Oysterfest 2006

On Saturday I participated in the 5th Annual Oysterfest in celebration of the glorious time I have spent on this earth. As always the menu consisted of beer and oysters. Supposedly some people can't handle only eating oysters for dinner so some shrimp, corn, and birthday cake were thrown in for the weaklings. It was an excellent end to my vacation and plans for next year's bash have already started. Below I have listed the beer menu for the party and some fun facts.

Asahi Super Dry
Stella Artois
Heineken Light
Molson
Red Stripe
Red Brick Blonde
Woodchuck Cider Granny Smith
Bud Light Aluminum Bottles
Michelob Ultra Amber
Bud Select
Corona Light
Dos Equis Amber
Dos Equis Lager
Tecate
Negro Modelo
Abita Amber
Widner Brothers Hefeweizen
Shiner Hefeweizen
Shiner Blonde
Anchor Steam

Fun Facts:

10 imports, 10 domestics
7 countries
3 continents
7 states
122 beers
120 pounds of oysters
6 pounds of shrimp
170 pounds of ice

Cinematic Magic

As I returned home from the disappointing Braves game last night I scanned the HBO channels to see what movies were on. Well I was delighted to come across Wild Things 3 (there was a Wild Things 2?). I caught a majority of this masterpiece before drifting off into a drunken haze.

The biggest "star" in the movie was probably Dina Meyer who I apparently recognized from the cancelled Birds of Prey, which I didn't even remembered I watched until last night, though most of you will know her from 90210 as Lucinda the married antropology teacher who had an affair with Brandon. Other than that it's a no name cast. Apparently the movie's actual title is Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough, and was filmed as a TV movie. In reality the whole things plays out like jailbait Skinemax. In the original Wild Things Neve and Denise look like 22 year olds playing high school students and they're hooking up with a 30 something Matt Dillon. The girls in WT3 look like they are actually 17 and are involved in sexual acts with 40 year olds. It's quite disturbing. Awful acting, awful excuses to include lesbian sex scenes, gratuitous nudity, it's all there.

Here's the summary from imdb: Once again set in the oceanfront Florida city of Blue Bay, "Wild Things 3" tells the tale of snobby rich girl Marie Clifton. Although she lives the life of luxury, Marie's distraught over her stepfather not giving her a pair of diamonds, valued at over $4 million, that are entitled to her in her late mother's will. That is, until one of her classmates, the local bad girl Elena Sandoval, accuses her stepfather of rape. Soon, it's deja vu all over again as Detective Michael Morrison and probation officer Kristen Richards investigate, but as with the first "Wild Things" everything is not what it seems to be, and everybody has secrets to hide.

I mean, how can you pass that up? It's pretty much the OC without censorship or a good soundtrack. I highly suggest catching this on HBO. I highly discourage you from renting this.

cool video

Check out this real life stop motion animation. (HT: Gorillamask)

Face of a Champion?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you didn't watch the last two days of the Tour De France. I'm also going to tell you that you missed out on one the riveting sporting events in the last decade. Two days ago on a treacherous mountain stage in the Alps, Landis bombed, cracked, practically died on the road. I admitted the end of US reign and tried to figure out who else still had a chance. At lunch yesterday my dad asked me if I though Landis still had a chance? My response was something along the lines of "Are you kidding me? He's like 8 minutes back? What's he gonna do? I guess he could make up 2 minutes in the time trial on Saturday and get into 5th place or something. It's not like he can break away from the field tomorrow and make up 5 minutes." I've been torn on how I feel about Landis. As far as Americans go, I probably like Dave Zabriskie the most, but he can't climb worth shit, so he'll never win the Tour. I couldn't really get a hold of Landis. He's definitely not physically imposing. Sporting that wispy red mustache he looks more like someone who works in the DVD section at Circuit City than one of the world's elite athletes. His interviews have come out dorky at best. But he's an Amercian and seems pretty honest in his interviews, and he was unflappable during the Pyrenees. So I kinda started to like him.

Well, I get home from work yesterday, fire up the old Tivo, and within the first 20 minutes of the broadcast we see an interview from yesterday with Landis. When he first finished the stage he declinded to talk to the media. Then 2 hours later he came down from his hotel to answer questions. He immediately quippped "I'll take you questions but I'm pretty sure I can guess the first 5" He accepted his imcompetence the day before, said he was disappointed, and stated that not talking about it was going to help him so he might as well answer questions. Minutes later they get to race covereage andinform us that Landis broke away from the field on the first of 5 mountain climbs yesterday. The final climb of the day was the only mountain that cracked Lance Armstrong in his 7 victories. So basically 170 guys are climbing a mountain and Landis decides to climb so fast that he convinces the entire field that he will crack before the finish line some 60 miles away. This never happens. Sure nobodies go off and get 10 minutes ahead of the field and sometimes hold on to win. But big name guys within 5-10 minutes of the yellow jersey are automatically chased down. Not yesterday.

Landis holds on over the next three climbs catching up with then passing another chase group. Around the fourth climb of the day the other leaders panic and start to chase Landis down with everything they got. Usually the final climb of the day starts off with a pack of 50-70 riders and they are continually dropped as the pace and difficulty of the mountain increases. The chase across the valley was so frenetic that the peleton started the final climb with about 20-25 riders left intact. Everyone is such shock at Floyd that team tactics go out the window and everyone just tries to claw their way up the mountain and not lose the tour.

Floyd Landis obviously does not crack. He gains 5:40 seconds on the second place rider and around 6:30 on the yellow jersey. Of all the people in contention Floyd won the first major time trial by 40 seconds. And for the record race officials made him change the setup of his bike 10 minutes before that time trial which forced the bike to break and make him switch bikes in the middle, so he probably should have beaten them by a minute. With today's flat stage, tomorrrow's time trial, and Sunday finish in Paris, he only sits 30 seconds back.

If he manages to win this Tour it will not be more impressive than any of Lance Armstrong's victories. Lance never fell 6 minutes behind his rivals and never was in such desperation that late in the tour, because he was just so dominant. But believe me when I say this, as far as a one day perfomance goes, what Landis did yesterday was more impressive, shocking and amazing than any singular performance that Lance ever made in the Tour.

Let's just say that I'm officially a Floyd Landis fan at this point. Dude had vengence on his mind. He was possesed yesterday. After the race Frankie Andreu asked him if his first stage win in the Tour was a special event. He responded by saying that he only cared about winning the Tour and he would consider everything else a failure so he better get another stage win on Saturday.

I beg of you to watch the time trial on Saturday. It will be awesome.

NCAA All Name Team

A compilation of some of the best names" in college football this year. Look for new Auburn commit Eltoro Freeman to make the list next year. "The Bull" seriously what a name for a linebacker Olé!

Best Week Ever

I don't know why I have never linked to the Best Week Ever Blog before or why I don't check it out on a daily basis, but I guess I'm making up for lost time. It's the blog version of the VH1 TV show, except instead of slighty humorous commentary, you get a link to something and get to make up your own banter. Anyways, they have a career retrospective of the guy who played Donkeylips on Salute Your Shorts. I'll probably forget one, but off the top of my head, I'd rank the best Nickelodeon Shows from my youth as

1. You Can't Do That on Television
2. Today's Special
3. Double Dare
4. Hey Dude
5. Either Out of Control with Dave "Cut it out" Coulier or Pete and Pete

The Answer in ATL?

More Iverson to Atlanta talk but this time by David Aldridge, which lends it credibility in my opinion. But it's still just thrown out there as a possibility. What's really sweet here is the Murph jersey. And for David's reference, I was much younger than 7 when I became a fan of Dale.

The Best 2nd Albums of all time

Rolling Stone has a list of the best sophomore efforts by bands. Personally I don't think Nevermind should count. I think your first hit should count as your first album. Almost every band has some crappy collection of songs recorded before they were big.

It's a short list, so they obviously left off some good ones. Off the top of my head

Black Crowes - Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
Coldplay - Rush of Blood to the Head
Dave Matthews - Under the Table and Dreaming (if you don't count Rember 2 things then Crash)
Neil Young - Everybody Knows this is Nowhere (although it's tricky with solo artists who were in bands)
Smashing Pumpkins - Gish or Mellon Collie depending on the Nirvana rule
Beck - Odelay
Britney Spears - Oops I Did It Again

Zidane Headbutt Remix

The Zidane Remix: I'm torn but I think my favorites are the Street Fighter cameos.

Weird @ss advertisement

Of all of the freaky Google ads that have popped up on this blog in the past couple of years, this has got to be the freakiest. I'm scared to even click on the damn thing to figure out what the hell it means.

The Wizard of Odds

Check out The Wizard of Odds. It links to a ton of college football articles everyday, plus other fun stuff like trying to collect all of the poster schedules college teams make. I can't remember Auburn's ever being noteworthy. As you can see below, the Tigers 2005 effort doesn't quite compare with USC's from this year.

Pete Orr and more

- Pete Orr at the hospital. He was probably there to apologize to fans suffereing from whiplash as a result of trying to follow his progress to first base. But while he was there he also made time to speak to the kids. "Keegan Puckett sat in his wheelchair with as much patience as could be expected from a 7-year-old boy who could see the outline of a No. 4 Pete Orr jersey two doors away." I know how you feel Keegan.

- Saw the Black Crowes last night. Fucking awesome. Made me realize that Lions is probably one of the most underrated albums of the last 10 years. It's obviously not as good as Southern Harmony or Money Maker, but it's pretty damn cool. What I like about it is that it's so obviously the result of touring with Jimmy Page for a year. Up until that point the Crowes had pretty much been a Rolling Stones knock off, but on that album they came up with a weird mix of the Stones and Zep that's really funky and soulful.

- In that whiskey article from Forbes I linked to the other day, they mention that Suntory Yamazaki 18 Year Old Single Malt Whiskey is the most expensive Japanese whiskey. Until then, I figured that Bill Murray must have been talking about a fictional product during Lost in Translation. So I looked it up in wikipedia and found this little tidbit:

"Suntory was one of the first Asian companies to specifically covet American celebrities to market their product. In the late 1970s, Akira Kurosawa directed a famous series of commercials featuring American celebrities on the set of his film Kagemusha. One of these featured Francis Ford Coppola (an executive producer of the film), which later inspired Sofia Coppola in the writing of Lost in Translation."

Sweet. "You want more mysterious? I'll just try and think, "Where the hell's the whiskey?"

Here is a Suntory commercial with the übertalented Keanu Reeves

God Bless America