Rod Allen Rulz...

About a year ago I was watching that terrible "The Sports List" show on Fox Sports Net hosted by puppy face Summer Sanders, (she used to host Figure It Out on Nickelodeon back in the mid-90's and my friend Kevin was obsessed with her, which led to a series of debates over her attractiveness that continue to this day) and featuring third rate comedians and Z-list celebrities who couldn't make the cut on one of VH1's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Celebrity Hot Body Hook-Ups From Our Favorite Decade the 80's,", and look everyone it's Vinnie from Doogie Howser and we're paying him in sandwiches, blah, blah, blah, but I digress. Getting back to the point, I'm watching "The Sports List" because I must have misplaced the remote or something, and they are counting down the most infamous brawls, fights in sports or something, when before going to commercial they quickly run through the honorable mentions. I'm only half paying attention when I hear them say "Rod Allen's fight in the Japanese Baseball League." I immediately snap back to consciousness and see Rod Allen, after taking a fastball to the ribs, start chasing a Japanese pitcher all the way into center field and laying waste to everyone who gets in his way.. I immediately searched for it on Youtube so I could post it in this blog and found nothing. I continued to search for it over the next few weeks before I completely forgot/lost interest in finding it. Apparently this video has since surfaced and been put on Youtube by the people of Motownsports.com, and was linked to by Bill Simmons on his blog today. In case there is anyone out there who hasn't seen the video on either of the other two sites, and I can't imagine many people who read this and wouldnt visit the other two, I posted it below. It blows my mind that someone as mild mannered as Rod Allen seems to be would be capable of such uncontrollable rage. The only thing I can think of is that Allen and his life "pahdna" Impemba must have been going through some rough times when that game was played. Allen probably had seen Impemba dancing with some gay Japanese businessmen at the "Doki Doki Panic" club the night before and became insanely jealous. I know those were a couple of lameass jokes about Impemba and Allen being gay, and you probably expected better from me, but......come on.......I'm tired.........jerks.

Errrrr.....

This is a very busy time of the year for me. Over the next couple of weeks I will be studying and taking a series of exams that will make or break my existence. I know I jerk my readers around by taking weeks off in between postings and constantly making excuses for not updating my site, and I'm sorry. I have a list of ideas so when I'm done with all of this expect a flurry of postings. In the meantime here is a photo of my favorite animal, the panda.

NHL Playoff Preview

I know nothing about hockey.

O.k. that's not entirely true, I know the rules of the game, most of the teams (I always forget about the Atlanta and Columbus teams), and some of the players, mostly the ones that are still around from the early to mid-nineties like Jeremy Roenick, Martin Brodeur, Teemu Selanne, and about half of the Red Wings current roster, (I'm always amazed how long hockey players can play at a high level, I bet somewhere Guy Lafleur is watching the NHL this season and thinking "Hey, I could still hang with these guy.") but my overall knowledge of the current NHL is limited at best. I mean I could probably name more LPGA golfers than NHL players and I hate golf AND women.

I haven't always been disinterested in the NHL, in fact between the ages of 10 and 14 hockey stood on equal ground with baseball and football, and was slightly ahead of basketball in my eyes. I used to be able to name the top 3 lines on every NHL team, (which I did, I remember sitting in class during 7th grade and filling up my notebook with lists of NHL lines, baseball lineups, NBA starting lineups, and the like, it goes without saying (but I'm going to say it anyways) that this wasn't the most productive time period in my life.), play NHL '93, '94, and '95 religiously, watch Hockey Night in Canada with Don Cherry on CBC, own multiple NHL jerseys, my favorite being the old Buffalo Sabres blue uniform with the crossed swords, and play roller hockey in the parking lot of the church at the end of my until the sun went down or until some white trash kid playing in tennis shoes goaded one of my friends into a fight, whichever happened first. I never was a die hard Wings fan during this time, I probably followed them closer than any other team due to mere proximity but I wasn't living and dying with every Wings success or failure. I didn't want to see Tim Cheveldae's head on a stick, or to continually bitch about whatever everyone hated Fedorov for at the moment, I just followed the players that I liked on an individual basis (Jeremy Roenick, Wendell Clark and Theo Fleury) and kept my eye on a few teams I arbitrarily liked for reasons unbeknownst to even myself, namely the Calgary Flames, Montreal Canadiens, and New York Islanders, (I remember investing heavily in Eric Fichaud rookie cards and telling everyone who would listen that he was the second coming of Patrick Roy, and if you just read that and thought, "Who the hell is Eric Fichaud?", then I don't need to tell you how that investment turned out).

Then I just stopped caring. I don't know why it happened but it did. I stopped playing roller hockey, stopped buying the NHL series of video games, stopped buying hockey cards, I even shaved my wispy moustache and cut my mullet. (Oh come on! You know I couldn't make it through a post about hockey without making the stereotypical, cheapshot, hack joke about Canadian hockey fans, I was literally shaking with anticipation, or delirium tremens but whose counting, to write that joke, but I kid, I love Canadians, they are funny, laid back, gave us Tim Horton's, The Kids in the Hall and Avril Lavigne, well not so much that last one, although her new video is........wow. O.k. I'm rambling, let's get back to the post.) The return of Terry Mills reinvigorated my passion in the Pistons and the NBA in general and the NHL barely registered on my radar during the winter months. By the time the lockout happened I was completely indifferent to the league and had little or no interest in if it returned. When it did come back the following season I was completely unaware because it was stuck on the Vs. network, which is way down in the 70's on my channel listing and I never make it that far because I'm a lazy, lazy man, and completely shunned by ESPN, which favored highlights from whatever crap league they had just acquired the rights for like the Arena Football League over the NHL.

But no more. I won't let ESPN control my sports conscience, not after they orchestrated the shutdown of one of the better blogs out there in thebiglead.com, and beat me over the head with the Don Imus/Rutgers women's basketball story for nearly a week (Seriously is Don Imus alive? He might be the scariest looking most vampire-like old man this side of Mike Ilitch and the fact that his face has been on TV for more than 5 seconds made me seriously reconsider ever turning on the television again). Most importantly, hockey is a great sport, it's fast paced, the players are skilled, it's physical (any sport that involves people getting carried off on stretchers on a semi-regular basis is o.k. with me), and they have some of the most passionate dedicated fans in the world (for an example check out any of the comments to those old NHL fight videos on YouTube where Islanders fans still call Capital fans c---rags from the Pierre Turgeon/Dale Hunter fiasco 15 YEARS AGO). So I'm throwing myself into the NHL playoffs this season. I'm excited to watch the Flames take the Wings to seven games and see the whole Wings fan base collectively contemplate mass suicide Jim Jones style, (not the "We Fly High", Jim Jones but the Peoples Temple one), watch Sidney Crosby in his playoff debut and watch my beloved Islanders take out the Buffalo Sabres in the first round in the biggest playoff upset since Arturs Irbe and......well you Wings fans know where this is going, and regrowing my moustache.......oh....sorry.....I can't help it.

My completely uneducated guess at the Finals: Canucks over the Devils in six with Roberto Luongo winning the Conn Smythe trophy and me losing interest in the playoffs by Thursday afternoon.

Rating the Tigers Entrance Music

I was fortunate enough to attend this afternoon's Tigers game against the Blue Jays with my friends Matt and Bill. I would give a more detailed account of the game but I don't remember much because it was freezing. Freezing is actually an understatement. Today's game made the Ice Planet of Hoth look like a sunny summer resort planet, only instead of AT-AT's lumbering around it was Frank Thomas and Troy Glaus and instead of snow and sleet blowing around and stinging your face it was mostly hot dog wrappers and used syringe needles. I was about five seconds away from climbing over the railing and cutting open Gene Lamont's stomach to sleep........for warmth of course, (shifting eyes). Anyways here is what I remember regarding today's game:

Blast of cold wind to the face, Granderson grand slam, standing and cheering, shivering, big lead, talking to Matt and Bill, fake peeing in heated restroom, Grilli sucks.......Rodney too, blowing into hands, go ahead run reaches base, I hate Todd Jones, game over, Tigers win, let's get the hell out of here because I can't feel my hands and face.

The other part of the game that stands out and one of my favorite and most underrated aspects of attending a baseball game in general, is listening to the entrance music chosen by the Tigers before their at-bats. So today I took a mental note of each batters song with the idea of rating them on a scale of 1-5. In the effort of full disclosure, and to have my own taste in music justifiedly ridiculed, I would go with one of the following three songs for my personal entrance music.

1: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit (namely the "causing more family feuds than Richard Dawson" part, possibly the greatest line of verse ever written, causing Keats, Byron and Shelley to rise from their graves all exclaim, "shit why didn't I think of that" before having "flaming flying guillotines" simultaneously "chop off their heads."

2: Ace of Spades, by Motorhead: This song is pretty cheesy but no one can deny it's face melting awesomeness, it's just too badass. I feel the only way I could do this song justice would be to have barb wire wrapped around my bat with rusty nails sticking out of it, kind of like Robert Redford's bat in "The Natural."

3: Jump, by Van Halen: This song sucks but the first five seconds of it always gets me pumped up for some reason. This song single handily convinced me to skip school one day in 11th grade. I turned on my car right when the song started and it motivated me to seize the day instead of listening to some boring anatomy lecture, so naturally I went inside and fell asleep until after 2. Oh well, there was always tomorrow.

Enough "Empire Strikes Back" analogies and personal lists though and onto the ratings.

1: Curtis Granderson: "Nuthin' But A G' Thang", Dr. Dre: Personally I think Granderson has an excellent taste in music. Nearly every game I've been to he has selected either classic old-school rap such as Dr. Dre or early Nas or newer hip-hop like Outkast and N.E.R.D. This is the type of rap music that I listen to and browbeat my friend T.J. with, while mocking his mainstream rap like The Youngbloodz, Young Joc, Young Jeezy, or any of the other 500 rappers who use the word young in their name. It's also the type of music I blare in the privacy of my own car while driving down the expressway and immediately turn down when I get off my exit and drive around the city. I don't do this because I'm embarrassed to like rap music but rather because if anyone ever saw me, the whitest guy anyone will ever meet both metaphorically and in actuality, it would cause the whole rap industry to lose its credibility and come crashing in on itself, and I just can't live with that kind of guilt.
Rating: 5 stars

2: Placido: Unidentified Latino Music: I'm not familiar with the artists that any of the Latino players use or anything about that genre of music, so I'm not going to pass judgment on any of the songs. They could be coming up to the Hispanic equivalent of the Beatles, or the Latino version UNK, (see below) and I wouldn't know.
Rating: N/A

3: Sheffield: "This is Why I'm Hot", Mims: This is currently the most popular rap song on the airwaves and can be heard somewhere on XM radio 24 hours a day, along with "The Sweet Escape" and "Glamorous". This song is nothing but 4 minutes of some guy named Mims, which might be the worst name in rap history, boasting about how he's "hotter" than other rappers. This may be the most arrogant, self-centered entrance music since Gabe Kapler used to come to the plate to "Whatta Man", but I'm not going to be the one to tell Sheffield that, because as my friend Bill said at the game today, "Sheffield looks like a crazy version of Ray Lewis." Yikes.
Rating: 2 stars

4: Magglio: More Unidentified Latino Music: See Polanco.
Rating: N/A

5: Guillen: "U Don't Know Me", T.I.: I like T.I. as evidenced by the fact that "Rubber Band Man" was my ringtone for nearly two years after it had ceased to be semi-popular or relevant. My only problem with this entrance music is the fact that Guillen has been using it for the past two seasons. I find it hard to believe that there hasn't been a song released in two years that Guillen has listened to and thought, "Hey I kind of like this, maybe I could use it for my entrance music this season." If anything I think Guillen's refusal to change his music confirms my hypothesis that Carlos is really shiftless and annoyed at the prospect of having to do anything but lie around and watch soap operas or The Simpsons on DVD, very similar to my own outlook on life. If I were in his position I would probably think something along these lines. "Shit I've been meaning to burn a CD with new batting entrance music for like 8 months now, I should get around to doing that. O.k. where are my CD's........found them, alright now I've got to get on iTunes and download a song, and then put the CD in and then.........oh fuck this I'm just gonna hook up the Atari and play some Space Invaders...." Then I would take a nap while hooking the system up. That's how lazy I am, it's either laziness or severe, overbearing depression and anxiety. Oh well six one way, half a dozen the other, I guess.
Rating: 3 stars

6: Pudge: "Latino Heat", Eddie Guerrero: I like the direction Pudge went with his song selection borrowing it from the "sport" that made entrance music popular. I'm talking about the PGA Tour of course, where Craig Stadler helped make "Don't You Want Me" by the Human League a smash hit on the heels of his 1982 Masters win. O.k. that last sentence may be the stupidest thing I've ever wrote. I'm really talking about the WWF (I refuse to acknowledge the World Wildlife Fund as the real WWF, no matter how adorable their panda logo is). The WWF played a pretty large role in my childhood until I realized how phony and stupid it was at the tender age of 22, (no I stopped watching shortly after the introduction of IRS, which was the lamest idea for a wrestler EVER) and I used to watch Monday Night Raw and Wrestlemania with my friends and play the games on Nintendo and Sega, so I'm pretty familiar with the theme songs for every wrestler pre-1994. I think more baseball players should use wrestling music from this era and I would recommend the following three songs as certifiably kick-ass. 1: Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss and used by Ric Flair (WOOOOOO!!!). 2: "Sexy Boy" by Shawn Michaels, and 3: "Real American", Hulk Hogan.
Rating: 3.5 stars

7: Sean Casey: "Evenflow", Pearl Jam: Evenflow may have been my favorite song in 1992 and possibly the first rock song I actually embraced as my own anthem of an angst ridden nine-year old. I know you're thinking that listening to Pearl Jam made me the coolest nine-year old around but I wasn't, it was a fluke, and six months later I believed "Runaway Train" was the greatest song ever created ( I think I just heard you yell out "lame" from your home computer right now and it's completely justified). Anyways I trashed Guillen for using a song that was two years old, so I have to bury Casey for using a song that is now 15 years old. However in Casey's defense he's probably clueless and thinks that the grunge era is still prominent. I can see him after the game listening to Alice in Chains, while dressing in a red and black flannel wearing Doc Martens and trying to invite Brandon Inge over to his house to watch "Reality Bites".
Rating: 3.5 stars

8: Monroe: "Walk It Out", UNK: I hate this song and I'm disappointed in Monroe for choosing it. This is the type of song that my old roommate Mike's girlfriend Keri (got all that) would love and that's a bad thing. A very, very bad thing. Keri is the stereotypical 21 year old college girl who enjoys three things. 1: inane babbling about every minor things thats occurred in her life over the past 24 hours, including but not limited too, what time she got up in the morning, who called her, what she ate at Fazoli's, blah, blah, blah. 2: Tending to her two Yorkies that yip at everything and shit everywhere. 3: Clubbing. This is the kind of song Keri and her friends would get all excited about and rush the dance floor for, so they could have gangly douchebags dance on them and try, in vain, to pick them up, (i've been there). Anything that encourages the above scenario and features a grating chorus gets a low rating in my book. Oh yeah, and where is Mike in this whole scenario, getting high at his house and playing Guitar Hero for 4 hours straight, he's my idol........seriously he is.
Rating: 1 star

9: Inge: Some Metallica Song or Metallica knock off band that Sounds Like All the Other Metallica Songs, or maybe it's Korn, who knows: Metallica and their genre of music might be my least favorite type. I would rather listen to calypso or polka or someone puking until they died than listen to a Metallica song. In my hometown of Clio, James Hetfield, Dale Earnhardt, and Jesus are the three most idolized figures and in that order. 98% of Clio couldn't name 5 U.S. President's but they could tell you the exact day that Cliff Burton died. Since I was the only person in my high school not to own a Metallica shirt I was singled out as a "fag", well because of that and the fact that I was paralyzed by fear to talk to any girl, which resulted in many Goldeneye Saturday nights, and this was in a school where the girls were so easy they converted a classroom into a daycare.....but I digress. Anyways I'm sure Inge isn't some judgmental, conservative, redneck. If anything I'm under the impression that he's quite the opposite. However this list isn't a rating regarding the players character but rather the songs and the repressed, bitter memories of high school they bring out,errr, something like that.
Rating: 0 stars.