Yet Another Pessimistic Comment About the Jets

They won the toss today, and that's probably the only thing they'll win.

Side note: I have a pretty bad feeling about this game. Herm Edwards has a traditionally great November record, but the Chargers aren't a bad team and the Jets are reeling. You know the Chargers have to be out for revenge on last year's playoff loss. Hopefully if K Mike Nugent gets put in a big spot this game, he will be able to convert, it would be ironic if he didn't since the man he replaced, Doug Bryant, was able to convert vs San Diego.

Strange stat of this week: Ladanian Tomlinson, RB on SD, has more TD passes (3) than Vinny Testaverde this year (0).

Basketball Has Started...

...and I already don't care. Wake me when we get to the playoffs.

The one subplot I will be following: how long will it be before Isaiah Thomas makes his next Knicks trade? He has been with the team under two years and already, no player remains from the team he inherited. Examples: Tim Thomas and Nazr Mohammad, acquired February 16, 2004 by Isaiah. Mohammad exited on February 24, 2005, nearly a year later. Thomas soon followed, with the trade on October 4, 2005. When will the Knicks revolving door spin again and who will be moving through it? There must be an over/under for this event (two weeks?)!

My advice to Thomas (who is an avid reader of the KFB, I'm sure): Trade Stephon Marbury. I know he's one of the best point guards in the NBA, but look what happened to Minnesota, New Jersey and Phoenix after he left -- instant success!

T3: Rise of the Machines

I just watched Terminator 3 (in from Netflix). The verdict: not as awful as I had expected it to be but not a great film. They pretty much were able to take a formula that worked in T2 and diluted it down to a bunch of good action scenes. There are some decent chases. The story is pretty awful but don't pay attention to it and you'll enjoy. Also, the new Terminator is pretty lame. I preferred the T1000 from Terminator 2 as a more menacing villain.

Advice to the President

Oh look! CNN.com has a section where readers can give advice to the President.

I know what you're thinking: "Blogman, what advice would you give to the President?"

My advice: Quit surfing the Internet for advice and get back to work!

Nobu 57

Nobu opened their third location in New York City over the summer, so I figured to give it a try. I went last night and had to make the reservation about a month in advance! I've been to Nobu Next Door once before but never to the main Nobu. Here are some photos of the dinner. These photos came from my cell phone camera - the snazzy but big LG VX9800, which I also plan on reviewing in this space soon. The photos are a little blurry but hopefully give a sense of what we had.

Overall the service was friendly and great, the atmosphere was nice but pretty plain and not as amazing as I had read in some reviews and it was a little pricey. The food was very fresh and tasted great. I sat in the back area which looked like it could be shut off for a private party.

I have to admit, I thought it was a little awkward to take photos of my dinner.


Yellowtail sashimi
Yellowtail sashimi with jalepeno - a Nobu standard.



Lobster ceviche - quite good - lobster marinated in a lime-type sauce and served on lettuce. Eaten with hands.



King Crab Tempura "Amazu" Sweet Ponzu - my favorite dish of the night. We started eating it before I took the photo.



Squid "Pasta" with light garlic sauce - not actually pasta, but squid supposed to be shaped like pasta.


Artic char with some sort of peppery (hot peppers) sauce. Artic char is a little like salmon. This dish was a special but I think we should have gone with the miso cod instead.



Dessert - the Meyer Lemon Semifreddo (with pine nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, almonds and caramelized cinnamon ice cream). The black things are caramelized sesame seeds.



Dessert Bento Box (warm chocolate fondant cake, goma tuille and green tea ice cream). I don't know what the "goma tuille" is.

One Trick Pony?

Ben Mezrich, writer of "Bringing Down the House" has another book out, "Busting Vegas." This new book sure sounds a lot like the old one!

Compare for yourself:


Bringing Down the House
The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T.

students who beat the system in Vegas -- and lived to tell how.

Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.'s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.'s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world's most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.

Filled with tense action, high stakes, and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a nail-biting read that chronicles a real-life Ocean's Eleven. It's one story that Vegas does not want you to read.

Busting Vegas
He played in casinos around the world with a plan to make himself richer than anyone could possibly imagine -- but it would nearly cost him his life.

Semyon Dukach was known as the Darling of Las Vegas. A legend at age twenty-one, this cocky hotshot was the biggest high roller to appear in Sin City in decades, a mathematical genius with a system the casinos had never seen before and couldn't stop -- a system that has never been revealed until now; that has nothing to do with card counting, wasn't illegal, and was more powerful than anything that had been tried before.

Las Vegas. Atlantic City. Aruba. Barcelona. London. And the jewel of the gambling crown -- Monte Carlo.

Dukach and his fellow MIT students hit them all and made millions. They came in hard, with stacks of cash; big, seemingly insane bets; women hanging on their arms; and fake identities. Although they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables only to be harassed, banned from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms.

The stakes were high, the dangers very real, but the players were up to the challenges, consequences be damned. There was Semyon Dukach himself, bored with school and broke; Victor Cassius, the slick, brilliant MIT grad student who galvanized the team; Owen Keller, with stunning ability but a dark past that would catch up to him; and Allie Simpson, bright, clever, and a feast for the eyes.

In the classroom, they were geeks. On the casino floor, they were unstoppable.

Busting Vega$ is Dukach's unbelievably true story; a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment at its best.

DePodesta

Maybe the Yankees should go after former Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta for a position in their front office. He was well-regarded in "Moneyball" to having new and innovative ways of evaluating players, and comes from a similar "new school" of thought as Red Sox GM Theo Epstein. There are probably plenty of "old school" guys in the Yankees organization already. It might be helpful to the Yanks, especially since Gene Michael may not be as influential anymore.

The Saints Will Stay in Louisiana?

For some reason this story sort of sounds like when a team says, "we have full confidence in the coach" and then fire the coach at the end of the season. Anyways, shouldn't the governor be worried about more pressing issues than whether or not the NFL team will stay in New Orleans?

At Least The Jets Can't Lose This Week

It's their bye week.

See the Jets Blog for the state of affairs in Jet fandom. The "fan confidence rating" on the left of 1.8/10 tells it all, I think.

White Sox Win!

Congratulations to the White Sox who finished off the World Series pretty quickly, in four fairly good games against the Astros. Does this mean we will see a ton of White Sox hats now that Chicago has beaten their streak? There was definitely an increase in Red Sox apparel after last year's drought ending victory.

Bud Pong

I don't even know where to start, but I will try by asking, does "beer pong" (or beiruit, if you prefer) need to be encouraged or explained by a major brewery?

They'll probably also have to scrap the "Bud Flip Cups" promotion.

Z's

In the competition to have the most Z's on a coaching staff, it looks like the Baltimore Orioles have gotten a head start.

World Series 2005

Pretty interesting World Series match-up, but sadly, I don't think a lot of people will be watching.

White Sox vs. Astros. The Astros (or any Texas team, for that matter) have never been to the World Series. The last time the White Sox made it to the World Series was 1959, and the last time they won was 1917. Is this karma? Red Sox in '04 after 1918, White Sox in '05 after 1917? If that's so, maybe the Cubs will have a chance soon. On the other hand, the Astros have never won, much less, made it to the World Series, but they are the Wild Card.

The White Sox ALCS victory ends the streak of the team that knocks out the Yankees wins the Series (which has gone on since '01).

I have been enjoying Bill Simmons less and less each day. Statements like this after Houston's game 5 loss are why:

"Once you have the momentum, the other team has to take it back. And they can't do that when they're reeling on the road and wondering what the hell just happened. That's why I believe the Astros are finished, just like that '86 Angels team was."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/051018

To use an old cliche, "In baseball, momentum goes only as far as the next game's pitcher."

By the way, has anyone noticed all the former Yankee starting pitchers in this series? Clemens, Pettitte, Hernandez and Contreras! Wow.

Ok, I'll try to have some better posts coming up soon. Good night.

I Posted This From My Phone

I am such a loser. Yet my phone is so cool.

Subway Chicken Parmesan

I've been thinking of ordering Subway's chicken parmesan sandwich, the latest way Subway has been trying to straddle the healthy / unhealthy line (I don't think Jared was able to lose any weight eating the chicken bacon ranch sub). But what cheese to get on this sandwich? The typical Subway offerings of American, Swiss or Provalone seem inadequate when what a true chicken parmesan sandwich requires is mozarella. I live a sad life because these are the kinds of things that frustrate me.

Bonus Baseball - Braves vs. Astros

One of the best things in baseball is how there is no time limit and no ties. Granted, in the NFL, there are hardly ties, but the baseball extra innings has got to be one of the tensest situations where just a slight mistake can cost a team.

Consider the Astros-Braves game right now, which has just entered the BOTTOM OF THE 18TH INNING. This thing is a classic already and we don't even know how it ends yet. By the way both teams have had grand slams!

This game reminds me of listening to the radio as a kid and hearing the 1986 Mets / Astros LCS game that went 16 innings. The Mets went on to win the game, and the series, but what was so striking about the game was how see-saw the scoring was even in extra innings!

As I write this, Chris Burke finishes off the game and the series in the bottom of the 18th with a walk-off home run. Wow.

Not a lot of Blog

Sorry there haven't been many posts recently, it's been pretty busy. Hopefully soon I'll be able to discuss more about China (I know, the trip was MONTHS ago), Mr. T Chia Head: The Second Go-Around, 15 Days (or more) with the LG VX9800, and a great comic book, Y: The Last Man.

In the mean time, consider whether or not John Lackey replacing Jarrod Washburn tonight in the Angels / Yankees game is a good thing. Since the Red Sox are out of the playoffs, if the streak of wild card teams winning the World Series is to continue, then maybe it's Houston's year? There is another, longer streak than that of the wild card teams winning the Series, and that is the streak of teams eliminating the Yankees winning the WS - '01 Arizona, '02 Anaheim, '03 Marlins, '04 Red Sox. Of course, twice this occurred in the WS. If these trends were to continue it would mean Houston beats the Yankees in the World Series.

Offensive

Amazing. I thought it wouldn't be wise to start Curtis Martin on my fantasy football team this week since he was playing against the Ravens, and since the Jets don't have a passing game, he wouldn't have a prayer against the tough Baltimore defense.

As it turns out, Martin wasn't my worst RB in fantasy football this week. That honor goes to Fred Taylor, who ran for an astounding 14 yards on 8 carries. Ugly!

Aren't They Taking this "Evil Empire" Thing a Bit Too Far?

(photo courtesy of AP)

Why did Chewbacca throw out Wednesday's first pitch at the Boston / Toronto game?

FOX Box

Here's a little rant about the awful coverage that FOX has provided today's Yankees / Red Sox game.

At present, the fourth inning has just ended.

So far, throughout the game, there have been live cut-in score updates of the White Sox / Indians game at the rate of about one update per half inning. That's understandable because there is a direct Yankee / Red Sox playoff implication from that game. Of course, but the score updates have been updating the fact that the score is 0-0, and also interrupting game play! In addition, the screen already contains a graphic with continuous updating of the White Sox / Indians game scores. So when they go to game break, we know it won't show any scoring because the live score update still says 0-0.

The biggest abuse of all was in the bottom of the fourth, the Yankee / Red Sox game was relegated to the little FOX Box and we were forced to focus on the Chicago / Cleveland game, which was 0-0. Who cares! Nobody watching the Yankee / Red Sox game cares about the specifics of the Chicago / Cleveland game other than the results. While the FOX box would have been annoying regardless, why did the main game we all tuned in for get relegated to see in the tiny box (and audio of the Chicago / Cleveland game)?

As I finish this post, A-Rod has just hit a non-clutch, top of the 5th, one out, solo home run to put the Yankees up 6-2. Fortunately, there was no FOX box to be seen.

Hopefully one of my favorite tabloid news sports media columnists will complain about this in the next day or two, because this was a horrible misuse of the FOX box.