HopsGuy

If I wanted to take the time to do it, I'd mash up the local news cast with audio from "Anchorman" to have Ron Burgundy explain to the denizens of San Diego what happened last night. "Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast." Please internet, don't disappoint.

Thanks folks. Pretty psyched that the discovery of the Higgs Boson will push whatever local fireworks tragedy from the headlines. Anyway, have a great day. I always do.

Da dum dum.

My spine is messed up these days (long story). I'm probably 5'8.5" now (just like Dexter. ), with a bit of a lean to it. Also like Dexter, I choked out a dude in a bar fight, recently. He had it coming. I have a code.

Back before the first one, I was a 5'9" white dude that was this close to dunking (I could dunk a volleyball). Now I'm just a guy that likes a good IPA. Either way, it works.

I tore my left ACL in 1990 playing pick-up hoops. I was 20 and my doc suggested surgery but I knew that if I did that I'd lose my ROTC scholarship, so I never had anything done. I had a brace for sports but I did all my Army stuff very carefully. Running straight forward was never a problem. In 2001 (after leaving the Army) I tried to score from 3rd on a pop-up to short left and instead of crashing through the catcher (this is beer league softball after all) I tore my right ACL as I tried to ballet step around him. It was the same snapping sound I heard years before. Never had an MRI, so I'm not really sure it's totally torn but it feels the same now as the other. Can't tell you what to do but I do know when the next storm is coming. Good luck! Smash-cut to 2003: I ended up meeting a guy in my alumni group that ran a knee brace company. I got myself a couple of great new braces and decided to join the company softball team again. At the first practice I was fielding grounders at 3rd. After picking a particularly hard one, I took off my glove to see the last join in my left pinkie about 45 degrees off. Broke the least important bone in my body. I figured the universe wanted me off the diamond. Now I just do running.

I just read this entire thread and from what I can tell, H&A was profoundly affected by the first 10 minutes of "The Newsroom" pilot.

Don't lean to the right. Don't lean to the left. Let the circumstances inform you. Just do that. Chuck Klosterman wrote it best years ago, & I've quoted it here many times: I liked the pilot. I know how contrived it is but hey, good entertainment is contrived in some form. At least Cervantes was referenced enough as a hat-tip the fact that it was contrived. I gotta respect that.

I feel the same. Voted for C&H based just on the snowmen strips. I liked Garfield when I was a kid. Looking back, using Lorenzo Music as the voice for the TV cartoons was pretty great. Of course I was a kid and thus, stupid. I read that Jim Davis initially resisted TV/Movies/etc in the early 80s because he knew that he wasn't suited to to anything other than this strip and that if it blew up, that would be the end. So he stretched it out another 30 years by slowly allowing things like the suction-cup stuffed animals and then the Bill Murray movies. I guess it's still around, but I doubt he's done anything new in the strip since the 1st Reagan administration. Bill the Cat from Bloom County was a great jab at Garfield.

Here's the Season 5 Trailer. So we know that Mike comes back. He's the one that knew how the Gus' distribution network functioned. The super-lab was destroyed and the Mexican cartel had its entire leadership eliminated. As Walt says, "There's a market to be filled and no one to fill it." It looks like neither Mike nor Saul wants to work with Walt but he seems up for cranking it back up. Jesse also wants to cook. Now, we know that Walt's original reason to get into this business was to raise enough cash to provide for his family. After Skylar's scheme to ensure that the IRS didn't come sniffing around after the Benanke tax kerfluffle, he probably doesn't have enough to do that. That will be his motivation. Jesse though... you'd think he'd have enough to move on. Even with his binging and supporting Andrea & Brock, he should have plenty of money. But it looks like we're in for more cooking/scheming and intrigue as Mr. Chips transforms into Scarface. Either that or Jesse gets Badger & the rest of "TwaughtHammer" together for a tour under a new name "Meth Lab for Cutie".

In season one, Bert points to "Atlas Shrugged" sitting on his desk and says something like, "Right there... that's the one." Later he tells him, "I'm going to introduce you to Miss Ayn Rand. She'll love you." Part 2 comes out this fall and they've really upgraded the cast. Esai Morales will play Francisco and DB Sweeney is John Galt. They must have bumped the budget based on how Part 1 did. I've been wondering the same thing. I think there was one flashback to him selling cars, but maybe I'm just remembering the fur store flashback differently. There really needed to be a transformative event. The Dick Whitman that peed himself in Korea is a far cry from the Don Draper that got Roger drunk and convinced him that he had offered him a job, right?

Here's a good read on Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell). Really good actors tend to be strange.

Send a text to my buddy about how crazy nervous I'd be as Kings fan when they were up 4-0. Sure enough, a goal to shave it to 4-1. Following Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton (@wilw)) on Twitter is funny. Huge Kings fan w/ a lot of passion.

Pretty solid season that kept with the theme of how the rapid cultural changes that happened in the 60s affected our characters. Roger made a point early on about how it's "every man for himself" and it really was. Don's observation that "happiness is just a moment before you want more happiness" was something I thought about during this episode. Megan wants to work as an actress, even in ads after quitting the advertising game. So much so, she'd steal an idea from a friend and get her husband to get her an audition. The two people that revered Don as a professional over the years have attained those accouterments that go along with success, but to vastly different levels of satisfaction. Pete has the pretty wife and the house in the 'burbs but longs for Beth, wife of his train-riding/life-insurance selling companion, Howard. He ends up getting punched in the face by two different guys after revealing his affair with Beth. Tough year for Pete's face. Peggy, OTOH has gained the authority at the new firm and gets a shot at Virginia Slims. "You've come a long way, baby" might be a bit too 'on the nose', but it's completely apt for Peggy's growth. Then again, Richmond isn't Paris and a couple of dogs banging in the parking lot probably isn't her idea of a view. Also, Stan & Mike struggle with the Topaz pitch because they don't have a woman's point of view for that product. After Megan gets the ad part, we see Don in a bar being approached and asked "Are you alone?" Pretty poignant. Don had a moment at the dentist when he saw his brother Adam. He hadn't thought about Adam since the first season and now Adam was showing up in his mind quite a bit. That's a lot of guilt that Don really hasn't confronted. It might have flipped a switch that sends him back towards the old philandering Don who was always looking for that bit of happiness with women that Betty couldn't deliver and apparently he doesn't seem to be getting from Megan. The view of the SCDP partners looking out the window of the second floor they'll look to expand into was probably the shot of the season. It's a look forward for the principals (well, maybe not so much for Bert) who have all had big life changes this season. 26 more episodes.

Thank you for paying attention. (See Post #50). These kids today...

Read that story earlier today. Then going through this thread all I could think of was how bad lung cancer was... "Jeeze, my dad, JoPa, the guy from the BN story, now plenzmd1's brother... What a horrible year for lung cancer." Then to find the latter two are related? So sorry for your loss. The pain never goes away but in time, you'll make room for it.

Dave Winfield was drafted in 3 sports and he didn't even play football in college (yeah, it was the 17th round, but still...). I usually include him in this discussion. Jim Brown is my pick, but I'm glad someone mentioned Allen Iverson. Bill Simmons once wrote about what it would have been like if the US hadn't invented our own sports (baseball, basketball & football) and instead we all played soccer. AI probably would have been a star. But then, there'd be no TBD.

When I read the title of this post, I first thought '27 Yankees. Then I remembered that African-Americans weren't playing in the majors leagues in those days, so they get an asterisk. Then I thought '86 Celtics, but that immediately led me to the '97 Bulls. I'm going to be biased towards teams in my lifetime, but it's hard to argue against a team that dominated like that Bulls team in an era when the game was truly global. That gets me thinking about what soccer team would be the all-time best. Should it be a national team or limit it to club teams? I had dismissed the '92 Barcelona Dream Team because it was an assembled all-star team. Probably should do the same here, right? It's a good discussion.

The red-head at the 2:40 mark got club level tickets for me & my friends for a Bills-Dolphins game a couple of years ago. One of my friends dates her sister. Calm down, Pooj. The color is out of a bottle. She's Argentinian.

Sure. I used to love those songs, but now I'm just "meh". He's playing here in Charlotte tomorrow and I have no desire to go. I've been to 6 or so JB shows and I know what to expect. In fact, if you offered me a choice between that and Aziz Ansari who is also here tomorrow, I'd probably choose comedy. Speaking of guys that don't like Jimmy Buffett, haven't we established that David Allen Coe sang Steve Goodman's " " as the greatest Country-Western (We got both kinds!) song of all time? I hear there was a crazy scene at a C-W show in Buffalo last night? Some guy named "Church"? Any truth to that?

I started collecting shot glasses when I was in college, but it was a specific type of collection: cheap airport news stand versions. My first one was from the Fayetteville NC airport after I had completed my ROTC Advanced Camp at Ft. Bragg. I had a couple of others like from Bourbon St. NOLA and the gift shop at the Federal Cartridge plant in MN ("the only shot glass you'll ever need"), but for the most part they were simply $3 ones you see in every airport. When I was in NYC for a wedding shortly after 9/11, I was looking at a shelf at the Newark airport and a guy I worked with saw me and asked what I was looking for. I told him about my collection. Eventually this guy would become my boss and on every trip he made, he'd pick up a shot glass for me. But not just cheapies. He got some real nice ones from Rome, St. Luzerne Switzerland, and another from Door County WI that is so big, it's more like a juice glass. Other people in the office would notice him dropping off the glasses and would remember. So one girl picked up one in Paris and another friend got one from Mexico City. So when I look at my collection, it also reminds me of the friends I've picked up over the years that have kept me in mind while they've traveled the globe.

Reading the reviews, they keep harping on how the theme for this season has been "Every (Wo)Man for Him/Herself". When you think about it, that's really been the case. Peggy realizing that Don just won't give her her due Roger ending his marriage Lane's embezzling/suicide Ken continuing to write under a nom de plume after being told to stop Just about everything Pete does Megan quitting to concentrate on acting Joan selling herself for a piece of the company Betty being Betty Harry doing whatever it is that Harry does - actually Harry does try to help Paul escape Mother Lakshmi... that's something I'm guessing we'll see a lot of movement in the finale to set up the next season. That's sort of the MO in these cable shows. That was certainly the case with Game of Thrones this week. Sad to see you go, Lane. The way you brokered everyone's departure from the original SC/PPM was brilliant. And we'll never forget your time at the steakhouse. Yeaahhh-hawwww, indeed.

Larry Miller (before his unfortunate accident (is there another kind of accident?)) would say, "If you walked out of bed today, had a job to go to, and had someone to come home to that cared about you... I tell ya - game's over, you've won." I agree with every word and from what I've gleaned from your posts, you qualify. Seriously Tom, what the hell is wrong with you?

You don't get to go to court. You'll note in the fine print that you forfeited your right to sue in court in lieu of binding arbitration. The arbiters are selected from the industry and side with the brokerage firm 4 out of 5 times. And if you say you'd take the firm to arbitration over a gain, you're lying. I was a trade desk principal and the phone never rang when the client profited - and sometimes they did. This stuff gets brought up all the time. The engineer and/or the QA person goes to the product manager and expresses their concerns. The PM will then go to their boss or high management and will be told that there is no time for further testing. I know this because I was a PM for the roll out of an option trading product. I knew as well as anyone that it wasn't ready, but because some clueless VP had given a trade publication a hard date the CEO told me we had to go. Can you guess what happened? I had a lot of jobs at that shop.

What he said.