Category: Miami Heat

Sporting Chance

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in Botaoshi, Chris White, comedy, Dallas Mavericks, DC Improv, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, humor, Japanese Pole Toppling, Jared Stern, Miami Heat, NBA

Hey there, ‘Redheads… Wow, two blogs in a row. Don’t get excited, I’m going to try to kick things back into the blogularity I spoiled you with for the first couple months of the year but, as usual, no promises. When I left you last night, the second half of Game 6 of the Mavs/Heat series was just getting started and it turns out all of the star wattage on the Heat burnt itself out. Here are some sample headlines I was hoping for in the Sports section this morning…

Heat Stroke

The Agony of the Heat

Mavs Take Talents to South Beach, Take Title

Dry Heat

Decision Made: Mavs Win

With the storyline that played out in the NBA, with the Cobra Kai of the league getting crane-kicked in the face, the schadenfreude is rampant among fans and analysts who were galled by LeBron and the pomp and circumstance of his “Decision” last summer. People are happy that the flashy superstars got taken down by the Johnny Punchclocks. Good triumphed over precieved evil. Roll end credits. Once hockey concludes, that interminable dead zone of sports will fall over the land. Normally, we’d have the happy distraction of off-season NFL speculation, but with the lockout, who knows how long we’ll have to suffer meaningless baseball and women’s soccer. What will fill the void? I’m hoping this catches on…

That’s Botaoshi, or Japanese Pole Toppling. Rugby meets Iron Chef meets a Walmart on Black Friday. And don’t act like you wouldn’t watch it, either. That’s the alchemy of ratings gold, my friends: the spirit of competition, the hint of controlled chaos, and flailing foreigners. Game on.

I was going to regale you with tales of my weekend gig in North Carolina, but my laptop crashed and I don’t feel like retyping it right now. So, maybe tomorrow. Just in case I don’t get back to the blog this week, I wanted to let you know about a great show on Saturday in the DC Improv Comedy Lounge. My buddy, Chris White is recording his new CD and I’ll be opening up the show and getting some stuff recorded too. Click here to get tickets and provide us with the necessary rousing live crowd atmosphere.

See you soon.

Sunday Bloggy Sunday

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, Dallas Mavericks, funny, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, humor, Jared Stern, Juwon Howard, LeBron James, Miami Heat, NBA, Washington Wizards

Hey there, ‘Redheads… I’m back from whatever arbitrary hiatus I imposed on myself. Thanks for pretending to care. I’m sitting on the couch, watching the Heat/Mavericks game. I’m not usually a big NBA guy, but it doesn’t take much to get me interested in a potential championship-clinching tilt. Besides, I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t gotten caught up in the manufactured villainy of the Miami Heat. LeBron took his talents to South Beach, now the heat are the Legion of Doom. It’s halftime right now and Dirk Nowitzki is apparently trying to rebuild the Berlin Wall with all of the bricks he’s putting up. I’ll give you my favorite stat in situations like this: Dirk has only made one more shot than me. If the Mavs end up winning, I want a ring. Y’know who else should get a ring? Ted Leonsis. There are three former Wizards on this Mavs team. Washington knows how to build a championship team, just not theirs.

I’m torn about who I want to win. It’s mostly a question of which NBA fossil I’d like to see win a championship before they retire. I always root for professional athletes who are older than I am. Juwon Howard was drafted when I graduated from high school. His defensive technique is mostly just yelling at the younger players to get off his lawn.

Just to see a Game 7, I’m rooting for the Heat to win this thing. Ok, back to game. I’ll have another blog tomorrow to recount my weekend getting laughed at. Again, thanks for pretending to care.

Don’t Have a Title… I Should Join The Heat…

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in AA-12, comedy, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, Larry Hagman, LeBron James, Miami Heat, NWO, Predators, solar

Hey there ‘Redheads… Welcome back to your nearly weekly dose of flim-flammery. I bring you reheated news that’s been piling up whilst I twiddle my thumbs and wait for the other eight fingers to muster up the energy to get typing. For example, did you guys hear that LeBron is joining D-Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami? I know! Why do they keep these things from us? A lot of clever names are being bandied about as the sports world tries to figure out what to call this new power trio: The 3 My-Egos, Miami Thrice, The Yankees. All of them are good tries, but I know what I’ll be calling them. The N.W.O. Check out this video from WCW’s 1996 Bash At The Beach. As my comedy buddy, Ryan Conner, pointed out, it completely parallels the Lebron situation, right down to the fan outrage…

Even if you’re not a fan of wrestling, the similarities are eerie. I’m hoping this new storyline will make next year’s NBA season halfway interesting. And LeBron better smack Kobe upside the head with a steel chair.

Speaking of fan outrage, I’d like to express a little of my own about Predators. I had fooled myself into thinking that my expectations were lower than Verne Troyer looking for a missing contact lens, but in my heart of hearts, I wanted this movie to be good. The Predator franchise deserved a decent sequel. And they got us fanboys all in a lather because the called it Predators, so it’ll be like Aliens was to Alien, right? And they lied to us in the previews by giving us WTF shots like this…Turns out, that bad ass shot isn’t even in the movie. It was just shot for the preview. And all of the action scenes in the last half of the movie are shot in the dark, so you can’t make out what the hell is going on. What should have been a great fight between a Yakuza killer with a samurai sword and a Predator, ended up being so muddled it wouldn’tve made it past the cutting room for Power Rangers. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the premise is basically that the best killers from our world (and Topher Grace) are air dropped onto an alien planet that serves as a Predator hunting ground. My big complaint for the movie as a whole was that the filmmakers took it for granted that we know how the Predators operate and do nothing to establish their tactics or technology. In the first Predator, you got to see Ahnold noodle things through, adapt to his dire situation, and match wits with the Predator. In this one, they just shoehorned in a final confrontation with Adrien Brody spouting lines from the first movie out of context, just to get a rise out of us. There were so many forced call backs, you might as well have just had the cast of this film reminisce about the first one. Also, and this was a major missed opportunity, they did NOTHING to acknowledge the firepower that Adrien Brody was packing. His character had an AA-12. Just watch…

It makes the mini-gun Jesse Ventura was toting look like a super soaker. There are a host of other things wrong with the flick but, long story short, save your money. If you want to see a great character-driven monster movie, go watch Aliens or Pitch Black.

Here’s an item that caught my eye…

Larry Hagman of ‘Dallas’ fame becomes the new face of SolarWorld – Actor Larry Hagman was all about petroleum when he played oil magnate J.R. Ewing in television’s long running “Dallas” series. These days, he’s pitching solar energy with a new slogan — “Shine, baby, shine,” — soon to air on a television near you. Hagman is the face of a new ad campaign for SolarWorld.

This story struck me because… Larry Hagman is still alive? Forget pushing solar energy, I thought he was pushing daisies five years ago. He’s probably advocating solar energy out of self-preservation, since he could be used as fossil fuel. Also, I think this is the face I’d want selling my product…Use solar energy or Larry Hagman will swallow your soul.

Wow, I haven’t even gotten to my fever dream of a trip to Natural Bridge, VA. It deserves it’s own blog, but I can tease you with this in the meantime…

To be continued…