We all know the “Desert Island” game, in which you choose things that you’d bring with you if you were stuck on a Desert Island for an indefinite amount of time.
The first one I’ll tackle is Books, and list five that I would want with me to read.
It’d be great to hear what books some of you would bring with you!
Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy — This book in the Ryanverse doesn’t include Jack Ryan, but it’s a long book full of lots of great action.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling — Arguably the best book of the Harry Potter series, with World Cup Quidditch and a Triwizard Tournament.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain — There may not be restaurants on this island, but any little tricks and tips of the kitchen that can be gleamed from this book would certainly be useful.
The Crass Menagerie: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury by Stephan Pastis — Gotta have at least one comic book, and Pearls is one of my favorite series’ to read.
Moneyball by Michael Lewis — This one will show you how to properly manage what you do have, and how to best plan out the future.
Deadpool is the dirty Marvel movie that you never knew you needed.
Ryan Reynolds plays Deadpool, and it’s funny, it’s goofy, and it has no problem breaking the rules of TV and Movies: Breaking the Fourth Wall.
From cleaning dirt off the camera lens to addressing the person known as “Ryan Reynolds”. He hints to previous failed roles of his, such as Green Lantern, and to other real worldly items.
I may be super, but I’m no hero. -Deadpool
If you don’t like puns though, this movie would be a colossal waste of your time.
Overall this movie is a solid 8 out of 10.
PS. Please listen to Deadpool, and don’t take children to see this movie.
The NASCAR season gets underway this Sunday with the Daytona 2016.
While last year was all about Jeff Gordon’s final run (which turned into a race for the Chase), this year was supposed to be about Tony Stewart’s final hurrah. That is until he injured himself a few weeks ago and will miss the opening of the season.
No word yet on if that will affect the final year, and if he’ll decide to stay longer to try and get in one last run at the Daytona 500 and the likes.
But here is the logo that was supposed to represent the year for the driver known as Smoke.
Another big storyline to focus on will be Kyle Busch. Kyle missed the beginning of last year with a broken leg, and came back with barely enough time to make the playoffs and walk away with the win in the Chase.
If I were putting money on it, I’d put him as a high favorite to repeat the Championship this year.
Other choices for me to win this year: Kevin Harvick.
He won in 2014, and he is one of the drivers of Stewart-Haas Racing, the team that I root for.
Others on the team are Kurt Busch, Danica Patrick, and the aforementioned Stewart.
The league has also increased safety on many of its courses, with lots of SAFER barriers added, especially at Daytona, the site of Busch’s crash last year.
Pictured below, SAFER stands for Steel And Foam Energy Reduction, which creates a “cushion” of sorts that absorbs the force of impact, lessening injuries when the car meets the wall.
SAFER Barrier in Milwaukee, picture from Wikipedia
Thank you Ronda Rousey. Thank you for not killing yourself, and instead hung around to tell people about it.
Ronda opened up on the Ellen Show the other day about her loss to Holly Holm, and how in the first round she got hit in the mouth and lost depth perception. After her loss her first thoughts were of suicide, before realizing she had more to live for, such as a life and family with her boyfriend Travis Browne, another MMA fighter.
The problem isn’t that she lost. Or that she thought depressing thoughts of suicide after it.
The problem is America’s issues with sore losers.
Americans can’t deal with losing. Everyone who plays a sport these days gets a “consolation trophy”. People grow up not knowing how to lose, and when they see actual superstars fall, they don’t know how to handle it.
Ronda and Cam Newton are two recent examples of players at the top of their games, coming out of a tough loss, appearing as “sore losers” to the public. But I think that those knocking them down for their actions have just never experienced anything similar.
The “Haters” of the Ronda/Cam reactions are people who have never been in a place where they are high enough to fall down. Never faced depression and/or suicidal thoughts.
Nothing scares Americans more than something they haven’t experienced or can’t relate to.
I want to a decent sized elementary school in Brooklyn, with ~30 kids in my class and ~90 in the grade.
Spending 10 years there I got to know most of the people in my grade pretty well, at least by name and face…after all you are just kids and not thinking much about others outside your class.
But then I went to a small high school, and none of my 90 elementary classmates went there as well.
Heading into a CUNY for college the odds of hitting one of my schoolmates wasn’t high, as I had been to a very Orthodox Jewish elementary school, of which most of the people went on to even stronger Orthodox high schools, which pushed for further Jewish education after high school, and mostly urged against secular college.
Throughout my time at CUNY Brooklyn College, and the few years that followed, I’ve run into about 3 elementary classmates at college.
Besides for the 3 I re-met at college, I ran into another handful over the years at random times, in random locations, but I don’t have any real connection to the MYRCB class of 2003.
I’ve picked up bits and pieces of information over the years of classmates getting married and having kids, but when I opened a local paper this weekend, I was faced with a new first: The first passing of a classmate.
On Friday night, January 30th, Ari Levin had a couple of drinks before heading to bed. Unfortunately during the night, while lying on his back, he choked on some vomit, and by the time it was noticed there wasn’t anything that responding EMTs could do for him.
The full story could be read HERE, and a tribute from his family (as well as info on a Memorial Fund) can be read on page 114 of this publication.
RIP Ari Levin, 1989-2016
Some are my personal preferences, and on some I will say who I think will win vs. who should. Enjoy!
PS. I’ve left out categories that I just don’t know enough of the music to pick from.
Album of the Year — 1989 by Taylor Swift — Taylor has long ruled the charts and awards, and this year will be no different.
Best New Artist — Tori Kelly — This girl has been my favorite of the group all year, but Sam Hunt and Meghan Trainor have to be the public’s choices. But don’t count out an unseen win by Courtney Barnett.
Record of the Year — Can’t Feel My Face by The Weeknd — The Weeknd took the radio by storm, and they have good odds on beating out T-Swift and Bruno Mars.
Song of the Year — Girl Crush by Little Big Town — Always gonna love the underdogs in these categories, and to beat out Kendrick Lamar, T-Swift, Ed Sheeran and Wiz Khalifa will take a lot for this underdog.
Best Rap Album — To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar — Kendrick will be upset over not winning Album of the Year, but this award is his for the taking.
Best Country Album — Traveller by Chris Stapleton
Best Pop Vocal Album — 1989 by Taylor Swift — Taylor will win it, but I would love for a Kelly Clarkson win, or even bigger if Florence + The Machine earns her first ever.
Best Pop Solo Performance — Love Me Like You Do by Ellie Goulding — Ellie’s voice is pure in her works, but it’ll be tough to beat out Taylor, The Weeknd and Ed Sheeran. Did I mention Kelly Clarkson is nominated too? Packed category.
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance — Bad Blood by Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar — Both these artists will walk away with solo wins as well as this duo win on Grammy night.
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album — No One Ever Tells You by Seth MacFarlane — Let’s see if good old Seth can steal a Grammy?
Best Rock Performance — Ex’s & Oh’s by Elle King — This song was a late bloomer, but once it hit the MSM it took off. Look for a tough fight from Florence+ and Alabama Shakes.
Best Rock Song — Ex’s & Oh’s by Elle King — Same as before. The winner of performance is likely to win this as well.
Best Country Solo Performance — Burning House by Cam — Cam had a nice quiet year, jumping onto the scene. Expect a good fight out of Carrie Underwood (Little Toy Guns) and Chris Stapleton (Traveller).
Everyone has something to say on everything these days, which is okay. We live in an era of social media and opinions, and the rights for everyone to say what they’d like.
But if you are going to give advice to someone about something, you should probably have experience in that matter, and at least appear like you practice what you preach.
And yes, I have a couple of examples in mind, some that I’ve thought of for a few years, and some that have become more prevalent to me in recent weeks.
The overweight people offering dietary advice. When this person who looks like they can stand to lose a lot of weight (and yes, I understand people have medical conditions, and I understand that it isn’t easy on people to lose weight) is shoving their advice and techniques down everyones throats like it’s a piece of chocolate cake, enough is enough.
The only people you are going to convince to go with your plan and make them believe it will work are people whose elevators don’t go to the penthouse.
But then again, Facebook is filled with MLM and Pyramids that people just get all giddy over…
The late-30s single woman offering teenage girls dating advice. Oh yeah, all the girls instantly know who I am talking about, because they idolize these women.
No offense to the women, I know that dating is hard and gets harder the older one gets, but when you are giving advice to impressionable teenagers on what to do and not to do with guys on dates and in life, I think you are unqualified. You have obviously had zero luck with these techniques and ideas, so why push them on other people?
That’s right, the title is not a mistake. The Harry Potter series is getting more books.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling will be the eighth book in the popular series, and it will take place 19-years after book seven.
This book is the “script book”of a Harry Potter theater production coming to London the day of the book release, which of course will be on JK’s and Harry’s birthday (July 31st for those Muggles reading this).
Featuring a grown up adult Harry, working for the Ministry of Magic, the book is said to focus on his third child, Albus, and his struggle with the families legacy that he simply can’t live up to.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited for this.
The Mayor of NYC, Bill de Blasio, unveiled plans recently for BQX, a streetcar running through Brooklyn and Queens, in parts that have previously needed to loop through Manhattan to use mass transit between the two.
The new streetcars are supposed to run up to 12 MPH, and cut the commute time in half from the current scenarios. And the vehicles will hold almost 2X as many people as the current articulated buses.
My issue is how do we make sure they stay running smoothly, with the abundance of double parked trucks/cars, and taxis/cabs who just “pull over for a second”, and the BQX wouldn’t have the capabilities to go around it.
Early artist renditions don’t show any barriers between the streetcar and the driving lanes, and has these cars running curbside, and not through the median, so you can expect lots of loading/unloading vehicles in its way.
We’ve already experimented with bus lanes and cameras on the buses to try and enforce them, and for the most part they work…but when there’s something in the way, a bus can just go around…
The reality is, these neighborhoods are horrendously overlooked in terms of good mass transit, and this system could really help it.
For all my uncertainties with the system, one man I trust to run New York’s transportation grid correctly, Sam Schwartz (a cabbie and former NYC Traffic Commissioner), has an opinion piece in the Daily News, pro the BQX…and if he is okay with it, then so am I. Here is the piece for your perusal.
In the last week I’ve finally started to play Madden 16, thanks to its recent addition to EA Access’ vault, and it’s been determined that they haven’t fixed any issues in the 5 1/2 months since it came out.
Here are four instances that I’ve documented in the last few days:
Exhibit A: Center Can’t Run
It’s the typical start to a football play. The ball starts on the ground in the hands of the center, and he snaps it thru his legs and the play is off and running. But why can’t the Center just stand up and run with it? Madden thinks it’s okay, so should the NFL.
Exhibit B: Defense Lends A Hand
The game is nearing its end, and you are down a few points, so you transition into your hurry-up offense. But what happens when your Quarterback goes AWOL after hurrying them to the line? Well, just ask one of the defenders to step in and lend a hand!
I snapped the ball, assuming there’d be an offsides penalty…but instead the Lions decided they didn’t want to win a playoffs game.
When I went to the stats after the play, the LB was listed on their Passing list, with 1-for-1 and 47 yards…sign him up!
Exhibit C & D: Freezes Are Fun
What’s that? You are almost done playing an hour long game, and you are winning? Yeah, this seems like a good time to stop working…because why wouldn’t you want to have to do it all over again?
Aviously 