Aviously

Because, aviously…

This Sunday I went to the Barclays Center to watch my first NBA game between the Toronto Raptors and the last place Brooklyn Nets.

It was impressive to watch in person, as you see the power on the dunks a lot better than it comes across on television, but I had a few issues:

For starters, why are they pumping in music and song all game?
I understand that the fans were terrible and barely rooting on their team, but why can’t the game (and sounds of the game) speak for themselves?
Soccer is one of the largest song sports, and those songs are provided by the chanting fans.
Baseball, one of the slowest sports, doesn’t have actual sounds once the play begins. In between batters, sure. But once the pitcher is on the mound, it ceases.
Same with hockey. The second that puck is dropped, it’s all about the sound of the game and the fans.
Yet they felt the need to pump music in throughout. I would’ve enjoyed being able to hear the squeak of the sneakers and the players talking to each other while setting up plays.

I was also shocked watching practice. Now granted this Nets team is awful, scraping along at the bottom of the league, but they are at the end of the day ‘Professional Basketball Players” being paid thousands (if not millions) of dollars to shoot a basketball.
But when they were shooting around before the game, with no defenders or pressure, they were completely missing some pretty basic mid-range shots.
During the game itself, there was also an embarrassing amount of missed shots just falling short.

I’d definitely try going again to a professional NBA game, but maybe next time I’ll try for two teams that are playing up to their worth.

Nets Raptors 2-5-17 Barclays Center

Last night cemented a few things as the “Greatest of All Time”, or GOATs.

For starters, the Game itself:
Never has a Super Bowl gone to Overtime, but the bigger shocker is that a team has never come back from more than 10-points down to win the game, and the Patriots trailed by as much as 25 in the 3rd Quarter.

Next, Bill Belichick:
This was his record setting 5th Super Bowl win (passing Chuck Noll) in his 7th Super Bowl appearance (passing Don Shula)

Lastly, Tom Brady:
He won his record fifth Super Bowl, passing Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw, and did so with 43 completions in 62 attempts for 466 yards (all Super Bowl records).
After the game he was awarded his fourth Super Bowl MVP Award, again passing Joe Montana for first place.
With the comeback, he becomes the first quarterback with three 4th-Quarter Super Bowl comebacks and this is his 10th Postseason comeback (not surprisingly, also a record).

All-in-all a fantastic Super Bowl LI.

goat

Super Bowl LI will be played this Sunday in Houston, Texas between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons.

The Patriots are being led by four-time Champion (and three-time Super Bowl MVP) Tom Brady and the mastermind coach of Bill Belichick.
It doesn’t seem to matter what receivers/running backs are placed with that duo, they still make it happen.
The talent level of those two is so high, they make everyone around them look superb…when most of them aren’t. This has been proven time and again as mediocre players on other teams have joined the Pats and been elevated…or when a player who was great on the Pats moves to another team and now seems to underperform.

On the other side is Matt Ryan (otherwise known as ‘Matty Ice’), who took the job over from the extremely popular Michael Vick in 2008, and has struggled to get the city behind him.
A city that has had a team for 51 years, and only had one failed Super Bowl appearance before, closed out their 24-year-old Georgia Dome with an NFC Championship title, is looking for a little hope and glory on Sunday.
They will be moving next year into the Mercedez-Benz Stadium, and debuting their fantastically new food pricing plan.

I want the Falcons to win, but I fully believe the Patriots will walk away with it. If the Patriots win, the final score will be 35-21….if the Falcons win, it’ll be by a score of 31-28.

super-bowl-51-logo

A few months ago I talked about starting to finally watch Homeland. Well, I’m glad to say, with the new season underway, that I am fully caught up in it, and loving every second of it.

But now that I had that Showtime subscription on Amazon Prime, I figured may as well keep paying for it, and just started binging another of their shows…and then another.

Well, I’m happy to say that Ray Donovan is absolutely enjoyable. Mob mentality, a fixer in California, the Boston tie-ins, and the combination of Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight…the Crime filled Drama knocks it out of the park (not to mention Steven Bauer who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting…as he plays Avi on the show!).

But after two Crime Dramas I went on a separate route and tuned into the comedic genius of Shameless. William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum are the standouts of the show, and the underwritten comedy of Steve Howey is always good for a laugh.

I know that Premium cable channels tend to run up their bills…but if you get a chance to try any of these three shows…try them! You won’t regret it.

shameless-posterray-donovan-posterhomeland

Time for a little game of Internet ABCs. This allows people to get to learn other people’s habits, dirty secrets, and favorite websites.

The game is simple enough: Go to your regular browser (in my case Google Chrome) and in your search/URL bar type in a letter of the alphabet. The first thing that comes up on the AutoFill is your selection for that letter…go through your A to Zs and let’s see what you come up with!

My list has lots of Google products, a few shopping sites, sports from all sides and some random sites (United) for letters that don’t get used much.

A: Accuweather.com
B: BarstoolSports.com
C: Celayix1/webx – Work schedule intranet
D: Drive.Google.com
E: ESPN.com
F: FanDuel.com
G: Gmail.com
H: Hulu.com
I: iAmAviG.com – Shocker, right?
J: JWed.com
K: Keep.Google.com
L: LandsEnd.com
M: Maps.Google.com
N: NHL.com
O: OneDrive.com
P: Photos.Google.com
Q: QuiBids.com
R: RunYourPool.com
S: Smile.Amazon.com
T: TVNewser.com
U: United.com
V: VerizonWireless.com
W: Woot.com
X: Xbox.com
Y: YouTube.com
Z: Zillow.com

Monster Jam Triple Threat is moving across the East Coast in a great show filled with Monster Trucks, Speedsters, and ATVs (hence the ‘Triple Threat’).

Monster Jam 2017 Scooby Doo Gif

At yesterday’s show at The Prudential Center, there was a nice variety of cars, from fan favorites Grave Digger and Max-D, crowd-enticing Zombie and EarthShaker, to the animals of Scooby-Doo, Monster Mutt Rottweiler, and El Toro Loco, and lastly the underwhelming N.E.A.

Monster Jam 2017 Zombie Monster Jam 2017 Scooby Doo Monster Jam 2017 Max D Monster Jam 2017 EarthShaker

With a range of seven events to fill out the scoring, each driver needed to earn as much as they could, with a variety of votes coming from the judges and audience.
There were head-to-head races Speedsters and ATVs, and then the large trucks raced the course, spun doughnuts, popped wheelies, and ended with a Freestyle extravaganza.

This was a great event and highly recommended for kids and adults of all ages.

While some events it doesn’t matter where in a Stadium/Arena you sit, for Monster Jam I would recommend paying a little extra to sit downstairs and close to the action, where you can really see the height these vehicles get and feel the rumble as they rev their engines.

Monster Jam Triple Threat 2017 Poster

When humans are around pets are exactly what you need them to be: Friends, family and mutual fun times.
But what happens when the owners go away to work and leave their pets home alone?
Well, that’s when the real parties start. Movies, video games, real food, music and parties, and nothing is off limits.

Secret Life of Pets Poster

Enter Max (Louis C.K.), our little terrier, who suddenly has a new roommate: A stray named Duke (Eric Stonestreet), who’s large frame takes up too much room, and demeanor steals the attention of their owner Katie (Ellie Kemper).

So Max sets about causing some trouble, trying to drive Duke out of the apartment. But when they get caught by animal control, without their collars, they need to go on a mission to get back home safely and avoid the rejected animals (rabbits, crocs, snakes…) and crazy wildlife (hawks…), all while their neighborhood friends (dogs, cats, hamsters, birds…) are there for the lifesaving adventure.

In the midst of the movie there seems to be a Sausage Party teaser, which was a little weird, but the Sing! ads on the side of NYC buses seems like a nice touch to help promote other Illumination movies.

This movie is fun, but falls far short of Zootopia, and gets a 7 out of 10.

Secret Life of Pets Collage

Yup, the game came out 15+ months ago, but I finally got around to playing it so here are my thoughts:

The Gameplay experience is a step up from previous games, as performing in front of a “Live Crowd” and hearing them react to wrong notes is a lot more fun than just a generic background.

Meanwhile, the Setlist was pretty decent, with three songs from the 1900s and then a nice mix of 2000s and 2010s, as well as a range of styles from Indie to Metal.

But then you turn to the controller, and where all the issues begin:

  • Personally I’d prefer a wired controller for this sort of game because the wireless one doesn’t work great.
    With the dongle plugged in behind my Xbox (in an open area) it wouldn’t read all the signals, and when moved to the side USB port I experienced better results, but still an occasional missed note.
  • To that effect, the brand new controller I got was defective, with the downwards clicker only working 50% of the time. This was tested out of game as well, with generic scrolling through menus…up worked fine, down was spotty.
  • New controls: Changing from the original five colored keys they moved to six Black and White keys, three up-three down, this up/down black/white style sometimes made it difficult to read on the screen (especially when using a “Power Up” and you’d have blue flashes across the screen). The clunky controls, with a line in between up and down, made it more difficult to do “combos” in which they wanted you to hit both at once with the same finger.

This game is overall pretty bad and gets a 4.5 out of 10, I’d go for one of the older ones…if they worked on the One.

Guitar Hero Live Poster

Today is the 7th Annual Bell Let’s Talk day.

The Canadian telecommunications company, Bell, has made this day a yearly focus on Mental Health issues, nd encouraging everyone to talk about it.

Last year I posted on it, simply describing the cause, and this year it has taken on a new meaning after losing a friend to mental health issues in June of 2016.

It’s already trending early this morning on Twitter, and for every tweet that uses the hashtag #BellLetsTalk the company will give 5¢ to mental health initiatives. The same goes true if you use their designated Snapchat filter.

As of this posting, there have been over 6 million interactions, which can all be tracked here.

Please make sure to help spread the word on mental illness, and keep an eye on those around you who might be suffering.

If you want to donate to the cause, I would recommend NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness), who are the nation’s largest grassroots mental health advocacy organization.