I will digress from my normal pastiche posts about whatever flits into my mind that's sports related for a moment and beg, plead, and implore you to get yourselves to the polls tomorrow and VOTE! Democracy only works when citizens participate, and this is the lowest level of participation. If you don't vote, then you have no voice. Good men and women have died to give you the right to vote, don't let those sacrifices go to waste. I've already marked up my ballot and after I drop the wife off at work tomorrow morning, I'm voting, I want to get it done so that I can come home and watch returns all day. In years past I've been stuck at jobs watching the numbers roll in, not this year. I can camp in front of CNN and MSNBC all day long.
Which reminds me, I'm in LOVE with Rachel Maddow. Yes, I know she's a lesbian, which makes her that much more attractive to me. When I say LOVE I really mean that she's the latest person who I actually WANT to listen to speak. She's just so damn smart (she's got a Doctorate in Philosophy for Pete's sake), and eloquent. I love her MSNBC show, for all the reasons that I love Air America as well. Seriously though, you can learn a lot from watching her show which is on at 9 pm EST/6 PM PST.
Some Sports Content
The UCLA Men's Basketball Team has their first exhibition game tonight against...err...Cal Baptist, which is the #5 ranked team in NAIA Division I. It's not on TV or radio, but it's supposed to be streaming on CBS All Access. If you want to pony up the $60 for CSTV's season long web coverage you get the game for free, but since I'll be watching as many games as possible on television, it isn't worth it to me to buy the package as well, though if I lived anywhere else other than Southern California I'd buy the package.
Starting Point Guard and returning Senior
Darren Collison was just voted onto his SECOND straight Pre-Season AP All-America team. The Bruins are just looking awesome as we head into the 08/09 season, with THREE returning Seniors in the lineup and FOUR incoming Freshmen who are the cream of the crop when it comes to recruiting. Seriously, I've been following Jrue Holliday, Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson, and Drew Gordon since before Kevin Love took his first shot at UCLA. We also managed to get J'Mision Morgan (just call him 'Bobo') to forgo his plans to attend LSU and come to UCLA instead! Five freshmen, two seniors (Collison and Josh Shipp) who have been to the Final Four in each of their college seasons and now want to cap their careers with a National Championship, and a healthy underclass featuring Alfred Aboya, Michael Roll, James Keefe and Nikola Dragovic give the Bruins ELEVEN scholarship players, each of which will get game time. Yes, I was excited about the Bruins last season, even knowing that K-Love was one-and-done, but this year I'm QUINTUPLY excited. FIVE FREAKING FRESHMEN!
Trading Update
OK I admit it, I SUCK when it comes to checking lists and prepping trades. I always have. I'm slow. I often forget to check lists as well. It's not that I don't WANT to trade, I definitely do, it's just that my time, such as it is, is limited. When you have a toddler that you're taking care of all day you have to go by her schedule, and pulling out cards to check want lists is a recipe for disaster around a two-year old, and it's not like you can just point her at the TV and tell her to watch Dora for two hours. So I know that I owe people the courtesy of checking their lists and putting together trades, I'm just a bit slow.
The good thing is that I only have one package to send out at the moment to the U.K. for a great trade that I was offered. The bad thing is that I also sold some non-sports and wrestling card on eBay over the weekend and I have to ship those out too, and I need to get boxes. Darn it. Nice thing is that I've got a decent amount in my Paypal account, that I'll probably have to put towards house bills. I'll be lucky if I get to buy a few singles this go-around.
I'm also about half-way done with an UD Baseball Heroes set, so as I get closer to that I'll post a want-list because I've decided that will be my second set I'm going to put together this year (the first was 2008 Upper Deck Base). I'm still not sure about 2008 Topps, since even though I'm almost complete with Series 2, I still need about half of Series 1, and I just bought my first four packs of the Highlights.
Topps Town
Hey I've got about five or so Baseball codes that I won't use because I've already completed my baseball set that I'd like to trade for basketball or football codes. We DO NOT have to trade the actual cards, I'll trade code for code.
Fantasy Football
I'm going 1 - 1 this weekend, winning in my league by about 10 points, and losing in Gellman's lead. I think I've lost 3 out of the last 4 in his league dammit. Fortunately I'm still in the playoff hunt in both leagues. Yeay! I'm doing horribly in my pick 'em pools though. Bah.
Hockey
I'm still off of Hockey, and the Kings don't seem to be doing much to bring me back. They have been at .500 twice this season, and are now under 500 by something like three games. They need to start WINNING games, they're skating well, but not winning, just like the last three seasons.
Celebrity Sightings
This last week was a very strange one for me. Living in the capital of the entertainment industry I do often see celebrities in public, so many that I forget about them half the time. Last week was a feast for the eyes though. I saw Scott Ian of Anthrax leaving my local Target (with wife I guess), and he acknowledged me when I asked him about Battlestar Galactica, so that was cool. I saw Thom Christopher (soap opera actor and he played "Hawk" on the old
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV show in my local post-office. I see b-movie actor Tracey Walter all the time in Beverly Hills now, I think he lives there.
The sighting of the week though HAS to be when I was at Toys R Us on Friday picking up a couple packs of Topps Basketball, I noticed that there was a tall good looking lady with seemed like a dozen kids checking out a HUGE basket of toys. I could hear the English accent lilt across the room, but I didn't think much of it, because she was with a HUGE blonde American guy. I got in line next to him, and noticed he had a Secret-Service type earpiece in and was talking to someone else outside. Hmm...then there was the HUGE SUV outside, not sure what type, but it was massive and brand new. Then I realized who it was I was standing next to, Mrs. Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice. I asked the bodyguard very slyly if it was indeed her, but he just shrugged as they all do. It was her, I recognized some of the tats on her back. You know what, not as attractive in person to be honest. Her kids were really cool though, my daughter was being rambunctious so I was really paying more attention to her than Posh. But it was something.
