My Personal Magazine Rack
Man oh man has the weather been nice the past few days. OK, so maybe it’s only nice to us in Connecticut, but once the mercury in the thermometer hits 60 it’s time to put away the jackets and open up the windows. Tuesday I was cruisin in the new whip blastin t.A.T.u (complete guilty pleasure), rockin my shades and ignoring most of the rest of the world. Heck, I even had a window cracked last night to let the cool breeze in.
This week I also hit Old Navy to get some khakis. Why do I mention this? Well, because I had to hit multiple stores to find the right pair and I swear that the salesman at the Eddie Bauer in Trumbull Mall is some sort of reformed drug dealer, or current drug dealer. His sales pitch included his eyes darting back and forth as if looking to see if anyone was within earshot who wasn't supposed to be and covering his mouth with his hand when asking "hey man, what you lookin for?" Seriously crazy, but also seriously funny. I swear one day I’ma just have to write up all the strange things that happen to me and my friends and create a sitcom based on it.
Keeping with the shopping theme, I also hit up Olympia Sports the other day looking for a new Mets shirt. All I wanted was a simple T-shirt. Figuring I live about an hour from Shea Stadium I didn’t think this would be hard, and it wasn’t, it was impossible. Rows and rows of yank-me and red sox jerseys and shirts lined the walls of Olympia Sports, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, bearing a Mets logo. I turned to the girl behind the counter and asked "what, is it no longer cool to be a Mets fan?" Another woman in the store commiserated with me. The next day I was telling this story at the gym to one of the trainers who happened to mention she was a Mets fan and we both went off on the local shops here and how we get no respect as a team. Of course, getting swept by the Reds to open the season didn’t exactly help with the respect factor.
In work-related news, I picked up a copy of the latest issue of RIME yesterday. It features my Ali Shaheed Muhammed interview. Personally I feel the article is fantastic, of course I’m a bit biased since I wrote it, but it’s a serious piece and I’m very happy with the way it came out. Since the RIME article is one of many I have on newsstands right now, here’s a list of where you can find my work:
XXL
Cover: Fat Joe
My Article: Calm Down (Subliminal)
Page(s): 40
RIME
Cover: The Game
My Article: What's In A Name? How Faith Is Affecting The Life And Career Of A Hip-Hop Legend
Page(s): 30-31
Elemental
Cover: Rass Kass
My Article: Copperpot: Chicago's Other College Dropout
Page(s): 70-71
Right On!
Cover: Omarion
My Article: 50 Cent Separates Fact From Fiction
Page(s): 58-60
I’m still not sure what the weekend holds for me. I have a few friends who’d like to get together, a group I work with is performing in Danbury, and there’s the live finale of The Ultimate Fighter featuring the return of Ken Shamrock. FYI - my picks for TUF are Diego Sanchez and Stephan Bonner. If you’ve watched the show at all it should be fairly obvious as to why.
Thankfully I’ve been finding time to read this week and I’m already about a hundred pages into Survivor. I really dig Chuck Palahniuk’s characters, they’re so strange yet completely developed. Not only that there’s a level on which I think everyone can relate to them despite not wanting to. It’s like the thoughts behind their warped actions are thoughts a lot of people have, they’d just never act on them, or at least they’d never act on them quite the way the characters in his stories do.
Before I get to my fantasy update, this just in, the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League have signed noted moron John Rocker. One of my boys just pointed out we could see a matchup of two of our least favorite closers of all time, Mel Rojas vs. John Rocker, when the Ducks play the Bridgeport Bluefish. One blew games for the Mets the other blew his top talking about Queens, NY. We liked booing both. My best John Rocker memory was booing him in the 1999 NLCS and then feeling Shae Stadium literally shake with excitement and joy when John Olerud got the game winning hit off him. We eventually lost the series because Kenny Rodgers is awful, but damn that was a helluva game!
Fantasy Update: My main move of the week was relenting and finally picking up Brian Fuentes of the Rockies. He’s a reliever in their muddled closer by committee ensemble that is supposedly going to close out games for them. Fuentes is supposed to get situational saves and maybe even a few extra thrown in. My feeling is if he has a shot at any saves I should pick him up. Who knows, he could become their full time closer if he gets hot. With Fuentes I now have him and Mike Adams of the Brewers as my relievers along with the hope that when Jose Valverde comes back he’ll get a few vulture saves for the D-Backs. For the roster add I put Garrett Atkins, the injured Rockies third baseman, on my DL. This add also allows me to move Brandon Backe to a pitcher spot and put Tomo Ohka on my bench. So in retrospect maybe it wasn’t about the saves, maybe it was about making sure I didn’t have to suffer through having to get stats from either Ohka, who’s starting against the Marlins tomorrow, or Victor Zambrano, who’s also starting tomorrow and is a walk machine, this week. After their respective spring trainings I’m not confident in either pitcher and would love to trade them for middle relievers.
Stat Attack: N/A What kind of a stat is N/A you ask? It was my team’s ERA and WHIP after two games this season. Basically, since I didn’t have a pitcher pitch until yesterday, rather than giving me an ERA and WHIP of 0.00 the scoring system gave me an N/A sinking me to last in each category. After starts by Jason Marquis and Mike Hampton yesterday, however, I jumped 22 points in the standings. Gotta love it!
Trades Rejected So Far: One
This week I also hit Old Navy to get some khakis. Why do I mention this? Well, because I had to hit multiple stores to find the right pair and I swear that the salesman at the Eddie Bauer in Trumbull Mall is some sort of reformed drug dealer, or current drug dealer. His sales pitch included his eyes darting back and forth as if looking to see if anyone was within earshot who wasn't supposed to be and covering his mouth with his hand when asking "hey man, what you lookin for?" Seriously crazy, but also seriously funny. I swear one day I’ma just have to write up all the strange things that happen to me and my friends and create a sitcom based on it.
Keeping with the shopping theme, I also hit up Olympia Sports the other day looking for a new Mets shirt. All I wanted was a simple T-shirt. Figuring I live about an hour from Shea Stadium I didn’t think this would be hard, and it wasn’t, it was impossible. Rows and rows of yank-me and red sox jerseys and shirts lined the walls of Olympia Sports, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, bearing a Mets logo. I turned to the girl behind the counter and asked "what, is it no longer cool to be a Mets fan?" Another woman in the store commiserated with me. The next day I was telling this story at the gym to one of the trainers who happened to mention she was a Mets fan and we both went off on the local shops here and how we get no respect as a team. Of course, getting swept by the Reds to open the season didn’t exactly help with the respect factor.
In work-related news, I picked up a copy of the latest issue of RIME yesterday. It features my Ali Shaheed Muhammed interview. Personally I feel the article is fantastic, of course I’m a bit biased since I wrote it, but it’s a serious piece and I’m very happy with the way it came out. Since the RIME article is one of many I have on newsstands right now, here’s a list of where you can find my work:
XXL
Cover: Fat Joe
My Article: Calm Down (Subliminal)
Page(s): 40
RIME
Cover: The Game
My Article: What's In A Name? How Faith Is Affecting The Life And Career Of A Hip-Hop Legend
Page(s): 30-31
Elemental
Cover: Rass Kass
My Article: Copperpot: Chicago's Other College Dropout
Page(s): 70-71
Right On!
Cover: Omarion
My Article: 50 Cent Separates Fact From Fiction
Page(s): 58-60
I’m still not sure what the weekend holds for me. I have a few friends who’d like to get together, a group I work with is performing in Danbury, and there’s the live finale of The Ultimate Fighter featuring the return of Ken Shamrock. FYI - my picks for TUF are Diego Sanchez and Stephan Bonner. If you’ve watched the show at all it should be fairly obvious as to why.
Thankfully I’ve been finding time to read this week and I’m already about a hundred pages into Survivor. I really dig Chuck Palahniuk’s characters, they’re so strange yet completely developed. Not only that there’s a level on which I think everyone can relate to them despite not wanting to. It’s like the thoughts behind their warped actions are thoughts a lot of people have, they’d just never act on them, or at least they’d never act on them quite the way the characters in his stories do.
Before I get to my fantasy update, this just in, the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League have signed noted moron John Rocker. One of my boys just pointed out we could see a matchup of two of our least favorite closers of all time, Mel Rojas vs. John Rocker, when the Ducks play the Bridgeport Bluefish. One blew games for the Mets the other blew his top talking about Queens, NY. We liked booing both. My best John Rocker memory was booing him in the 1999 NLCS and then feeling Shae Stadium literally shake with excitement and joy when John Olerud got the game winning hit off him. We eventually lost the series because Kenny Rodgers is awful, but damn that was a helluva game!
Fantasy Update: My main move of the week was relenting and finally picking up Brian Fuentes of the Rockies. He’s a reliever in their muddled closer by committee ensemble that is supposedly going to close out games for them. Fuentes is supposed to get situational saves and maybe even a few extra thrown in. My feeling is if he has a shot at any saves I should pick him up. Who knows, he could become their full time closer if he gets hot. With Fuentes I now have him and Mike Adams of the Brewers as my relievers along with the hope that when Jose Valverde comes back he’ll get a few vulture saves for the D-Backs. For the roster add I put Garrett Atkins, the injured Rockies third baseman, on my DL. This add also allows me to move Brandon Backe to a pitcher spot and put Tomo Ohka on my bench. So in retrospect maybe it wasn’t about the saves, maybe it was about making sure I didn’t have to suffer through having to get stats from either Ohka, who’s starting against the Marlins tomorrow, or Victor Zambrano, who’s also starting tomorrow and is a walk machine, this week. After their respective spring trainings I’m not confident in either pitcher and would love to trade them for middle relievers.
Stat Attack: N/A What kind of a stat is N/A you ask? It was my team’s ERA and WHIP after two games this season. Basically, since I didn’t have a pitcher pitch until yesterday, rather than giving me an ERA and WHIP of 0.00 the scoring system gave me an N/A sinking me to last in each category. After starts by Jason Marquis and Mike Hampton yesterday, however, I jumped 22 points in the standings. Gotta love it!
Trades Rejected So Far: One
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