Slayer’s Sports And Stuff: 5.21.04

Mistress: “How much did you pay for this, Slayer!”
Me: “Ummmm…50 bucks, Mistress”
Misress: “What! How dare you! With our budget in the red due to the prices of gas and milk, you paid 50 bucks for a boxing match! Get on your knees and receive your punishment!”
Slayer: “Shhhhhh…Honey..the fight is starting”
(five minutes later)
Slayer: “Ok-it’s over.”

Hello Sports Fans! Welcome to another edition of Slayer’s Sports and Stuff! Thank you so much to everyone who e-mailed me; from the kind words of support to the constructive criticisms. Even people who disagreed with me on some of the issues did it in a constructive manner i.e. nobody was mean. One nice fella named Frank did say that Apple Martinis were gay. I didn’t know that beverages had sexual orientations but I think I got the grasp of what he meant, so when I wrote back to correct his mislabeling; he wrote back saying he apologized and that he was thinking about margaritas. He even added Martinis were cool because that is what James Bond drinks. I agree with him on both counts. The number one reason martinis are cool is because of James Bond (and more on that in an upcoming edition). The second is they can kick your ass if the bartender makes them right. And yes, I’m not a fan of margaritas. They are usually overpriced and almost void of alcohol. Though a margarita pizza slice…Yummy! For those of you outside of New York, that a white Sicilian slice topped with fresh tomatoes and dabs of melted mozzarella. Mmmmm…mmm…good.

Ok, let’s do this thing.

HORSE RACING

The horse won….quite convincingly. This made people almost happy. A very popular horse on the track also got second place. This means lots of people won lots of money by betting on the 토토먹튀. That made them sort of happy too. The horse’s owner is terminally ill and generates what the Greeks called ‘pathos’ by having to use an oxygen tank to breathe. Don’t worry, he’s kind of happy now too. The jock isn’t happy. It’s two more weeks he has to vomit after every meal to make weight. Is the horse happy? Probably has no clue what the hell is going on and is happy in the most basic sense. But if the horse wins that next race, everyone will be REALLY HAPPY!!!!!!!! Horse racing fans get to say they saw a triple crown winner (and made a bundle doing it). The owner can die happy and have a healthy inheritance by selling the horse’s children for 100,000 dollars a piece, then sell the horse to Purina for 50 bucks. The jock will be happy to know he will have a place in the sport’s history as one of the best ever as he is slowly dying of liver failure. If the horse loses lots of people will lose money, the owner will day with a sad face, the horse will still be sold to Purina, and the jockey will still die of liver failure. But, I’ll be happy! Here BetEasy offers punters as good as you will get an offline betting service. Check out BetEasy Review.

BOXING
I don’t see Boxing getting on the top of this page very often due to Rule 3 which was stated in my last column. But, when the modern era’s best boxer goes down for the first time in 50 fights, that’s news. Roy Jones, Jr. who is not only the best boxer of our time but the most progressive as well went down at 1:41 of the second round when southpaw Antonio Tarver landed his big left hand square on Roy’s jaw. This is considered by many to be one of the more bigger upsets in the past few decades, so if you have HBO I encourage everyone to take a look at the replay (which will start to air on Saturday and throughout the next week). It won’t take too much of your time. I can’t say I’m either shocked or surprised. In fact, several asked my when analyzing what will be for Vitali Klitchko, why I did not mention a fight with Jones. I just felt Jones would lose to Tarver. This is not due to intel or knowledge, but it was just a hunch. I didn’t think Tarver was a better fighter then Jones, but he had his number. And in boxing, everyone has someone’s number despite talent and/or experience. Plus I loved Tarver’s attitude as the fight was approaching: confident but not cocky. But, have no fear Jones fans. This is the best thing to happen to him since 1995. Admittedly, Jones looked to be in the best shape of his career, his knockdown was due to a hard punch, not because his skills are deteriorating. Jones/Tarver III (If you don’t know, Jones won a sketchy decision in their last fight) is probably being booked as we speak and if Jones can win out, it will solidify his place as one of best boxers of all time and no less then anywhere on the Top 5. Some people balk at these statements because they find it difficult to conceive the notion that one of the best in their own respective sport is playing NOW. Even when Michael Jordon was playing, people were stating he was no Oscar Robertson. And yes, comparing Jones to Jordan is not a stretch at all. What is the one thing every Jones hater always complained about? He never had a dramatic rivalry. Well, here it is developing before our very eyes. If Jones can do something amazing in the next fight, he goes from being arguably one of the best ever to one of the best ever period.

BASKETBALL
I have no idea when this article will be put on line as my orders from the Commanding Officer were to submit them when they were done, and he’ll worry about spacing the articles apart.. So, because of that I can’t tell you where we are in the basketball playoffs. And since the story of the playoffs is whatever happened the night before, analyzing the current scenario is fruitless. Fruitless I say. It is that which is without fruit. But I can say last Thursday (or two Thursdays ago depending on when you’re reading it), all four conference semis were tied at two games each! For lack of a better word, that was awesome. Yes, there are words such as wondrous, indescribable, astounding, prodigious, stupendous, and my personal favorite: inconceivable. But I choose Awesome because it is just what everyone needed to finally become interested in the playoffs. Even the most hard core of basketball fans were having trouble getting into it. As stated before, this is due to the extended first round which is an exercise of absolute tedium and the fact no one knows when and where these games are being played. For example, did you see that triple OT classic between the Nets and Pistons? NO? What, like you had something better to do on a Friday night? That game should have been played on a weekend afternoon. Everyone in the sports media, even their apologetic cheerleaders on TNT and ESPN have been stating the that playoff schedule is goofy. Commissioner Stern has been giving the political ‘everything is fine’ answer, and had been saying that as recently as a few days ago. Well, he’s a liar (news flash!) as it is now being reported that the NBA owners and union will meet this summer to fix the playoffs for 2005. I’ll have plenty more to say about that in a future column, let’s deal with the present now.

The present is that the defending champion San Antonio Spurs are out! There are only two teams in the conference semis that were ‘locks’ to win this round: the Spurs and Pacers mostly due to their competition. Fat Van Gundy’s Miami Heat put up a fight but it was to no avail against the much superior Pacers, and the Spurs did not own up to their end of the bargain to the supposed ‘winner of this series wins the championship’ match. People are fine with this as the Spurs were uncaptivating as champions and made people turn the channel. The Lakers seem to attract every rat in the gutter. So, why couldn’t the spurs? They have the best player in the league in Tim Duncan and watching him do his ‘thang’ is a Zen experience. But it’s like when public television shows an opera. You watch it for a few minutes and conclude this is the best thing on TV right now, it’s informative, beautiful, and entertaining. You even realize that just by watching it you could be a better person as it well increase your intelligence, musical awareness, artistic appreciation, and overall wisdom. But you turn the channel because American Idol is on. That’s the Spurs and the Lakers.

Wanna know something weird? Microsoft Word puts a red underline under the word Lakers. Come on! The Lakers are an American fabric for better or for worse. But a professional word processor is not going to recognize surnames for professional sports teams, right? Yet if I type the word supersonics, it’s considered an acceptable English term and is not underlined. Hmmmmmmmmm

Kevin Garnett got everyone’s panties in a knot by saying the following about his upcoming game seven against the Kings: “This is it. It’s for all the marbles. I’m sitting in the house loading up the pump, I’m loading up the Uzis, I’ve got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I’m ready for war.” He later apologized. My question is to Kevin is “what????????” and my question to the pantieknots are even a bigger “WHAT????????”
Kevin supposedly made an offensive comment. People pretended to be offended by the supposedly offensive comment. What is there to be offended about? He said he was going to prepare for a basketball game by sitting at home loading weapons. What does that even mean? What is the metaphor? What do people think it means? I do not understand why this is a story. What Kevin says equates to sitting next to somebody and having them say, ‘I love it when the sky is a clear green.” It means nothing. What he said meant nothing. But people play this stupid game and hear a black male talk about guns in a time of war and say its offensive for soldiers, bad role model for the kids, blah blah blah blah blah and they have to say it’s wrong and all that jazz not due to any consistent moral philosophy but because people expect them to do so. All the guy did was read outloud a catalogue from the “Guns and Ammo” annual pricing issue. Now if he said something like “I’m going to bring a hammer, smash open Bibby’s head, rape his wife, and kill his children.” Then people would have a gripe.

BASEBALL
Old people rule! Not only is Clemens 7-0 (as of this writing) but Randy Johnson pitched a perfect game at the age of 40 years and 251 days and is now the oldest player to do so. He also did it against the Braves which aren’t spring chic-a-filas. What is being underreported is that more importantly this is his SEVENTH no hitter. It’s quite unfathomable. This is also good news for the D-Backs as they can now hold him for a king’s ransom to the teams salivating to bring him over. These teams being in order of probability of receiving him are Yankees, Braves, Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels, and White Sox. So if you’re a fan of one of these teams and you’ve been begging your GM to get this guy, prepare to pay up.

Are we in the decline of western civilization? Danny Graves, a reliever for the Cincinnati Reds doesn’t think so. He recently lost his wallet on the team bus during a west coast trip. It contained credit cards, his driver’s license, his Reds identification card (worth alot to the right people), and about $1,400 in cash. The man whose job it is to clean the busses found the wallet and returned it to him via airmail, even exchanging the cash for travelers checks under his name so it wouldn’t get stolen in the mail. All he asked for in return was an autograph for his daddy. Awwwwwwwwww. Graves stated publicly, “He’s going to get a little more than an autograph.” Yeah, yeah, I know I could add the homosexual humorous retort here (which is way too common on the internet) but I’ll let you do it. Finish the sentence with whatever you desire, just like a fortune cookie. This story is nice but one thing stood out. 1400 dollars is cash!!!!!! Rich people don’t even carry $1,400 in cash. This is the sociological lesson of the week. Rich people born rich carry no more in cash then any of us. ‘Normal’ people who become rich love having wads of hundreds in their wallet. Fascinating….or not.

HOCKEY
All I can say about the conference finals are WOW! They have been amazing and other people here on Black have further details if you wish. Nothing I can say can add to WOW. Either you are being wowed yourself or you wouldn’t watch Hockey if your life depended on it. Because of that, some people seemed to be taken aback about my little survey of the NHL’s low ratings last week. Now ideally, a hockey fan shouldn’t care about low ratings. Who cares if it’s a big time sport or not. You love it, you live for it, you want more of it. That’s all that matters. Unfortunately in reality, low ratings does have an effect on the game as a whole. First of all, low ratings means less games or more importantly less playoff games. It also means that the NHL brain-trust is going to continue to make stupid rules every year in order to attract other demographics. I have alot to say about this but I won’t do it now. Hockey is at its apex and lets just sit back and enjoy it before impending Armageddon.

Should they survive the Armageddon, there is some good news. As I type this, it seems the NHL was able to Sucker NBC into being its network flagship. The package consists of 7 regular seasons games, six playoff games, and the Stanley Cup Finals games 3-7 in prime time. This contract will be for four years with NBC having an opt out clause after two. That’s actually great news. NBC and Dick Ebersol have a good history of promoting their sport programs. The bad side of this is that Dick also has a nasty habit of interfering directly with the game itself as well. NBC also doesn’t hesitate to buy out the contract if they don’t like the ratings. They also renewed their contract with ESPN and ESPN2.

OLYMPICS
New York City is now in the final four of the 2012 summer games (there is actually a final five, but in truth its really between four cities). This is THE story here in New York and most of the clearer minded people here don’t want it. Not because they don’t want the games per say. It’s that our city has problems up the ying yang including the worst public education system in the western hemisphere, police applications already dropping their low requirements, firefighters losing their mind, minimal salaries to everyone in the civil service, and the absolute depletion of any form of middle class as well as an alarming increase of poverty. So the mayor will solve all this by bringing in the Olympics and putting the stadium in a spot that will create inhumane traffic conditions for the next eight years. Well, New Yorkers can relax because it is doubtful the city will get it. They are clearly in fourth place of the four, with London rated a little higher then them, and the real battle being between Madrid and Paris. The experts claim Paris will get it because they have been second place in these decisions for the past 10 years or so. Also, the world hates us right now.

The upcoming Summer Games in Athens could end up being a disaster. I don’t mean technically (which it is in danger of due to the fact most of the facilities haven’t been built yet) but literally. One of their practice facilities just blew up. They claim it was just a gas leak but it still scared alot of people due to its overall symbolism of what might be. This country not only has international terrorists to deal with but their own domestic ones as well. Just cross our fingers I guess and hope everyone gets through this alive.

FOOTBALL
Deion Sanders will no longer be part of CBS’s pre-game due to what is being claimed as a contract dispute. I actually thought that the CBS’s show was finally getting some chemistry with one of the reasons being Deion. His rants and raves complimented NFL defender Boomer Esiason and mellow but stern Dan Marino. Some say he went too far on occasions. Many felt it was classless when he politicked for Dan Reeves coaching job on the air. Classless maybe, but priceless as well. There was also the time he went to SCHOOL on Boomer Esiason after he claimed that he never saw a problem with drugs in the locker room. Deion basically said he didn’t want to see it which is worse then the problem itself (how true). Basically, he took everyone out of their comfort zone yet was charismatic enough to be one of the guys as well which are both two great attributes for a host. So, while the reasons he left may seem political up front, the experts state that it was because Deion asked for a ridiculous amount of money and if they paid they would have to pay Marino and Boomer that much as well. He will be replaced by Shannon Sharpe who has the potential to be just as good as long as he doesn’t suck up to his friends that are still playing and coaching.

RASSLIN
Yes, I watch wrestling. I love it actually. Loved it all my life and once thought ECW was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Love it too much to be part of the so-called IWC. For example, everyone hates Smackdown right now. They say its boring, not enough stars, a conspiracy against Eddie Guerrero, etc. I’ve really liked it. Has an old school feel to it and is an antithesis of the high energy Raw. Aren’t they supposed to be different? I actually thought about doing a wrestling column here at 411 (for those of you who don’t know, this site started out as a wrestling site and it is still its bread and butter). But I couldn’t see how I could write a column every week on wrestling. Like this week for example, I have nothing to say.

FIRENDS AND FRASIER
Everyone is real sad about the end of these two shows. I’m not much of a TV head, so unless the show comes on during an insomniac syndication time slot, I usually don’t watch them. Friends never had one where I live, so I’ve only seen a few episodes my whole life. They were good for a sitcom I guess. Gave me a couple of giggles. People though look at me strangely when I say I’ve only seen a few episodes. Why? What am I missing out on that is so important and beneficial to my lightness of being. It’s a well written, well acted situational television comedy which means its not that destructive to the human psyche. Frasier on the other hand had this nifty 1:30 AM time slot for about two years or so and I was able to catch many of the episodes. It was funny…but isn’t everything funny at 1:30 AM?

SNUFF
I’m the farthest thing from computer savvy but the closest in a couple circles I dwell in. Many people asked me where they could find the beheading online. I told them to go fly a kite instead.

APPLE MARTINIS NO MORE
They got me sick. I’ve moved on to Vodka Martinis. More specifically, Stoli Dry Martini. (Dry just means less vermooth or however the hell you spell it.) Last night, this girl named Annie said Martinis are like breasts: One is not enough and three are too many. How true Annie, how true.

COMING SOON!
That wraps it up this week! But here’s what we have to look forward to in the upcoming couple of months.
-What the NBA needs to do to be better
-Why college basketball doesn’t need marquis players
-What the MLS needs to do to survive
-What the NHL does NOT have to do to survive
-How Grand Theft Auto VICE CITY is an OCD nightmare
-Top Ten personal favorite movie lists vs. Top Ten best movie lists
-Why I hate lists
-How to gamble on professional wrestling
-How to make the perfect Baked Ziti
-How to make a James Bond Marinti according to Ian Fleming
-Why anyone who complains about anything in sports including me is a hypocrite
-The philosophical comparison between Utilitarianism and Kantianism
-How the Dutch, German, Japanese, and America Lesbian S&M films compare and contrast.
-And every week you’ll get your weekly news and opinions from a writer that finally admits they have a lower IQ then the reader.

See you next week!