hired to somehow thinking that we care about the words and reports of Cris Collinsworth on the Winter Olympics to only streaming hockey and curling on NBCOlympics.com while CTV is trying to stream every single and minute event to the complete debacle of their schedule (more on that in a bit), it has just been a complete disaster. An indefensible disaster.
Take last night for example. At 7:30 PM ET, the Canada-Norway hockey game was supposed to start on CNBC, however, a close women's curling match between the United States and Japan was going on. Now I understand not wanting to cut away from a close curling match featuring the United States and I am not going to complain about that. Too bad that was the only thing NBC did right in handling the situation.
I forget what USA was running at the time, but on MSNBC at the time of Canada's faceoff with Norway was a women's hockey game between the USA and Russia. Now, again, normally I would say don't cutaway from a U.S. hockey game, but when it is in the 2nd half of the 3rd period and the score is 13-0 USA, I think it is a safe assumption to make that a very small portion of the population will be pissed off if you cutaway from that blowout to show the men's Team Canada hockey team in action for the first time in the 2010 Olympics. You know, the same Team Canada team that was mentioned more during the U.S.-Switzerland game than the U.S. and Switzerland were combined.
Okay, so no TV channels available for them at faceoff. Even though it would be an inconvenience to some, NBC can just go directly to streaming the game online at NBCOlympics.com until the games on MSNBC or CNBC concludes, right? Well either they had technical difficulties with the system or the feed, the technology itself is bad (and I find that highly doubtful with Microsoft Silverlight), or the people at NBC are just incompetent morons, but whatever the answer is, NBC did not have a stream up until at least 5 minutes after the puck was dropped.
Now the U.S. women's ice hockey blowout is over and MSNBC does temporarily flip to the Canada-Norway game. At 7:58 PM ET, Mike Emrick announces that the game can now be seen on its originally schedules channel, CNBC. Thus the first thought that pops into my mind is that curling is over and CNBC is now showing the game.
Wrong. Some studio guy was still talking about the curling on CNBC followed by an extended 5-minute commercial break.
Does MSNBC stick with the hockey game until CNBC is finished with their required advertising (despite the fact that the time after a curling match and before you JIP a hockey match is never a good time for an extended commercial)? Of course not! This is NBC we are talking about people and you know what 8:00 on MSNBC means, don't you? It's Countdown with Keith Olbermann's Overblown Ego! Whoopee!
Whose decision this was, I have no idea. Is it possible that Keith Olbermann's ego got in the way and asked that his show not be preempted for 5 minutes so that MSNBC can satisfy a greater audience by airing a Team Canada men's ice hockey game? Absolutely, it is possible. Is it possible that it is somehow in his contract that his show is more important than the Olympics? Just as possible. Could it have just been awful communicating between the sister stations, MSNBC and CNBC? Probably the most likely of events, yes, but regardless, NBC morons made sure that it's television audience missed another 5 minutes of hockey in addition to the beginning of the game that was cutoff just in case the Russian women make one of those ever common 13-goal comebacks that you read about everyday in the papers.
Eventually with 2 minutes left in the 1st period, CNBC started airing Canada vs. Norway.
Again, I am not going to fault CNBC for sticking with a close curling match involving the USA, but something does need to be done about this. For the summer Olympics they had separate channels dedicated to just soccer and baseball, why not do the same here? Why not dedicate a channel just to hockey or a channel just to curling? That way you avoid compressing too much into too small a time frame and thus you risk having to join-in-progress pretty much every sporting event on cable which is what NBC-U did last night. It was just bad. And they even cutoff the first 2 minutes of the Russia-Latvia game for the conclusion of Finland-China women's ice hockey game. Get another channel, have the IOC space out games more, change something because this is the kind of Olympics coverage I would expect with a bunch of high schoolers running the show, not a major American broadcast network, even if it is NBC. This has been pathetic even for them.
What's my overall point in this post? Basically that NBC is a disgrace and should, by law, never be allowed to cover the Olympics again.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
2010 Winter Olympics Day 5 Men's Ice Hockey Open Thread
Group A: United States vs. Switzerland 3:00 (USA - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, ItG: Pierre McGuire)
Group A: Canada vs. Norway 7:30 (CNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, SR: Joe Micheletti)
Group B: Russia vs. Latvia 12:00 AM (CNBC - Kenny Albert and Joe Micheletti)
Let the World Cup of Hockey begin!
10:08 PM: We are 112 minutes away from the epic showdown. To get you all ready for Team Latvia to begin their quest for the gold here is some Latvian music to get you fired up.
First, the Latvian national anthem!
And now, Latvia's entry in the 2008 Eurovision Final, Pirates of the Sea!
Latvija par zelta medaļu. Lai dzīvo demi-Dievs Oskars Bārtulis!
Group A: Canada vs. Norway 7:30 (CNBC - Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, SR: Joe Micheletti)
Group B: Russia vs. Latvia 12:00 AM (CNBC - Kenny Albert and Joe Micheletti)
Let the World Cup of Hockey begin!
10:08 PM: We are 112 minutes away from the epic showdown. To get you all ready for Team Latvia to begin their quest for the gold here is some Latvian music to get you fired up.
First, the Latvian national anthem!
And now, Latvia's entry in the 2008 Eurovision Final, Pirates of the Sea!
Latvija par zelta medaļu. Lai dzīvo demi-Dievs Oskars Bārtulis!
Monday, February 15, 2010
The High School Years: Part 6 - Wake Up Call
Missed a part? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
We got to finals week. And after going quite a long time without a mention of it, Anna all of a sudden out of nowhere sent an email asking, “Hey, for some reason i just thought of this: Justin, do you still like Alura?”
It hit me right across the face and I started thinking about it. My emotions started taking control of me. I thought about Alura and how wonderful she was and how sweet and pretty and awesome she was. These feelings, these feelings that I had done such a good job at suppressing for the past month were coming back into me.
Alura did reply to my question with a simple, “Well, actually, no, I haven't. Sorry.”
I was doing so good controlling my inner obsession and now, all of a sudden, this rush of emotion was coming to me. But I had had enough of this. I wanted to break the habit.
Basically I was left speechless. I did not know what to say. I sent her an email asking how she knew about Alura’s hiding in the hallways and how bad I felt that in I was torturing her and making her life miserable. I even asked Anna if Alura was going to do mock trials again next year, to which she replied, “She's going to go through with it, because of mike, but she's confessed that she really doesn't want you to start liking her even more”. I told Anna that she did not have to email me anymore and her only reply to that was “her conscience would feel bad”. And to top it all off, Anna added that “You've scarred Alura for life and she's probably never going to be comfortable with you again”.
Anna had explicitly stated that not a word of this would come from my mouth to Alura. But a part of me felt so bad that I just felt like crawling up on my carpet and crying myself to sleep over the ordeal. How else can you get the pain to go away? I’m not a bad person, I knew I was not a bad person, and yet, here I was, scarring this innocent girl for life with my creepy stalkerishness. What was wrong with me? It’s bad enough that I have problems harming flies, now I had to cope with the fact that I have negatively affected someone I cared about in the most ostentatious manner possible.
That urge to say something was too overwhelming. If Anna could break her implicit promise to me that no one would know about my crush on Alura, then I could break my promise that I would not tell Alura that Anna just told me things that Alura did not want me know because it is the only way I could start feeling better about the whole ordeal.
I needed to send her something. I could not keep quiet about this. It’s the only way I could stop hating myself.
After a long night of sleeping on everything, Alura got back to me the next day.
Alura had deemed that we could keep emailing, just a little less frequently. Alura’s wish would become a reality, at least in the very near future. I may have been in the process of getting over the crush, but the fun of the whole ordeal was just about to begin….
We got to finals week. And after going quite a long time without a mention of it, Anna all of a sudden out of nowhere sent an email asking, “Hey, for some reason i just thought of this: Justin, do you still like Alura?”
It hit me right across the face and I started thinking about it. My emotions started taking control of me. I thought about Alura and how wonderful she was and how sweet and pretty and awesome she was. These feelings, these feelings that I had done such a good job at suppressing for the past month were coming back into me.
I like her now more than I have ever liked her before, but I'm controlling myself. Have I been doing better, do you think? Actually, it's funny that you mentioned that because just earlier today I was wondering to myself if I did the right thing by flat-out telling her that I liked her a lot 2 months ago and later the exact same day here I am telling out right that I like her more now than I ever liked her before. Let me tell you what, I am braver than I ever thought I would be when it comes to dealing with her girl. I'm actually very proud of myself. Seeing as how I we are putting these questions out there, I have a question for Alura. Alura, have you changed your mind at all? You can be honest, I won't be hurt/offended/angry/upset/mad/depressed if you say "no".What I said was true. At the time I was feeling brave. Braver than I had ever felt in my life, despite the constant rejections and the lack of a date. Just the fact that I was regularly communicating with a girl that I liked was doing wonders for my self-esteem.
Alura did reply to my question with a simple, “Well, actually, no, I haven't. Sorry.”
I was doing so good controlling my inner obsession and now, all of a sudden, this rush of emotion was coming to me. But I had had enough of this. I wanted to break the habit.
Anna, please help me. I was doing so good, but today I'm having one of those days where I literally can't stop thinking about Alura. I know that I will always like her, but when you were absolutely obsessed over Mark, what did you do to cool down the obsession? I was doing so good until you asked me if I still liked her and then all of a sudden I started loving all over again, like I was a month or so ago. I just wished she would go out with me, but that could either a). help me feel better, or b). I could become so crazy over her that I start planning a marriage already. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.3 months is a little bit too long for a crush and I was beginning to realize it at this point, and I legitimately wanted to break it. Something about that surge of emotion Anna gave me with that question also compelled me to seek her advice on how to break the habit. And from the response I got from the 1-on-1 private email that I sent to her, Anna legitimately wanted to help me.
Well, first of all, ask yourself why you like her so much. Any reasons? Tell me them when you reply. Then think about all her faults. She has many, I assure you. Then say to yourself "what am I gaining in this? Absolutely nothing. I'll just keep liking her for all eternity to no avail and she'll never like me back, what's the point". It also helps to switch your attention from her. Think about Jodie Sweetin every time you find yourself concentrating on Alura.Yes, I had told her about Jodie Sweetin. I replied by basically telling her what I have told you in previous chapters about how I thought she was beautiful and I had never really liked a girl before. I clued her in into the inner-workings of my mind, just like I have done with you here. However, I was stumped on the faults. Luckily for me, Anna was right on top of it.
1. She doesn't like soda.I replied:
2. She doesn't like dogs.
3. She already likes someone else.
4. She talks back to her parents more than even I do.
5. She's really impatient.
6. She pretends to be friends with people and then backstabs them.
7. She's a bully to the losers in our grades.
8. She has really bad handwriting.
9. She has told me several times that she can't wait to get back to work because the guy she likes works with her.
10. This is all being told to you strictly in confidence and you are not telling Alura I told you this personal stuff.
We'll work on those for now. Let me know if you need more faults. I personally don't know why you think she's all that beautiful. I mean, she's not ugly or plain or anything, but she's no raving beauty either, and even my other male friends don't think so either. And she's not all that understanding. She is quite embarrassed by the fact that you like her (again- not a word to her on what I'm telling you). But she is sweet, I can't argue with you on that one if other girls didn't like you, what made you think Alura would? (this has a negative connotation to it, but that's not how it’s meant to sound. it’s a sincere question)
Au contraire to your thoughts, I think she is a raving beauty, just she doesn't act like one. Then again, I guess this is all a matter of opinion. Why is she embarrassed that I like her? Again, you know her better, but is she embarrassed because I like her or is she embarrassed because she feels bad and doesn't like me back. Granted, I'm not the most popular kid in school, but I'm not a geek or a nerd or anything like that. What I mean is is that I am smart and I do well in school, I'm just not a geek/nerd person, if that makes sense (okay, maybe a little).Anna sent another email back:
It's not that I thought she would like me, it's just that I never liked a girl more than I like her and my hope was that if I told her how much I really like her she would notice me, like me, and go out with me. Well, I think I got one of three down (I definitley thinks she notices me)
I'm not sure how to mention this without having a really awkward conversation (or by bringing up this conversation) but no one is asking her to email me or anything. If she feels uncomfortable/embarrassed emailing me and she is only doing it because she feels like she has to and doesn't want to hurt my feelings, then tell her (somehow) that she doesn't have to.
How can you not like dogs? You're practically not human. And she is embarrassed about the fact that you like her. I think she was wishing it would be Mike (shh!). If given the choice, to be absolutely honest, she'd rather have finished mock trials and then never speak to you again, but she's too polite to let you know that she's only emailing because she feels she has to. I'm sorry for my bluntness, but you really have to get over her. Plus, the reason your little ruse to see her in the halls didn't work is because every time she sees you coming, she seriously runs, uses a different route, or hides behind a tall person. No joke.Ouch. Mike was another member of mock trials and that bit about the hallways got me devastated. Sometimes I would see her and find ways to see her in the hallway to say hi or what not, but the fact that she intentionally runs away from me? No, that, that can’t be. Is she really that hurt? That embarrassed? That scared? To literally run away and go in a different direction?
Basically I was left speechless. I did not know what to say. I sent her an email asking how she knew about Alura’s hiding in the hallways and how bad I felt that in I was torturing her and making her life miserable. I even asked Anna if Alura was going to do mock trials again next year, to which she replied, “She's going to go through with it, because of mike, but she's confessed that she really doesn't want you to start liking her even more”. I told Anna that she did not have to email me anymore and her only reply to that was “her conscience would feel bad”. And to top it all off, Anna added that “You've scarred Alura for life and she's probably never going to be comfortable with you again”.
Anna had explicitly stated that not a word of this would come from my mouth to Alura. But a part of me felt so bad that I just felt like crawling up on my carpet and crying myself to sleep over the ordeal. How else can you get the pain to go away? I’m not a bad person, I knew I was not a bad person, and yet, here I was, scarring this innocent girl for life with my creepy stalkerishness. What was wrong with me? It’s bad enough that I have problems harming flies, now I had to cope with the fact that I have negatively affected someone I cared about in the most ostentatious manner possible.
That urge to say something was too overwhelming. If Anna could break her implicit promise to me that no one would know about my crush on Alura, then I could break my promise that I would not tell Alura that Anna just told me things that Alura did not want me know because it is the only way I could start feeling better about the whole ordeal.
I needed to send her something. I could not keep quiet about this. It’s the only way I could stop hating myself.
Alura,That felt better. And so she was not left entirely out of the dark, I told Anna what I had sent to Alura. My punishment was to forward the above email to her so she could see what I said. I learned my lesson well.
Wow, this is hard for me. Um, I have been talking to Anna privately on how to conquer my obsession with you, seeing as how she conquered her obsession with Mark and she told me how much I was bothering you. I kind of understand why you felt that way because I really liked you and you don't really like me. But why did you have to keep all of it a secret from me? If all I am doing is bothering you and making your life hell, then why do you keep emailing me? You don't have to run from me, my intentions are only those of good ones. Now that I know how much I have bothered you I feel so awful because I obviously never meant to do that to you. I'm sorry for causing you any pain or suffering. I understand that you will probably never look at me in a positive light again, but I hope you understand what I am saying. I still want to be friends with you (hopefully you want the same, but if you don't I understand) and hopefully we can still email (in childish tone: I like emails. End childish tone), but if you don't want to I understand. I just want you to forgive me for bothering you and I want to set you free and make you feel better, not like you have to do things just to keep me happy. So what do you say? Can you forgive me and can we start all over? Thanks for your time.
Justin Feinberg
P.S. Please don't be mad at Anna. I wanted advice and she told me all of that stuff that you (with perhaps a reasonable reason) hid from me. The only way I could ever forgive myself is to apologize to you and ask for forgiveness from you (as weird as it sounds it makes perfect sense in my mind), whether I get it or not is irrelevant.
P.P.S. Yes, I think I am finally over my obsession of you. Thanks for trying to keep me happy, but if I ever bother you again, please let me know so I can look at myself and my actions like Anna made me do today.
After a long night of sleeping on everything, Alura got back to me the next day.
It's fun when you and me and Anna are just e-chatting with each other, but yeah, sometimes it gets a little weird. I know you like me, rather obviously, and I know that I probably will never feel the same way because actually, I like someone else. (don't ask me who; he doesn't go to Windy Hill.) I do feel kind of bad that I don't like you in that way and it doesn't really help if you mention it or whatever, even if it is only in fun. It's good that you're getting over me, and I think we can keep e-mailing, probably, but maybe it should be less frequent.While it did not take away all the pain of harming an innocent person, her response definitely put me to ease.
Alura had deemed that we could keep emailing, just a little less frequently. Alura’s wish would become a reality, at least in the very near future. I may have been in the process of getting over the crush, but the fun of the whole ordeal was just about to begin….
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A Rant: NBA All-Star Edition
Good grief I hate the NBA right now more than I normally do.
I am sick and tired of people defending the shit that is on TNT right now.
It's a pointless all-star game that means absolutely nothing! Just because a bunch of big names are playing, does not mean that you need to drag it into JerryWorld and have a concerts before, during it. The festivities started 2 and a half hours game and halftime is just ending! What in the blue fucking hell is this supposed to be?
An all-star game is not the Super Bowl. Don't make it that. Don't pretend that it is. It's not. To think that it is even remotely equivalent is an absolutely quixotic way to go about it. And it truly is embarrassing. The ultimate showoff game in the ultimate showoff league is nothing close to the same level as the Super Bowl. Fuck, the NBA all-star game is nothing close to the same level as the Pro Bowl, which in turn is nothing close to the MLB All-Star game. At least MLB can tout the fact their game actually matters!
What's wrong? Am I saying something that is upsetting you? Does this go against everything that you've come to know and believe about the NBA? Does this offend you?
If it does, WAKE UP!
The fact is this: games are never the Lakers vs. the Cavs; they are all Kobe vs. LeBron. A team sport should be treated as such, a team sport. And the NBA does not do that. The media does not hype it as that. The game lends itself to players, not teams. It always has. It does so now. And unless drastic changes are made, it always will. Why would they change? People pay to see this bullshit. The attendance at JerryWorld tonight was an astonishing 108,713. Congrats Dallas on hosting the highest attended exhibition game ever!
The media defecates and people swallow this game and this league like it's the tastiest filet mignon ever. But the bottom line is this, when the finals are Cleveland vs. Los Angeles, it will be amazing if ESPN mentions the words "Cavs", "Cavaliers", and "Lakers" 5 times. Because gets what, it will be "Kobe vs. LeBron" and guess how the game will play it: you guessed it. It will be Kobe vs. LeBron with 8 other useless and irrelevant players that nobody cares about.
This may not be the NBA Finals, but if anything epitomizes everything bad about the NBA, it is the All-Star game. It's the most boring of the 4 major all-star games and the pomp and circumstance that gets behind it is simply nauseating even more so than the day they are playing it on this year.
Suffice to say, this game represents everything I've grown to not like about the NBA: overhyped, overrated, selfish players, and boring.
I am sick and tired of people defending the shit that is on TNT right now.
It's a pointless all-star game that means absolutely nothing! Just because a bunch of big names are playing, does not mean that you need to drag it into JerryWorld and have a concerts before, during it. The festivities started 2 and a half hours game and halftime is just ending! What in the blue fucking hell is this supposed to be?
An all-star game is not the Super Bowl. Don't make it that. Don't pretend that it is. It's not. To think that it is even remotely equivalent is an absolutely quixotic way to go about it. And it truly is embarrassing. The ultimate showoff game in the ultimate showoff league is nothing close to the same level as the Super Bowl. Fuck, the NBA all-star game is nothing close to the same level as the Pro Bowl, which in turn is nothing close to the MLB All-Star game. At least MLB can tout the fact their game actually matters!
What's wrong? Am I saying something that is upsetting you? Does this go against everything that you've come to know and believe about the NBA? Does this offend you?
If it does, WAKE UP!
The fact is this: games are never the Lakers vs. the Cavs; they are all Kobe vs. LeBron. A team sport should be treated as such, a team sport. And the NBA does not do that. The media does not hype it as that. The game lends itself to players, not teams. It always has. It does so now. And unless drastic changes are made, it always will. Why would they change? People pay to see this bullshit. The attendance at JerryWorld tonight was an astonishing 108,713. Congrats Dallas on hosting the highest attended exhibition game ever!
The media defecates and people swallow this game and this league like it's the tastiest filet mignon ever. But the bottom line is this, when the finals are Cleveland vs. Los Angeles, it will be amazing if ESPN mentions the words "Cavs", "Cavaliers", and "Lakers" 5 times. Because gets what, it will be "Kobe vs. LeBron" and guess how the game will play it: you guessed it. It will be Kobe vs. LeBron with 8 other useless and irrelevant players that nobody cares about.
This may not be the NBA Finals, but if anything epitomizes everything bad about the NBA, it is the All-Star game. It's the most boring of the 4 major all-star games and the pomp and circumstance that gets behind it is simply nauseating even more so than the day they are playing it on this year.
Suffice to say, this game represents everything I've grown to not like about the NBA: overhyped, overrated, selfish players, and boring.
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