I completely forgot to write about Federer’s loss on hard courts … the streaks that ended are simply amazing to read:
1. First time he did not reach a final in 14 months (18 events!) 2. First loss this year to someone whose name is not Rafael Nadal 3. 55 consecutive match wins on US Hard Courts
While is is easy to write these things, it is almost impossible in today’s day and age to achieve such things. Hats off to Federer for keeping up the quality.
The next day had Nadal losing to Juan Carlos Ferrero. Which meant that #1 and #2 were both out before the finals.
What promised to be the first US Open Series matchup between the 2 this year, ended up not happening at all. I am sure the fans were ok with Roddick making it to the finals and destroying Ferrero, but it was nothing close to the Federer/Nadal, of course.
Now that he has been kicked out of his team and most likely, his F1 career, Jacques Villeneuve unloads a bunch of crap on Michael Schumacher.
He seems to be full of sour grapes that he did not get any attention despite being a winner and Schuey keeps getting all the attention. He seems to contradict himself when he says that it is ok for Prost to crash because he announced it but it is not ok for Schumy.
Come on Vill, give it up. Just go to NASCAR and try to win some races there at least. Meanwhile, leave F1 alone.
I have not blogged in a bit, so this is a catch up post … forgot to write about Josh Blue winning the Last Comic Standing, and deservedly so. He is funny. He can deliver in a weirdly funny way. He has good material. Congratulations, Josh. Enjoy the moments!
And Rockstar is getting tougher and tougher now. I thought Ryan did well but did not think he could get the encore because Dilana had a killer performance. But I was glad to see Ryan’s version of In The Air Tonight getting the encore. This guy has stepped up big time in the past few weeks, but I do believe he is not right for Supernova.
I think Dilana seems to be the best fit for Supernova at this point. She did prove it a bit last night when she was offered to sing the first Supernova track …
JPM says that he was bored with F1. Is he just complaining/whining? I think so. I think he just wanted more bumping and passing and of course, the more important thing is he wanted to get more exposure (read: more income from commercials) in the US.
John Wright keeps surprising us with snippets from his book coming out in the media, about how things were during his tenure. It all seemed like fun times from the outside, but it does look like there was a lot of strange stuff (not so strange given we are talking of the Indian team) going on out there.
The latest example is his account of Sehwag’s casual dismissal … amazing how he has to almost apologize for the incident. Money in the head of these new cricketers is spoiling the whole fun nowadays.
I wonder how it is now that Gangs is gone and the disciplinarian Chappell is at the helm.
So what if it was only a preseason game? Tennesse defenders were made to look like a lot of USC opponents after Reggie Bush had this excellent run. I love the way it ended, with Reggie going head on into a bunch of defenders.
He’s no weak runner who will go out of bounds to end the play. Mind it! :-)
Well, knocking on wood after this high praise. But I just could not resist it. I hope they show a lot of Saints games here on the West Coast.
Blake Ross of Firefox recently had a great post about how the current crop of companies have started getting used to high valuations (legit or not) and only talk of millions and nothing less.
Read it here and enjoy. It just shows that we are dangerously close to repeating history from 5 years back. I hope it does not come down to it, but a portal snagging 15 mill???? I don’t know how that can be justified. How much money will they have to make to give their investors a good return on the 15M?? The only way a portal can justify it is perhaps having insider information about someone like Google gobbling them up in some time for multiples of that number.
Otherwise, how could anyone justify such a huge need for capital???
Had a wonderful weekend this past weekend. Had hosted a function for an important event in our lives and it was attended by about 50 people. Family flew in from out of town and a lot of friends came in and joined the fun.
The ceremony was done in a sort of traditional format, with prayers and the rituals, and some of the people did comment that everything went according to how it is supposed to be done. Some were surprised how “traditional” it was.
Everyone enjoyed it a lot, including us. There was a little less hassle because we hosted it at a restaurant, so the cleaning and everything was taken care of by the restaurant staff.
Both of us missed our immediate family members. It almost felt like a wedding ceremony and it was sad that no one from immediate family was there to witness it and be a part of the experience. Anyway, there is quite a bit of detail captured in the video and hopefully they will be happy to see it.
And now starts the fun. It is surely going to be a hectic period from now to the end of the year. Can’t wait!!
This is one of the reasons Coaches Poll should be made public every week and let the media debate it with the coaches. How could Steve openly say that he “throws in” a vote for Duke just because he feels he owes them a vote???
He is making a mockery of the entire voting process and if there are enough knuckeheads like him, it could throw the whole thing off.
Some things that could break the hypothesis: Massa being confident about his ride next year. How good an indicator is his confidence? Kimi cannot go to Renault and so he will go to Ferrari. Therefore, the team is going to have Kimi and Massa.
Think about it as much as you want. In a few weeks it has to come out - Kimi’s home for the next year is key to fitting all the remaining pieces together.
I was reading earlier this morning about the AOL screw up with exposing search histories of 500,000 users! Paradigm Shift has listed one such user’s history and it is scary stuff.
Begs the question - are we better off not knowing such creeps' searches (denial) or is it better to know that your neighbor could be the one searching for how to kill someone??? In any case, it is not a pleasant situation to be aware of.
What a freaky race! First, the qualifying, which actually points to the Friday practice where Alonso was penalized 2 seconds in each of his qualifying sessions. So Michael Schumacher only had to qualify well enough so that he has a clear gap between him and Alonso so that he can chew up some points in the lead. But no, it was not that easy. Schumacher got a 2 second penalty of his own and that became to be known/confirmed only on qualification day morning!
As a result, Schumacher ended up 11th and Alonso, 15th. Combine this with some engine changes and there were a total of 5 drivers with penalties on the grid. Kimi was on the pole and had a good chance of winning his first race of the year. About time, right?
Race day sprung another surprise. Rains! Never happened in the last 20 years! Everyone was surprised and did not know how exactly to react - what tires to use, and how to strategize. In the end, it looked like Michelin had the better tires, because after the start, where both Schumy and Alonso made up tremendous ground (and Massa got bumped down badly in the process), it was Alonso, Kimi, de la Rosa who were all coasting along in the wet track compared to the Toyotas and the Ferraris who seemed to be struggling.
Just when things were going awesome for Alonso, with a comfortable gap between him and Schumy - he in fact lapped Schumy!! - things went wrong for Alonso. After his pit stop he came out and almost immediately, spun out with a tire/wheel issue! Out of the race! Out! Yay, for Schumy fans! He was already 3rd by that time, so he only needed to finish the race to chew up 6 points off the 11 point lead.
But there was another twist waiting to happen - Schumacher was on intermediates and the guy behind him, de la Rosa was on dry tires and he was certainly going quicker than Schumy. It was either Schumy takes a pitstop and sacrifices 3 spots and finishes well, or he goes on, losing maybe 1 spot but risking not completing the race. Knowing Schumy, it was a no-brainer - he continued with the risk. He did something silly at one corner when de la Rosa clearly had him but Schumy went across the chicane and came up ahead of de la Rosa. Schumy should have given up one spot there, because it was clearly unfair. But he did not.
But de la Rosa eventually got him fair and square and Schumy was now 4th. With two laps to go, the final twist (race-wise) came about and Schumy’s car gave up! He had to pull in and get parked! Oh no! There go the freebie points.
Jenson Button claimed his first F1 victory and I am happy for him. Finally he gets the big one.
And this morning I read about Schumacher getting bumped up to 8th spot becauise Kubica’s car was found to be too light! So the lead is now 10 points.
It was a toss up between Michelle and Chris Porter and it was Michelle who left us last night.
Chris Porter has turned out to be such a disappointment. All he focuses on is drunks or drugs or something to that effect. Sad writing for such critical rounds.
Josh Blue continues to impress with his jokes. Ty I think has the best delivery.
I say Chris is out this week and between Ty and Josh, it is a 50-50.
It was actually not a bad show last night. Except for one or two … ok three … performances, all the rest were quite superb.
The best though, was the Losing My Religion version by whats-his-face from New York. I won’t be surprised if he gets the call tonight for the encore.
The young chick amazes me with her childish comments. At some point she said ‘I even headbanged’. Last night she said ‘I might get a tattoo, I am that bad!’ ;-)
Oh, and that Puerto Rican girl?!?!?! What a shocker last week that she stayed and Phil went (though he was not that great, but between the two I would have imagined she would have gone). I do believe Supernova is keeping her for the humor. Which is sad - to have her hopes lifted for nothing. But of course, I do believe she is not minding the publicity at all. After all, no publicity is bad publicity.
Anyway, I think Jill and the weirdo looker guy along with the Puerto Rican girl will be the bottom three. And I will really be shocked, no matter what, if the Puerto Rican does not get knocked out tonight.
And I am terribly sorry I have not memorized any names so far. I will do it when it gets down to top 5 or so.
So far, no real favorites … it keeps changing week to week, so I think there is no clear favorite or two.
I feel it is very sad to see how Agassi’s career is ending. He is losing in first and second rounds of mid-tier tournaments, if he has not pulled out of them already.
He had a nice spike in performance last year and he should have called it quits then. His wife Steffi Graf knew exactly when to do it, and Sampras had a nice moment to leave on. Agassi chose instead to prolong his illustrious career and in the bargain, made me feel bad for him.
We’ll certainly miss him, his personality, his return of serve and his presence in general. I wish I could go to Flushing this year to see his last few matches.
I never liked him or his movies (did not see the ‘hit’ Passion of the Christ), and after this incident, I don’t think I will see any more of his movies or any other work.
Such damage is hard to undo - no apologies will take back what he said in a drunken state.
Two weeks back, I had set up a directv installation. It was for a Monday and they said it was going to be between 8am and 12noon, so I stayed at home for that time. I had given detailed instructions to the rep who took my order, about how to get to our complex and what to do when the installer gets there, so that I can let him in.
So the first thing that went wrong was that guy did not follow those instructions and landed up at some nearby hotel. What was he thinking? In any case, when he called, I told him to drive on the same road that he was on, pass the convenience store and get into the next set of gates.
Guess what? He actually went up to the convenience store and called me and said ‘I see some market or something, where are you located?’. What?!?!? I told him he did not have to go in there, just use it as a landmark and take the NEXT right. He somehow, after much trying from my part, got it. He drove back out and went to the next set of gates.
Now, I had clearly given instructions about what to do to get in. They were supposed to enter a code which would then let me buzz them in. He did not have that information at all. So I had to explain the whole thing to this guy, who by now I realized, was not interested in this sale.
So finally, he understood what he needed to do and suddenly, he asked me if I could see the sun from my balcony. I was a little puzzled, and I had to respond with the vague ‘I guess so’ :-)
As he drove in to the building, he kept saying if I do not see the sun, I cannot get service. And I kept pushing the decision out by telling him, yea yea yea, just come up and let me know.
Then, to my most shocking surprise, he got out of the car, and started yelling from down to me, saying it was impossible to get service. No compass, nothing. Just not possible. I told him he should at least come up with a compass, and see if there was any chance of getting it. He said it was a waste of his time and mine!
What?? Are you kidding me? I had already wasted time and I would damn sure want you to confirm and put it in writing that I cannot get the signal. Also, he had bloody driven from wherever his office was, and he might as well spend 5 more minutes, come up and check it out!! It was that simple. But no.
He did not come up at all. He said I am free to call DirecTV and complain about it. He said he has 3 years experience in this stuff and he wanted to guarantee that I cannot get the signal. Then I told him I used to have dish network which 3 different installers said I cannot get. And he did not respond to that, but started walking away.
Ultimately, he did not come up! He just walked away from me and went to his car and drove off.
I was SO angry at that attitude. I am just shocked how a business can allow such a thing. Pathetic.
It was an exciting race, but it was complete domination from the Ferraris. Suddenly, with Alonso not being on the podium, the difference between Alonso and Schumacher is down to a reasonable level and it keeps my interest in this season alive :-)
Schumacher/Massa and the Ferrari team had a total blowout performance. Kimi did well to be on the podium despite a 3-stop strategy, which was essentially because of a glitch in the qualifying that ended up with him having too little fuel on race day.
In any case, it is on to Budapest next weekend and I do hope that Schumacher eats up a few more points (not 2) in the lead so that the last 4 races are the most exciting of the season.
Kimi Raikkonen is on pole for tomorrow’s race! Yay! Finally, right? Hope he wins!
What happened in the pits with Alonso and Schumacher?? Alonso was showing the fist and some team radio comments they had were things like ‘Did you see what Michael did?’ and the team seemed to be saying ‘Yes, we sure did’. What did he do??? Try to take him out in the pits? No way! Alonso has started crying.
And starting at 7th is going to be a good test for him. Let’s see how well he copes …
I have come to realize that the talent on this season is much worse than last season. Coupled with the sad band, it makes for quite a so-so experience watching the show.
Last night, at least for the first few guys, the panel had only negative things to say, and that too quite harsh. Some of it, I think deservedly, but some of it I would challenge.
I think the crazy woman with a lot of piercings on the face is the best female vocalist and may even be the best singer/performer in this group. The only thing is will she fit into Supernova the band? She may get the encore for the superb version of Time after time.
Either she or the crazy makeup dude will get the encore.
What the heck was that blue dress thingy that Puerto Rican chick wore??? Gosh. It shouted of ‘I cannot sing, so I might as well be slutty’. And similarly, even before Gilby mentioned the grinding, I told the wife that the woman was unnecessarily grinding with Gilby. Pathetic, cheap and sad.
As for kicking out tonight - my feeling is the Puerto Rican chick is gone. But who knows what Tommy Lee is thinking. He is crazy and totally unpredictable. She should have gone two weeks back but he shockingly kept her in the running - was it for face/body value??
It was a good show last night. I was a little surprised to see Roz go, but oh well.
Ty was funny - he writes well. Michelle’s jokes were not well received, I don’t think. But in some ways like Roz, her delivery was not that great - the punchline was not delivered with enough punch to let it sink in.
Chris Porter was better than last week, but still not the funniest. The fact that he repeated the first joke from an earlier show meant that his writing skills are a little limited. Of course, this also matches the fact that last week he sucked in terms of joke quality.
Josh Blue was hilarious, just like last time. He is probably the best and may win it all if he continues his streak of well-written sets.
I was laughing to read this nonsene piece on Yahoo Sports about Reggie Bush potentially sitting out the entire season and coming back next year and doing something different then.
What??? Sit out the entire season? For a guy who contributed $50,000 even before he started in New Orleans, for a guy who pledged to donate 25% of his earnings from jersey sales of #5 and then choosing to give half of his earnings from the #25 jersey to McAfee (who in turn will donate it to Katrina relief), it does not seem like something he would like to do or would do.
I hope he does not sit out the season. I want to see him play this year!
