Afternoon Baseball

That's right, it's the recurring character of this blog, much like The Todd on "Scrubs," or Newman on "Seinfeld" -- sometimes inappropriate, but always worth the time.

Anyways, today we have a nice mix of sports and non-sports things that's surprisingly wordy:

Leading off, in the "college kids acting dumb" category, we have J.J. Redick dodging a police checkpoint by making a U-turn. I think we know how that turned out.
While this will lead you to question his on-the-court decision-making abilities, it does prove that he is ready to lead a life as a professional athlete. A push here for J.J., who we've talked about before, albeit back when I apparently thought his last name had two D's in it.

Jose Contreras has won 15 consecutive decisions. This is a nice kick in the gut for Yankees fans, despite the fact that it was generally a relief to be rid of him, even if little was being offered in return (Esteban Loiaza). There's a little discussion on it over at WasWatching, who was kind enough to say they liked this little blog. I just do it for the fun -- if it's actually not terrible, that's just a bonus.
One quick note of Loiaza: The year he won 21 games for the ChiSox, he had that great first half. I remember Peter Gammons at the time said, well, his first-half ERA was better than any second-half ERA he's ever posted. So expect a downturn. On the other hand, his first-half ERA was also better than any first-half ERA he's ever had. This was by a wide margin, too.

Paris Hilton has an album coming out. Don't laugh. Well, go ahead. Anyway, apparently her first single is remarkably similar to an old UB40 song. Want to know how bad this song is? Read the last sentence of this, um, review.

Not a funny one here. Sorry. Flag Day is tommorrow, and here's the official site for more info.

The august NY Times talks money for recent college grads. The biggie? Cook your own food, make your own coffee. Having a $3.50 latte every day can cost you more than $11,000 over 10 years. Similarly, quitting smoking can save up to $25,600 over 10 years. Heady stuff. Of course, that's betting on you not going out all the time, not sleeping and therefore not needing that latte.

I already talked about the new Metallica song, which I like, but with reservations. I've been checking out some other music haphazardly (and that's still without getting the full Pearl Jam and RHCP albums that I was so excited about...ditto for Tool).
The emo-loud-whatever band Thursday actually had a couple catchy songs on their new album, "A City By The Light Divided," which came out last month, that you can hear on their MySpace. "Counting 5-4-3-2-1" is probably the one that's the best example of them breaking out of the LI/NJ emo band habit of either too much noise or too much self-wallowing.
Just random stuff I've listened to otherwise.

Finally, to close it back out on a Yankees note, their official site's Mailbag addresses questions about the draft and current prospects. He wisely advises against panicking and trading for someone like Dontrelle Willis -- no need to have another ex-Marlin suck it up for the Yanks.

Labels: Midweeklinks