A Yankee Divorce

Did anyone in the history of the world have a worst day yesterday than Steve Swindal, current Chairman of the Yankees? Yesterday Jessica Steinbrenner, daughter of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner filed divorce papers against Swindal, thereby not only ending their 23 year marriage, but also ending any possibility that Swindal would become the future owner of the Yankees after Steinbrenner kicks the bucket in a few.....So, not only did he lose his wife yesterday, but he also lost the chance to lead the most valuable property in sports. Some people estimate that the Yankees are worth approximately $1 billion.

Steve Swindal's day yesterday worse than General Custer before Little Big Horn...worse than Napolean's day at Waterloo....worse than Yoshi Matsui's day after she looked up into the sky and was greeted by an atom bomb in 1945...

Should be a messy divorce...

Sanjaya Achieves Keith Hernandez Status

It's clear to me that Sanjaya Malakar doesn't give a crap any longer. He knows he should have been voted off of American Idol weeks ago and has topped himself each week by his increasingly hideous singing and ever ridiculous haircuts. Last night took the cake as Sanjaya donned a crazy-ass mohawk hair-do. It's clear to me that Sanjaya has achieved"Keith Hernandez" status.

For those Seinfeld watchers out there, Keith Hernandez, former 1B for the 1980s New York Mets was on a few episodes of the sitcom and did whatever you he wanted to do - like get to second base with Elaine Benes on the first date - because well, as he said to himself "I'm Keith Hernandez!" and he could do whatever he wanted to.

That's the point that Sanjaya is at. He knows his singing sucks and he also knows that no matter what all of the teeny boppers will vote for him, so he does whatever the hell he wants. He acts surprised when he's not the person voted off, but he knows all along that he can do whatever the hell he wants because he's Sanjaya Malakar.

Big Year Coming for A-Rod

I referenced it a few weeks ago, and I wanted to devote a full blog to something I feel really strongly about. "I don't ever think it's appropriate to boo professional athletes on your team." Sure they make a ton of money, but so does the MLB, NFL, NBA and the players are the sole reason for that. So, unless a player on your team murders someone, beat their wife or hurts little kids, I don't think there's any reason at all to boo them.

It's this belief that makes me completely bewildered in the fact that a majority of fans in New York boos Alex Rodriguez. It's completely ridiculous. The guy is a perennial All-Star, switched from his born position of SS to 3B when he came to the Yankees and consistently averages 40 HRs and 120 RBIs every single year. And the more that people boo for A-Rod, the more I cheer for him and root for him to do well. But it seems like the booing has definitely gotten to A-Rod and with that he devolved from the best player in baseball to a mediocre beer league player.

It's true that he hasn't been clutch from time to time. And most people will say that he amassed those numbers in garbage time with no pressure when the Yankees were winning by 8 runs. Well, that has happened sometimes, but it's ridiculous to think he doesn't hit in the clutch, because he does. (everyone forgets when he had a great 2005 ALDS against the Twins) .

People boo not because A-Rod isn't a clutch player. They boo because of his supposed rift with team captain/poster boy Derek Jeter. Jeter is the mythical hero and Alex is the villian. And it's all just a bunch of bullshit. Don't get me wrong. Derek Jeter is a great player and probably one of my favorite Yankees of all time, but when it comes down to it, he is a shitty captain.

Do you think Don Mattingly or any other Yankees captain wouldn't stick up for A-Rod the way things have been going since A-Rod became a Yankee? But Derek doesn't stick up for him, because he is pissed at A-Rod for something that happened years ago. Derek isn't a big enough man to forgive and forget though, I think it's important that A-Rod came out during the first day of spring training and be honest about everything...about how if he doesn't perform this year, he expects to get run of the City by the fans...about how him and Jeter used to be best friends and now they aren't. I'm fine with that and I really think it was a relief off A-Rod's shoulder's. Hopefully he'll be a more relaxed player this year.

Coming Clean

I have a confession to make. Two Sundays ago, I didn't accidently spill bacon grease on my left hand and arm... It was Jack Bauer who spilled bacon grease on my hand and arm during a 2-hour torture session, where he tried to get me to admit that I was behind the secret plot to kill Anna Nicole Smith by poisoning her with a concoction of Viagra, McDonalds Happy Meals and horse tranquilizers.

An Underachieving Off-season

Last season, as you could tell from the tone of my past blogs, the New York Giants underachieved significantly. Was it the fact that they hated playing for Head Coach Tom Coughlin? Was it the fact that there were too many injured players on the team like past seasons? Or was it the fact that there was too much division in the locker room? I don't know the answer to any of it, but I definitely know the answer wasn't to go into the postseason and do completely nothing in free agency except re-sign center Shaun O'Hara.

Trust me, I liked the O'Hara resigning and believe that the Giants O-line has gotten better over the past few years because of their cohesiveness of working together. But in that same vein, why are you cutting Luke Petitgout - despite his injury and constant offside penalties last year. Why are you cutting Lavar Arrington - who showed promise before he got injured - when we have no one to replace him?

Is the Giants new GM Jerry Reese retarded, stupid or just not willing to make any splashes in free agency this offseason because of the lack of Giants cap space and ridiculous contracts that have already been offered to Free Agents.

The only thing I've liked about this Giants offseason is the trade of Tim Carter - who did absolutely NOTHING here with the Giants - for Reuben Droughns. Droughns is an above average RB, but again, it's a trade that doesn't make much sense due to the fact that he's a bruising running back and we already have one of those in Brandon Jacobs.

This offseason, just doesn't make much sense to me and I'm at a loss at what type of team will emerge next season. Will Eli continue to regress further or was his long-time girlfriend and soon to be wife smart to say yes -- to his proposal last week -- before he turns into a superstar that gets as much ass as he wants? Will injuries derail the Giants season again? Will the players continue to hate Tom Coughlin? And will we be worse than last year's sorry 8-8 record? Could we possibly be worse than last year?

And why the hell am I writing about the Giants when opening day of the baseball season is 9 days away??

Blog Catchup as I'm Stuck in Hell.

Because I was worried that a 3 p.m. conference call would go past 5 p.m. and tear into my weekday, I took the call from my cell phone and came home early. Now, I'm stuck in the hell that is my wife watching a Tivo'd version of last Monday's 2 hour Dancing with the Stars Season 4 premiere. Shoot me now.

Some recent thoughts that I've been meaning to blog on....

1) My tourney pick em blew up and I'm in 7th place with no shot of winning. Even though some of my teams are still alive - including my predicted champ Ohio State - who has survived two near losses. I am however in first place in the tourney pick em where no money is involved. Isn't that how it always happens.
2) My burned hand still hurts like hell. and ...I'm out of my painkillers and Motrin just isn't cutting it.
3) Baseball season starts in 10 days and I can't wait.
4) Did I mention that the withdrawal from videogames is worse than my withdrawal from painkillers.

Oooh, boobs are popping out of this Russian chicks dress on Dancing with the Stars. Maybe I should be watching.

Here's a Funny Joke

Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their wives duties.

The first man had married a woman from Maine and bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning. He said it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were done.

The second man had married a woman from Canada. He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. On the first day he didn’t see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done and he had a huge dinner on the table.

The third man had married a girl from New Jersey. He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn’t see anything, the second day he didn’t see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye.

An Impatient Writer...

I'm a writer, but I don't have the patience to sit down and write a whole book. I've always wanted to and have taken a few attempts at it, but I just can't stay in one place for too long and don't have the dedication and patience to do that.

When I was 15, I handwrote a 65 page short story - that wasn't ever finished - called The Heist. It was a Sopranos type-story before the Sopranos were the Sopranos. It had robberies and mob-styled killings, which is a lot coming from a 15 year old kid.

Then when I was in college, I typed out a 70-80 page story - again, never finished - called Freshmeat about a college student and a scientist and something about a werewolf...okay, I still don't know exactly where the story was going, so that's one of the reasons that I never finished it.

There's been other ideas I've had, but nothing ever made it on another type of paper than a cocktail napkin.

From 15 to 25, I found my love of writing love poems that didn't require a lot of work and patience and got me a bunch of girls, including my lovely wife. Over the course of 10 years, I probably wrote the upwards of 300-400 poems. I made one of them into a hardcover book called Words to Be and my wife has it on our bookshelf to this day.

In the last few years, I haven't written much of anything, other than starting this blog back in November. Hopefully I can continue this experiment and maybe find the patience to write a book again. ...or to finish the two that I started so long ago.

I was going to include background in this blog as my time as a sportwriter during high school and college, but I really want to dedicate a separate blog to that because of the huge effect that it had on my life.

My favorite Entourage Line

I'm watching the 2nd episode of Season 3 of Entourage on HBO on Demand and remembered why this show is my favorite ever.

In the episode, rolling blackouts have apparently affected the opening day revenue for the release of Aquaman. Well agent Ari Gold is upset about it and rants to his wife: "It wasn't the Cubs fault when that doucebag caught that foul ball, but they still don't get a World Series Ring. There are no asterisks in this life ... only scoreboards and ours is currently reading F*cked!"

I'm a Burn Victim

I have a suggestion for you if you're reading my blog. Don't ever, ever pour scalding hot bacon grease on your hand and forearm...because it hurts....a lot.

This morning, my wife and I were cooking breakfast. I am responsible for cooking the bacon while my wife cooks the eggs. After I cooked another tremendous portion of bacon, I went to empty out the bacon grease into a cup. Well, after getting all of the grease into the cup, I went to wash the pan at the same time. Stupid me, because I ended up dropping the full cup of grease. Not into the sink mind you, but all over -- ALL OVER - my entire hand and backside of my forearm. It hurt a lot...

I spent about 4 hours in the emergency room this morning and was diagnosed with 1st and 2nd degree burns. The doctors said I shouldn't worry, but that hasn't helped the crazy pain that I've experience over the course of the last few hours. Thankfully I've had some pain meds and burn cream to try to dull the pain...I'm survive, but it still hurts like hell...

Only idiots were hurt in the filming of this grease scalding scene. ....

This is Sparta!!

Entertain me with 300....

The second that I saw the preview for Frank Miller's 300 in the trailers for new movies, I knew I had to see it. Maybe it was the images in the trailer...maybe it was the fact that all of the critics said it was made for the video game generation. Maybe it was the fact that I loved Gladiator and Frank Miller's Sin City so I thought this movie would also be something that I liked... I knew even if it meant going to the movie theaters by myself - since my wife hates these type of movies - I knew I had to see it. So earlier this week, I went to see 300...

Overall, I would say that I enjoyed 300. It was entertaining. It had great scenes. But it just had an okay story and just seemed to be missing something. I'm not sure what it was missing. It sure wasn't missing bare breasted woman or bloody battles filled with decapitated heads...but it was missing something. I don't know what it was missing though.

Probably one of my biggest problems with the film was the casting of Dominic West of HBO's The Wire fame as 300's main villian Theron. Everytime I saw him, all I could think about was his Det. Jim McNulty character in The Wire. And that definitely detracted from my liking of the movie.

Other than that, like I said before, I enjoyed. And I definitely agree with the critics who said this was a good movie for the video game generation. Between the video game styled images and plot lines -- it definitely had the feel of a video game. ...

I would recommend the movie to any warm blooded American male who likes barebreasted woman and gladiators chopping off heads....not the heads of the bare breasted woman, mind you.

Go Terps!!

Here's my winning bracket for this year's NCAA Tournament. Really, who am I fooling myself. I haven't watched more than 2 college basketball games all year, so I really have no idea who is going to win. ... Here's my Final Four in case the bracket image is blurry: Ohio State, Kansas, Georgetown and Oregon, with Ohio State beating Kansas in the Finals.

While I did pick the Terps to go to the Sweet Sixteen, I don't think they'll have enough to beat the defeating national champion Florida Gators. You never know though. The Terps are good enough to beat any team in the country and bad enough to lose to any team in the country.

Go Terps!!

The Xbox Rewards Program

See that little Xbox 360 box to the right of this blog and above this post. Yes, my meaningless gamerscore has climbed from approximately 5,400 points to nearly 7,700 in just a month or so. And you know why? No, it's not because I'm insane. No, it's not because I'm immature (but you are close). It's because Microsoft started it's Xbox Rewards Program on February 13th. It makes sense for Microsoft. People are going to play games to try to get a bigger "fake" gamerscore, so why not up the equation and sell even more games by giving players something tangible to play for...and why not make the tangible gift just as meaningless as the intangible gamerscore. Read on to see what I mean.

The first contest was sponsored by Old Spice and based on your initial gamerscore, they rank you in one of three categories. Since I started over 5k points, they put me in Level 2. The ultimate goal of the contest is to raise your gamerscore by more than 1,500 points up until the end of the contest on April 22nd. If you do, you win a whole bunch of nonsense prizes....

Well, it took me 28 days, but I managed to raise my gamerscore that much. And you know what I might win. It's pretty amazing.

1) They automatically raised my gamer level to Level 3 - the highest gamer level. Now I don't have to have a gamescore over 10k points to get to Level 3. So in the next contest - I can't wait to see the dumb prizes that time - I get to compete for the "big" prizes....but that also means I'll probably have to buy more games just to get extra achievement points to try to obtain.

2) If I'm one of the first 70k people to obtain 1,500 points -- I guarantee I'm not -- I get Contra on Xbox Live -- which I spent $5 to purchase months ago.

3) If I'm one of the first 6k people - again, not - I get 100 MS Gamer Points to spend on the Marketplace. Which basically is $1.25 in real money. Are you serious?

4) And last, but never least I get a special Old Spice Gamer Card Picture, which I can show off to my competition. No doubt, it'll be a dude using deodorant.

But alas, I was excited as hell when I obtained 1,500 points last night and immediately went online to acknowledge on the contest page that I had won. Maybe I really am insane....or just really, really immature.

I'm Unique!!

The Title of this blog comes from this ridiculously insane chick from the beginning of season 1 of American Idol. After she stopped horribly singing, she went into this insane Vicodin filled rant about how unique and (INSANE) she was. You've probably seen it...

I mention this because my boy Smelmooo mentioned an interesting website in his blog, so I figured that I would check it out. Go to http://www.howmanyofme.com/ and type in your first and last name and it will tell you how many people in the country have your exact name.

I have no idea how legitimate this site is, but it turns out that my name is pretty unique. According to the site: 1 Person in the US has the name Tony Bianchini and 3 People in the US has the name Anthony Bianchini. That's pretty interesting. I question the validity of the site though because a few Valentine's Day's ago, my wife and I went to a restaurant in New Jersey. We had a reservation for 7 p.m. and the hostess asked if I was Tony Bianchini or Anthony Bianchini because there were two reservations at the same time with both of those names. So that means I was in the same restaurant as another person with my same name. And if there's only 4 people in the country with that name, the odds have to be pretty ridiculous right?? Or maybe the person who took my reservation was just an idiot. Who knows?

Borat....Very Average

Entertain me...with Borat...

When it came out in the movie theaters it was called by a number of critics as one of the funniest movies of all-time. So when I went to the movie theaters, I was definitely expecting to laugh my ass off. When all was said and done, I'll admit that I did laugh at parts, but it definitely wasn't the funniest movie of all time. In my opinion that honor goes to Dumb and Dumber.

Don't get me wrong...there are funny parts [BORAT!!] ...really funny parts [WHERE IS THE P*SSY MAGNET]...but when the funniest parts of the entire movie is two hairy, naked dudes wrestling and running naked through a hotel, you know that it's not the funniest movie of all time. While SmelmooO might find that erotic, I surely don't.

Borat came out on DVD this past week and I have watched about half of it so far and it's funnier than I remembered it being, but it's still not the funniest movie of all-time. It's good...not great. I'd recommend it to anyone who didn't catch it in the movie theater, but it's definitely not DVD-purchase worthy....since the invention of Netflix, not many movies are DVD-purchase worthy...

Other than that, I've been busy playing Worms on Xbox Live and the rest of the time, I've barely been able to keep up with Season 1 of the Wire and other shows that I usually watch. ....and blogging on a consistent basis for that matter.

...till next time.

Why Is This News?

I don't understand why it's such a big deal that she's dead. She was a skank ho whose only claim to fame was that she posed nude, put out a softcore porn in the 90s and made a fortune by swindling money out of an old man. No, I'm not talking about your mom. ... I'm talking about Anna Nicole Smith.

I can't even fathom, why it's been such a big news story for the last few weeks. Because it is not a big news story. Smith wasn't this famous when she was alive, so why the hell is she so much, MUCH more famous now that's she dead? I don't have an answer for it. It's ridiculous.

There's no telling what will happen when Paris Hilton overdoses. Start up a new newschannel to cover that one.

A Revival of Duke Hatred

Now I remember why I hate Duke. After watching Maryland trounce No. 14 Duke last night 85-77, I remember why I hate that team. And why I hate their fans. And why I hate their stupid chants. And why I loved seeing D.J. Strawberry and Greivis Vasquez pose for the Duke faithful after slamming daggers into their heart with tomahawk dunks.

And now, I have new Duke players to hate for their smug cockiness. You know who you are Chris Paulus and Josh McRoberts.

F*ck Duke!