10/27/2006

Raja Bell

Dan Bickley wrote a great article on Raja Bell of the Phoenix Suns.

During the playoffs, he became my favorite Sun. I think he should be Captain.

Players like him don’t come by often. Suns fans crave his type, because he’s husltling, diving, defending, and fighting:
PASSION, heart! I love it!

What’s even more exciting is that I think that Robert Sarver has it, which gives the Suns a huge upside; he’ll attract others that have it, because he can recognize it.

This might just be our year!

By the way, he's now "journaling" for ESPN. Great stuff. Heres a good Suns Blog.

10/23/2006

Goodyear Air Show


I took my family to the Arizona Goodyear Balloon and Air Spectacular on Sunday, October 22nd to see the Blue Angels.

Memo to the City of Goodyear: If you don’t have the appropriate facility, don’t host an event.

Once we got there, we learned that the parking situation (which was a dust bowl) required shuttling people into the event, because the lot was about 2 miles away.

After we waited 45 minutes to get on the shuttle, and after being driven to the event, the first thought after getting off the shuttle was, “you gotta be kidding me, An air show on the dust!?”

The “powers that be” placed the crowd and the exhibits (10's of thousands) on the dirt, which had the consistency of powdered-sugar. The dust was horrible, especially when a few dust-devils ripped through the crowd. Had I known, I wouldn't have gone. I feel like the venue was a bit of a rip-off, because the conditions were prohibitive: There was dust in everything, in the food, on the exhibits, and people weren’t happy. There were rumors of fights in the crowd on Saturday, October 20th in particular. The show itself was pretty good, especially the Blue Angels! WOW! We did left early to beat the crowds – my kids were done, and I wanted to minimize their exposure to long lines to for the shuttle.

Since I have young children, I bought upgraded tickets to the Cooperstown Pavilion ($35.00 each), which promised shaded seating, and tables and chairs. The tickets didn’t say, “You have a chance at getting some shade,” but it turns out, that’s all I got, was a chance, and no shade! Yes, I could have bought a few souvenir umbrellas… The tickets were non-refundable.

They charged full bore for the event and the food: $3.00 for 16 oz water, $7.00 for 2 chicken fingers and fries... I can only hope they take the profits and build a paved/concrete tarmac for future events.

Personally, I thought of the Soldiers that are in Iraq and other dust-bowls who endure these conditions with full gear while being shot at, and 40 degrees hotter day in and day out! However, the issue at stake is that the people that administered (and approved) this event were only thinking about profits, and not public accommodations. There’s also a health and safety issue in those conditions.

I’ll never go back to Goodyear Airport, and I’ll bet not many will either. It was funny. Before the Blue Angels performed, the PA announcer encouraged people to “stick around after the show to avoid long lines, then be sure to patronize local merchants in Goodyear. That sounded like a nice invitation, but all I heard was, “Stick around for 2 more hours of DUST BOWL hospitality!”

10/19/2006

Old Media

This post from Powerline is a must read. It shows President Bush's point about Vietnam being like the War on Terror: The enemy uses the mainstream American press to advance their cause. Could the evidence be any more clear?

Memo to the MSM TV networks:

ABC: A Bunch of Crap
CBS: Exactly! See-BS
NBC: NoBody Cares.

Go away. Go excercise your 1st ammendment rights and wrongs in other countries. See what happens.

10/04/2006

Same old Cardinals

I’ve wanted to cheer for the Arizona Cardinals for 18 years. I bought tickets in the Buddy Ryan years. We’re reliving those years all over again! Despite all the proclaimed good-intentions by the team to build a winner, and with history on my side, I’ve concluded this: I’m finally divorcing myself from them as a fan.

The Cardinals organization raped Arizona, and will continue to rape this community. Yeah we get the Super Bowl and fringe benefits of an economy of an NFL team, but they did us dirty. I’ve got more respect for an NFL fan that goes to Cardinals stadium to cheer for another team, than to go and cheer for the Cardinals. That’s why Cardinals-fans are such good “boo-birds.” There’s deep-down resentment. Our seasons (with rare exceptions) last from the first week in September to the first week in October.

When it comes time to pony-up for season tickets next year, nobody will have time or money for this team. Meanwhile, the management will be laughing all the way to the bank on their TV-welfare from the NFL and their 2/3rds-empty stadium (at least only 1/3 will be Cardinals fans). Hopefully we all can do what needs to be done: IGNORE THEM. Why? Because it’s the same story: Same old Cardinals.

Count me out.

Now, I have no team. I want to adopt another team, but I won’t spare the time and expense to go to their games. I used to live in Detroit. Root for the Lions? You’ve got to be kidding. Maybe I’ll root for the Panthers. After all, they would have been our expansion team.