chriswong.org

I’m eating pizza here at the office for our from Pizzamania.  It’s a local joint down the street that I’ve never been to, mainly because of the review/response from coworkers who’ve been there prior to me working here.  It’s good.  It’s better than Papa John’s.  But it ain’t fantastic.  It ain’t great.  Far from it.

I started thinking about Zachary’s Pizza, and how I miss that great pizza.  Yvonne and I, when we visit up north, would make a trip out to Zachary’s and bring a half-baked home.  The TSA would hassle us (in a friendly/joking way) about our pizza, but it was always worth it. (That’s also the time I saw Jerry Rice waiting in the security line immediately in front of me.  He played for the Seakhawks at the time.  I think they won that day.)

So I figure someone from Chicago must say this type of pizza online.  And certainly they must be better than Zachary’s, right?  So I found a place called Giordano’s.  They claim to be world famous, but I’ve never heard of them.  But then again I haven’t heard of a lot of world famous restaurants even here in LA.  But Giordano’s offers shipped half-baked stuffed deep dish pizza to anywhere in America!  Look at that picture.  It looks like some Zachary’s pizza.  I go through the checkout process, and the price of the pizza is reasonable.  Only 20 bucks for a single topping 12 inch pizza.  I figure the shipping should be only another 10 bucks or so, right? Oh no.

$52.20 for shipping.

I think I’ll pass on this Pizza.  The place got good reviews on Yelp, but some reviewers compared it to Zachary’s and the majority rated Zachary’s better.  Now I’m not going to pay $50 bucks to get an inferior pizza from Chicago.  But maybe a friend, or Cal student can hook a brother up?

(I looked up the score for that game.  Seahawks won. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/200411070sfo.htm)

Image reused under Creative Commons license http://www.flickr.com/photos/davefayram/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

http://www.bucksketball.com/2009/12/milwaukees-frustration/

That’s me too.

Stupid refs.  My only hope in the future is to get a superstar of my own.  Hopefully Brandon Jennings will be that superstar.

Here’s more on Kobe & the game yesterday, from http://espn.go.com/blog/TrueHoop/post/_/id/11587/kobe-bryant-in-a-nutshell

Conspiracy theorists
The Lakers won by one point in overtime. They got three points in the final minute on a play that appeared to most observers to feature both a Bryant charge and a travel, when he made himself into a bowling ball and Andrew Bogut into a bowling pin.

The NBA says there are no such things as superstar calls, but was anybody surprised by that? Can you find examples of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James or Kobe Bryant getting whistled for offensive fouls with the ball on the way to the hoop with the game on the line? This is not new. If it happens at all, it happens very little. It’s evident superstars operate with a certain impunity. You could argue it’s a reason to have a superstar — so you don’t have to worry much about offensive fouls with the game on the line.

Even on the next play, Bryant’s game-winner, he gathered the ball, and then hopped noticeably with both feet before pivoting.

It’s not alarming or even all that disappointing to me. The game is hard to referee in real time, and everyone wants to see plays like the one above.

And in a way, wasn’t last night’s game perfect? Kobe Bryant fans, stat geeks, conspiracy theorists … Just about everyone got what they wanted.

I kind of wished I never got that into basketball.  The NBA is rigged.  The NBA tells officials how to call the games.  Officials give the superstars all the calls.  It is what it is.

Did you watch the Lakers/Bucks game tonight?  Did you see the stupid and 1 call that Kobe got before he hit the game winner?  Did you see the travel on that play?  Or how about the charging?  Either one could have been called, but to call it blocking and the and 1?!  Are you kidding me?!  You’re going to give him continuation off of 3 steps?  If that’s Charlie Bell making that move, he ain’t getting that call.  I hate this game.

I hate Kobe.  I hate the Lakers.  I hate the NBA.  My team will never succeed because greater unseen forces are against them.

This brings up old bad memories.  I still hurt after reading this.  I knew they were shafted then.  And I still know they were shafted now.  Sad thing is no one cares the Bucks got the shaft, cause it’s Milwaukee, and no one wants to see the Bucks in the Finals, especially the NBA.  That was my last and only chance to see my team in the Finals, and it got stolen from us.

I watched all the games in that series that year, mainly cause that’s one of the last years they still showed the Conference Finals on network television.  We should have gone to the Finals that year.  And we could have gone if Big Dog makes that gimme 5 footer, or if Ray Allen gets that goaltend called on Dikembe.

I keep waiting for my team to get back into contention.  It’s a long road for Bucks fans.

From Bill Simmon’s latest article:

10. If crooked NBA playoff series were heavyweight boxers, then the 2002 Western finals (Lakers-Kings) was George Foreman and the 2001 Eastern finals (Bucks-Sixers) was Earnie Shavers. Translation: People remember only George, but Earnie was almost as memorable. To briefly recap, Philly’s wins in Games 1 and 4 swung on a controversial lane violation and two egregious no-calls. The Sixers finished with advantages of 186-120 in free throws, 12-3 in technicals and 5-0 in flagrant fouls. Glenn Robinson, one of Milwaukee’s top-two scorers, didn’t even attempt a free throw until Game 5. Bucks coach George Karl and star Ray Allen were fined a combined $85,000 after the series for claiming the NBA rigged it. In that game, Milwaukee’s best big man, Scott Williams, was charged with a flagrant foul but not thrown out, only to be suspended, improbably, for Game 7.

The defining game: When Philly stole a must-win Game 4 in Milwaukee despite an atrocious performance from Iverson (10-for-32 shooting), helped by a 2-to-1 free-throw advantage and a host of late calls. How one-sided was it? When an official called a harmless touch foul to send Sam Cassell to the line with two seconds left and the Bucks trailing by seven (maybe the all-time we-need-to-pad-the-free-throw-stats-so-they-don’t-seem-so-lopsided-afterward call), the subsequent sarcastic standing ovation nearly morphed into the first-ever sarcastic riot. And this was Milwaukee, the most easygoing city in the country! Nobody remembers this. The real loser was Allen, who exploded for 190 points in the series, including a record nine three pointers in do-or-die Game 6. Nobody remembers this, either. Even I didn’t remember it. Crap.

Q: With the benefit of a little hindsight, how do you think the top-10 of the 2009 NBA draft would look if it went down today?
– Michael McNamara, Jacksonville

SG: Love this question. Let’s say David Stern decides that everyone in the top-10 can do their picks over after seeing the first four weeks of games. Here’s how the revised top-10 probably goes:

1. Clippers: Blake Griffin
2. Grizzlies: Brandon Jennings
3. Zombies: James Harden
4. Kings: Tyreke Evans
5. T-Wolves: Ricky Rubio
6. T-Wolves: Thabeet
7. Warriors: Stephen Curry
8. Knicks: Jonny Flynn
9. Raptors: Ty Lawson
10. Bucks: Furious

This is exactly what we were talking about at work a few days ago.

From Bill Simmon’s mailbag:

Q: If Michael Jackson’s memorial had ended with him jumping out of the casket and performing "Thriller," would that have been the best moment in television history? I think so.
– Rick, New York

SG: Yes! One-hundred times over, yes! I will go one step further: Once I found out his body would be at the ceremony, part of me was sitting there for two hours thinking, "He’s gonna jump out of the casket. He’s gonna jump out of the casket." Can you name another celebrity in our lifetimes who would provoke this reaction? We are talking about a scenario in which A DEAD GUY WOULD HAVE JUMPED OUT OF A CASKET AND STARTED SINGING, and I wouldn’t have been totally surprised by this. Hell, I was a little disappointed when the ceremony ended. Crap. I guess he’s really dead.

(Ladies and gentlemen, the Michael Jackson Era! We will never see anything quite like it again. And maybe that’s for the best.)

Did you know that Michael Jordan makes steaks?  Yes, the Michael Jordan.  Did you also know he makes barbeque sauce as well?  Now only if we had gone to Illinois.  I could have bough Eric the classic All-Star Barbeque Sauce.

http://michaeljordansteaks.com