Free Beer, Saddam's Laywer zings foxnews, and Eddy Curry

I was thrilled to catch NPR's coverage of free beer, an open-source concept applied to beer.

Was watching foxnews last night when they announced saddam's execution. greta van straten interviewed saddam's lawer, and asked about Saddam's guilt(i'm paraphrasing here):
"what about the 150 people saddam killed in 1982, did he ever talk to you about that? and what about the 5000 he gassed in 1988, did he ever talk to you about that?"
to which saddam's laywer zingned back about America's guilt,
"And in 2006, 750,000 killed in Iraq."
to which Greta quickly changed the subject. Wow.

And finally, and probably least importantly, last night's loss in Phoenix. Stephon was off, but he took 17 shots, curry only took 11. I didn't see the game, but if they are collapsing down on curry and he can't get into his groove on the post, then outside shooters MUST make their jumpers, if we are to have any chance. Make the jump shots, defense stays honest, then get the ball back down to curry. but it is phoenix, they're a great team. nash, bell, stoudemire, matrix, that guy from the hawks whose name ecapes me, they have endless amounts of offense. knicks need to continue to improve on both ends of the court.

Knicks beat another top team, this time in triple overtime

As my lovely girlfriend robin said, it was a beautiful game.
Jeffries took Lee's starting job tonight but it didn't matter, lee still got his double double, his 6th straight.
WE BEAT THE PISTONS. the best team in the east. we just lost to the sixers, the worst team in the east. what is going on here? well, out of the last 5 games, it seems like most of them have gone into extra sessions, or brawls, the team has had recent suspensions, and injuries.
but we fight hard, we play together.
steph was great 41 points. clutch free throws, clutch drives to the basket, he made his lay ups tonight, played like the mvp of the game, was better than hamilton but fouled out in the first OT.
curry 30+ points AGAIN.
Jamal finally found his shot in the third OT, 26 points.
Frye had over 20, including some clutch shots in the overtime.

So, we just have to learn to win against the crappier teams. We need Q back, but we don't need francis nor robinson to win. in fact, its beginning to be clear to me that we win more without francis and nate playing for us. its nothing against them, we just have better chemistry when they don't play.

Q better start to like marbury or he should sit too.

Knicks win third strait at home, break Chicago's 5-game winning streak 103-92

Well it feels great to see my Knicks play so well together. We have to keep this lineup when everyone comes back from suspension and injury.
Tonight Steph had his career averages of 19 and 8, Frye and Lee BOTH had double doubles, and Crawford with the big 30 point outing against nemesis Ben Gordon. Curry showed up Ben Wallace with 20 and 6.
What does this mean for the New York Knicks? It means that both Nate and Francis are not needed on this Knicks team. It means that since we've got a great young fundamental player like Mardy Collins, that he can fill in for Steph or Jamal when they need to rest. It means that Quentin and Jeffries need to earn their minutes because although they both play great defense, three victories in a row speaks louder than statistics, the players who are playing now deserve to continue to get the minutes. This is the only three-game win streak this season for the Knicks, why try to mess with a good thing when everyone comes back?
Steph will be 30 in Febuary (as will Francis) BUT he is playing great ball with the extra minutes. Balkman is so versatile he's been able to guard some of the NBA's quickest guards and most powerful forwards.
bottom line is when the chemistry is a big problem -as it has been over the past two years- once you find something that works you stick with it.
Great chemistry tonight with 9 players available to play.
David Lee is becoming a leader for this team. With all these double-doubles, Lee seems prime to be a future all-star.
Eddy Curry really does deserve to be an all-star candidate THIS YEAR.
I'm happy for Steph's recent success.
Jeffries is the only guy I think deserves any minutes when he comes back, everyone else's minutes should be reduced (francis, nate, quentin), and they can earn their minutes back should the knicks start loosing again. Quentin is a great team player, a great shooter and defender but he doesn't like Marbury and doesn't play well with Steph, plus he has chronic back problems that force him to occasionally miss games. If it isn't broken Isiah, please don't fix it.
Nets lost tonight, which is a good thing for the Knicks and their playoff aspirations! Kristic got injured, which is bad for them, but good for us.
Fire Isola!

Live Music Archive

I stumbled upon this incredible site from a link on the bardo pond website, hummingbird mountain.
There seems to be many, many live shows of interest available for FREE download. They even have shows in various formats, ogg vorbis (my format of choice) or vbr mp3, flac, its crazy.
This is what the Internet founding fathers (who must be all of 40 years old by now) had in mind. Okay, perhaps not but I'm sure they wouldn't object.
Share the love!
The larger Internet archive has audio books and several other forms of media from all over the place.

New shows for the new year

If I see frank "kkk" isola at any of these shows I'm going to beat his ass.

Man Man Jan 5th Bowery $14
The Dears Jan 19th Webster Hall $20
Camera Obscura Jan 24th Warsaw $15.50
Deerhoof Jan 26th Irving Plaza $16
Trans Am Feb 24th (two shows) Knitting Factory $13
Acid Mother's Temple April 24th Knitting $13

George Karl calls Isiah a Jackass? An open letter to George Karl

Well you bald prick George Karl, at least Isiah has two championship rings (three including college at Indiana University) that he earned, what have you earned for yourself beside your subscription to hairclub for men and an annual pass to the Denver Nuggets all-you-can-eat 24-hour buffet? that's right, nothing, you fucking Larry Brown asshole-licking tub of shit.

You couldn't win with Shawn Kemp,Gary Payton, Nate Mcmillan and Ricky Pierce, all in their prime, you can't coach worth a lick and soon you'll be fired from your position with the Nuggets just like all the other positions you've unsuccessfully occupied in your career.

Here is a prediciton for your lousy team, should you make it as an 8th seed in the Western conference: your sorry ass team gets knocked out of the first round of the playoffs just after Marcus Camby goes down with another season ending injury. Carmelo, due to HIS OWN ACTIONS, will not be chosen for MVP, and you'll be searching the classifieds once again trying to convince someone that you once knew Dean Smith.

You swear on the lives of your children that you didn't leave your 4 starters in during a 20 point blowout to run up the score? Do you not think your children will someday be smart enough to deduce how much of an asshole you are by reading your quotes?

Let's see. Both the Knicks and the Nuggets were both fined $500k each. Know what this tells me Mr. Karl? Perhaps David Stern does think that you ran up the score by leaving your starters in. If Isiah ordered the hard foul, it doesn't mean he started the riot. Nate and J.R. Smith started the riot.


***Addendum 12/19/06***
The above comments were made prior to the Allen Iverson trade. I still don't think any George Karl lead team can amount to shit, but they probably can make it to the second round now due to sheer talent. Karl, go polish that bald yet empty head of yours you tub o lard!

Marbury leads Knicks to overtime victory over Jazz

I knew that Steph and Jamal would have a big night tonight against the Jazz because, lets face it, they are the only two active guards for tonight's game.

I was at the garden tonight wearing all my knicks colors and looking for those punks Frank Isola and Mike "the Larry Brown puppet" Lupica but those cowards were nowhere in site. They were probably so dissapointed the Knicks won tonight because it doesn't further their agenda of controling the team through their newspapers to ultimately have Isiah Thomas fired.

What I did see was an 8-man team go into a war with one of the top teams in the NBA and come out on top.

David Lee, you are a true Knicks warrior and you have the fighting spirit of Knicks great Charles Oakley. It is a shame any night where you don't get 40 minutes to display all of your skill and hustle (please learn how to shoot free throws and throw decent passes, btw).

In 45 minutes, Lee was 8-12 from the floor, had 17 points and 20 rebounds in addion to two steals and three assists. Congrats, hopefully Isiah will realize you need MORE minutes reguardless of how deep this team already is, you can't please everybody.

Congrats to Channing Frye for putting up a double double and coming up with the defensive stop of the game, blocking Carlos Boozer on the low post! 10points, 10rebounds, and 2 blocks.

Also congrats to Jamal Crawford for shooting his way out of the slump and coming up big in the final quarter and overtime with 18 points.

But mostly congrats to Stephon Marbury, who put the Knicks on his back tonight and let it ride with a big game, 29 points, 8 assists, and the game winning, buzzer-beating, drive-the-length-of-the-floor lay-up. Though they had to review the tape and the garden sat and anxiously awaited the decision, Marbury ran strait to the locker-room after the winning basket.

I also want to mention Renaldo Balkmen's tremendous defensive hustle throughout the game, getting blocks, getting deflections, what a great energy pickup for the Knicks! 15 rebounds for balkman tonight, also 7 points and two blocks.

Eddy Curry was a no show tonight, but he did a good job on Boozer when he covered him.

Kelvin Kato had 4 blocks! I like the players that played tonight. We just need Q and Jared Jeffries back. I like Mardy Collins too, he's a true Knick warrior and when he gets more playing time after we trade Nate and Francis people will see that he is a fundamentally sound player, particularly on the defensive end, where the Knicks need help on the perimeter.

Go to hell to all the Jazz fans (also known as the NY Beat writers) in attendance tonight at the Garden.

Fire Mike Breen from MSG Network!

Hey you uncle tom traitor Mike Breen, get the hell off my Knicks games, you anti-Knick, you watered-down ABC colorless commentator. Get somebody with some passion to call the games, I've been to insurance seminars with more emphatic speakers.
I'm sick of hearing you side against the home team during games that you call, saying bruce bowen doesn't take cheap shots at players and when a Knicks player does it on orders from the coach, you condemn him and are so disgusted.
Now you're siding with George Karl and Carmelo Anthony after the brawl. Who are you? Go call games for the Denver Nuggets, you swine.
Why don't you just resign your position if you hate the Knicks so much? NO-ONE like you, you politically correct asswipe, get the hell out off of MSG!
Let Gus Johnson and Clyde Fraiser call all the games, and when one of those two needs a nite off, let Kenny Smith call some games, but treacherous Mike Breen has got to go, because I can't stand his point of view, always siding against the Knicks when they're fucking paying him to call the games.
By the way Breen, you're fucking boring on top of all your anti-knicks sentiment.

Knicks versus Nuggets: Carmelo Anthony shows his true colors

Carmelo Anthony, with all his millions of dollars, couldn't buy class tonight at Madison Square Garden.

Carmelo Anthony, you fight like a bitch. Let me clarify that, you coward, Carmelo Anthony. You don't call yourself a man, Carmelo Anthony, and then punch somebody in the face, who isn't looking, doesn't have their hands up ready to fight, and the run away as fast as you can. Let me clarify that Carmelo, you, are a pussy. But how can I expect you to act civilized, you are an animal, Carmelo Anthony, and if you ever set foot in NYC if I'm around, I'll happily punch you in the back of the head when you're not looking, your over-paid son of a bitch. You have lost any credibility you've ever had as being a professional or a New Yorker and I now consider you as honorable a player as Latrell Sprewell after his "feed my family" comment.

The foul by Mardy Collins was a hard one, and the garden crowd over reacted with an "ooohhh." They're thirsty for blood, they're thirsty for anything, the knicks never win so they want to see a fist fight. But if you are a professional basketball player, J.R. Smith, you take the hit and take your free-throws and move on. You could do that or you could show your true colors as a common thug who happens to get 90 million dollars from Nike, as Carmelo Anthony did tonight. It seems early criticisms of anthony after he entered the NBA unfortunately were right. And ESPN, probably at the behest of commish David Stern, is selling this sucker punch as a half-punch, half-slap! I'm not buying it! That was clearly a closed fisted punch, and should be viewed as such when its time to dish out punishment. Anthony's publicists have tried to change his ghetto image with $1.5 million donations to kids and what have you, but in the heat of the battle Carmelo, we've got evidence of your character deficiency.

Class is not what happened tonight. Tonight was for the animals, it was for the cowards. And I say I applaud Mardy for fouling J.R. hard because he shouldn't be doing reverse dunks while up 30 at the end of the game. He should be on the bench, so should Carmelo, and this is an indictment on the coach of Denver, that looser George Carl. You disrespect us in our home, George Karl, we foul you hard. However your players react after that is your fault, because you shouldn't be playing them anyway when your team is up by that much with so little time left in the game.

That bald cocksucker George Carl is Larry Brown's best friend. He probably left the starters in the game to humiliate the Knicks as revenge for NY's humiliation of Larry Brown this summer. Too bad he has lost his star Carmelo to suspension just to appease his mentor.

Kudos to Mardy Collins and Jared Jeffries, you are true Knick warriors and I will cheer for you next time at the garden.

No love for Nate, because although he was fighting for the knicks, this is not the first time, not even this season, that he has escalated a situation on the court. He is proving to be an instigator, because he always talks and doesn't back down like a pit bull about to tear you a new asshole. Nate, you are out of control.

PETA are a bunch of assholes

I have been a strict vegetarian for about nine full years, but never during this time did I identify or sympathize with the group PETA.

I have witnessed PETA attacks on New Yorkers who wear fur, and although fur isn't something I'd ever wear, I always thought this extreme kind of violence to be the wrong way to get a point of view across. They seem to me extremists. They are not nice, animal-loving people, but human-hating people. The people that eat meat need awareness and information, not preaching, and in this country you have the right to eat meat if you so choose. Throughout the nine years of vegetarianism, during meals, I've been made fun of and persecuted by people that eat meat but I still don't think this kind of movement is the right approach to a solution.

I have never advocated my own dietary habits, because to me it is a matter of choice, and just because I chose a certain path doesn't mean that I think everyone else should choose that same direction in life.

I know if everyone was vegetarian it would be better for the world in terms of animal cruelty, energy, water supply, health, but should that Utopian society occur where everyone abandons cars and rides fixed gears everywhere -including to the local vegan-only restaurants, it should come by the free will of the people, not by absolutist doctrine enforced by some holier than thou hipsters trying to change the way people live. I predict that in the future this kind of evolved society will come eventually. Its just too bad that PETA is impeding progress by giving vegetarians negative publicity. They think they're raging against the machine but in reality they're polarizing prospective vegetarians.

Scroll down to the bottom of this link to see what PETA recently had to say to the players of the NBA.

go Veggie

Knicks beat Johnsonless Hawks

No Joe Johnson that is. A win is a win, right?

Well I have to make this remark reguarding tonights mintues allocation:

David Lee's minutes better not, at all, decline because Jeffries is back.

Magic Johnson was at the game tonight and during an interview he referred to Lee as a Knicks hero. That's high praise from one of the best players EVER. Also, the other night Rick Kamla was concerned Jeffries would steal Lee's minutes as well.

Tonight Lee got 21 minutes, but its tough to say his minutes reduced because the game was a blow out.

David Lee is double-double guy, and he can do some things that Jeffries can not. They should both play, along with Quentin, Curry and Stephon. Isiah, mess with everyone else's minutes (Crawford, Frye, Francis, Nate, Balkman) but please, give your main players the minutes they deserve: Lee, Stephon, Quentin, Jeffries, Curry.


Lee's numbers in recent games are loaded with double-doubles and are as impressive as Curry's as of late.

New York looses to Boston 97-90 after Knicks continued to miss free throw opportunities

I was at Madison Square Garden tonight for what should have been the fourth home victory of the season, had it not been for an overall poor shooting effort from the New York Knicks.

Jared Jeffries was back and came off the bench to take all of Renaldo Balkman's minutes, but it wasn't enough to get past the lowly Celtics, who seem to have the Knicks' number this season at Madison Square Garden with a 2-0 record.

Contrary to popular belief, this one was not Marbury's fault. Hey Isiah, why did you call that time out at the end? You Isiah, messed up the Knicks' momentum down the stretch.

Eddy Curry is now a force in the Eastern Conference, and what is the league doing in response? Hack-A-Baby-Shaq. And its working. Thing is Eddy Curry, for his career, isn't that bad of a free throw shooter.

Perhaps the Knicks never practice free throws, because tonight the entire team missed free throw opportunities. In fact, only one player for the Knicks shot better than 67% from the free throw line, Nate Robinson (2-2). The Knicks were 17-32 from the line.

And yet Nate was no hero tonight either with his silly fight with Telfair. No one had it going besides Curry, the booing idiots of MSG can blame Stephon Marbury all they want, but the entire team sucked in terms of shooting percentage at 38.9% from the floor. Curry was 50% from the floor but, like I said, every time he touched it in the fourth, Doc Rivers' players seemed ready to foul him and send him to the line.

Curry finished with 30 points, 12 rebounds and 2 blocks. David Lee had another double-double with 14 points and 13 rebounds while Stephon added 15 points and three assists.

Inland Empire -FINALLY!

I saw the film at IFC Center on Wednesday! I was quite excited as I had been waiting for this new Lynch film for years. Actor Justin Theroux was there and did a short Q&A session with the audience during our 6:10pm show. The question I wanted to ask but was too afraid to was "is there anything you can tell us that might help interpret the movie?"
I mostly love David Lynch's work. Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, and Blue Velvet. This one is different in that it doesn't have that trademark Lynch look to it (digital video versus film), but it still feels very much like lynch.
Impressions- I remember many darkened doorways, corridors, lots of shadows, at times I was reminded of 8mm, it seemed at times like I was watching Blair Witch Project. There were several lines which were repeated throughout the movie, that had a lasting effect.
Laura Dern, what a remarkable performance. Schitzo, to say the least. She played at least three roles during this movie.
The rabbit head family, I needed my girlfriends input as to their significance.
In fact, I learned much about the film afterwards, when three of us went for a beer to help digest everything.
Though I had trouble following the narrative I think we pieced it all together and I would like to perhaps give it a second shot and see if it all comes together.
there is a lot of tension throughout the movie, there are many instances where you can not tell if what you're seeing is real to the story or part of the movie or a dream or nightmare, and its just kind of eerie/scary at times although the film has some light hearted moments that come unexpectedly.
I would reccomend Inland Empire to Lynch fans only.
Although he lost me a bit on this one I would watch any and every Lynch film I come across.
things theroux said after the movie:
the actors never really know how things are going to look when the movie is finally assembled. they just show up, lynch goes over a few things, they shoot it lightheartedly.
The experience was more up close and personal because of the DV format Lynch was actually holding/walking the camera for some scenes as opposed to the film process which was more disconnected.
apparently lynch is oblivious to pop culture to the point that theroux has to explain to lynch who people like Jim Carry are.
some asshole in the audience asked theroux to compare his experience with Inland Empire with Miami Vice, to which Theroux replied "i hated miami vice"
Apparently there was enough footage for 3 films, and Theroux said many seens they shot didn't make the movie. The way it transitions into other scenes it could have gone on infinitely, but eventually it had to be taken down into a finite movie form.