Entertain Me!

Yesterday I caught up on all my sports thoughts, so I have to get caught up on my entertainment thoughts from the past couple weeks.

First things first, American Idol has had a couple eliminations since I last talked about it. Last week Stephanie Edwards was voted off, and it didn't surprise me that much, strictly from a talent stand point she was probably in the top five, but she never really did it for me. Something about her personality rubbed me the wrong way, as iof she thought she was a lot better than she was, she also seemed a little to ready for the fame, and when you have that lack of likeability you'd better be blowing everyone away with your talent. As far as this weeks elimination of Chris Sligh, well he was kinda the opposite, he was really likeable but he wasn't that talented. His singing was good enough but I never really thought he had a chance because he was too much like Taylor Hicks. Similar contestants never seem to win back to back years, and I think most Idol fans realize that Taylor had no business winning and they couldn't repeat that mistake. I really enjoyed that Gwen Stefani was the celebrity guest this week, she would never make it to the second round in an Idol competition, but she's really hot, very personable and has a great pop sensibilitywhich is far more important for a popstar than straight forward singing talent has ever been. As for Sanjaya sticking around, I'm of the opinion that he's the best thing that ever happened to this year's edition of the show. I tune in to see four people, Lakisha and Melinda cause they sing so damn well, Haley because I've decided she has a great body and sanjaya, because he also has a great body. Wait, no, I meant Sanjaya because he's totally wacky, between his hair-dos and wacky performances it's alomost as if William hung were being brought back week after week. Plus he makes the other more mature contestants seem more legitimate. My real hope at this point is for Sanjaya and Haley to hang around longer than that fraud Blake Lewis, musically he's like a homeless man's JT (thank you, Bill Simmons.) I'm so utterly unimpressed by his performances, and it makes me cry when Simon reacts with anything other than scathing remarks for him. 311 isn;t looking for a new singer, so there's no need to completely bite their style, if goes on and wins this competetion, I swear I won;t watch any more Idol, at least not until next winter anyway.

Just after Idol ended there was another great episode of Lost. Since coming back from their hiatus Lost has had more than a couple episodes that were greatly entertaining, but had nothing to add to the big story. Wednesday's episode was the king of such episodes. It seemed to me like the writers had an old script they had submitted to the new Twilight Zone a few years back but it never made it to air. The episode was great as a one hour experience but it wasn't anything more. Simliar to the last Hurley episode, it was all filler, greatly entertaining filler, but still filler all the same. The worst part of this episode was that they killed off the Nikki character who was quickly emerging as the second hottest woman on the show. Sure Kate is still on the show, but lets say you're on this island, and you're a guy, who are you supposed to go after if you're not Jack or Sawyer? Maybe they can write someone else onto the show, but it's not looking good for the castaways.

All during my TV watching I saw a ton of ads for new movies coming out. since when did so many heavily hyped movies come out in March? Over the last two weeks they've realeased Shooter, Pride, TMNT, The Last Mimzy, Reign Over Me, The Lookout, Blades of Glory, and Meet The Robinsons. I feel like it's the middle of summer, they all had tons of ads, big stars and big hype. This is over two weeks, not to mention it comes on the heels of 300 and just before we get Grindhouse. I'd say that all of these movies are at least worthy of a DVD rental and I'd probably be willing to see TMNT, Reign Over Me and Shooter in the theater if there weren't so many better options right now. Robinsons looks pretty damn funny but it'll have to take a back seat to The Lookout and Blades of Glory which are bordering on must see for me. The Lookout sounds like my kinda movie to begin with but it's also getting great reviews. The best news, Isla Fisher is in it as well and she's damn sexy. As far as Blades fo Glory is concerned, I have yet to miss a Will Ferrell movie in the theaters, and I would never miss the opportunity to see Ferrell doing his Neil Diamond impersonation for an hour and a half.

The best news for me was that they previewed next years pilots on AOL today. It was like they wrote this article just for me. The top highlights on the list of pilots were Football Wives, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, and Cavemen. Football wives is based on the birtish series that was totally over the top, I've never seen Footballers' Wives but I've heard the stories. I expect that the plots wioll be toned way down, there will be a lot less homosexuality in the american version which has of course switched from soccer players to football players. My most bold prediction is that this show will be more successful than the CW series "The Game." That show also centered around football players wives and it was another flop in the storied career of the oh so sexy Brittany Daniel. Do you think Brittany ever walked on the set and longed for the great writing from the series Swan's Crossing? Now Swan's Crossing, that was a show.

The Sarah Conner chronicles is a new series that takes place in between the first two terminator movies. I don;t know if it's gonna be as great as it sounds just because it's tough to make a show like this live up to the movies given the low budget of television, but I'm glad to see them trying, if I had to describe this idea in one word that word would be "awesomeness." As far as the Caveman series goes, it's a full sit-com based on the characters in those Geico.com ads. I love the ads as much as anyone, but I find it hard to believe this show will be a hit. I'll be more than happy to watch all six episodes of the show, maybe I'll sit back and enjoy it while having the roast duck with the mango salsa. I was also excited that Carrie-Anne Moss will star in a new series, it sounds pretty cool, just a new way to approach a mystery, the show all the suspects and tell their version of what happened at the time of the crime. This show could be really cool if it's done right. The other cool things were that Parker Posey, Jordana Bewster and Lucy Liu will all be in new shows and there's apparently a spin-off of Grey's Anatomy, which I won;t watch but should be a big deal. So now I'm starting a countdown for next fall already.

Anyway, That's all for today, enjoy the tourney.

-Bender Out

The latest of my hiatuseses

It's been a while since I posted, due to a combination of laziness and a nice trip down DC for a wedding. Most of you already know this of course because at least five of the ten people who actually read my blog were at said wedding. The wedding was kick ass, it was in Georgetown, and needless to say I'm a much bigger fan of the area than I am of the local university's basketball team. I must pat myself on the back for looking phenomenal in my tux, and I was even told as much by several admirers, including one very fetching cougar who was all about my set, but I digress. Anyway as a result of the weekend's festivities I didn't watch nearly as much basketball as I would normally have and can only speak on a few limited aspects of the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. So here are a few things I couldn't keep my mouth shut about. First, a few people cried about a supposed travel by Jeff Green in Georgetown's exciting win over Vanderbilt, and my take is this: how come guards travel almost everytime they come into the lane and no one says boo, but everytime a big man takes two and a halfsteps they can;t believe there was no whistle? If you go by the rule book definition on travels there's probably a travel on every possession, and just because guards are smaller, quicker and smoother doesn't mean that they should get away with it more, although they do. The one game I actually got to watch this weekend was Ohio State's huge comeback against Tennessee. The Buckeye's had no business getting that far down in the first place, but they really kept their cool and allowed the Tennessee style to even itself out, then when the game was on the line Oden was able to make his presence felt on the defensive end. Once again proving why Oden needs to be the number one pick in next year's draft.

I was able to follow the Georgetown-UNC game on the radio, and with five minutes left UNC had seemingly taken control of the game and were up ten, but after that point the Tarheels fell apart completely, I wish I'd been able to see the game on TV but this game was so good that even translated on the radio. Not only have Hibbert and Jeff Green established themselves as sure lottery picks, but I'm starting to come around on Tyler Hansbrough and I'm starting to think that someday we'll be looking back at this game as a classic featuring six future lottery picks. The most interesting subplot for me was seeing JT3 outcoach Roy Williams. Williams supposedly had gotten the monkey off his back a couple years ago by winning the national title, but it seems to me like there was just too much talent on that team for Williams' poor game coaching to take over. Between his days at Kansas and now at UNC he has arguably coached the most talent of out of any college coach over the last twenty years and to see him with only one title has got to be considered a disappointment. Meanwhile John Thompson III is emerging as a superior coach to even his father. In some ways it reminds me of how Bill Belichick emerged from Parcells' shadow to become the superior head coach. You would think that equalling the legend would be impossible, let alone surpassing it, but JT3 already seems to be a superior game coach and if he can continue to get the big recruits he could have a more succesful career than his legendary father.

Anyway, that's all I've got about college basketball for now, and in the world of sports there really isn't much else going on as best exemplified by the fact that Michael Ray richardson's "anti-semitic" remarks have dominated sports radio today. What Richardson said was stupid, but I really didn't care to hear about the dumb comments of the head coach of the Albany Patroons. The one silver lining in all of this was an anecdote that made it to the air today involving something richardson had said as a player. When he was playing for the Nets one particularly difficult season he declared "This ship be sinking." Then when the reporter asked him how low it could sink he said, "The skies the limit." In case you were wondering, richardson, a former NBA All-Star is far from the most famous coach to ever lead the Patroons, in the mid-eighties their coach was Phil Jackson, so maybe someday Richardson will end up as a coaching legend, who knows?

One last sports note, Jonathan Papelbon has been moved back into the closers role this year. Good news for my fantasy baseball team, but bad news in the big picture. It's a waste to have someone of Papelbon's talent level in the role of closer. The contribution of a closer as compared to that of a good starter has become completely overrated in the last couple years. If I have to endure one more person making the point that Mariano Rivera has been the most important player for the Yankees over the last ten years, I may vomit. At this point he's one of only two guys who has been there for the full time period, along with Derek Jeter, who was not the player as a rookie, that he is now. But more importantly, if Rivera had been a number one or number two starter for those ten years he would've been a hell of a lot more valuable. People see the closer as such a critical role because it's a very obvious thing, any idiot can see that when a closer blows a save he cost them the game, but it's a lot more difficult to quantify the value of a high level starter. Hopefully the Red Sox can fnd a less talented guy to be a top closer next year and Papelbon can start to fulfill more of his potential, give him a shot at greatness, and if he can't quite hack it, they'll move him back to being a dominant closer.

Those are my sports thoughts for today, I'll be back soon to fill you in on the world of entertainment.

-Bender Out

First Weekend Reactions

It's been a week, and I keep putting off my ramblings, so I have a few of them saved up. The main thing going on has been the NCAA Tourney and instead of giving all my thoughts between rounds and going on record, I waited til the end of the weekend so I can seem like I know what i'm talking about. Everyone was disappointed by the lack of upsets in the first round, but it made for a much mroe exciting second round. And for the most part all of the favorites are still alive with the exception of Wisconsin. The Badgers were a team that relied on strong defense and great execution, they didn't have a high margin for error, so once their starting center went down they weren't quite the same team thay had been all year. The next big surprise was Texas being knocked out, many people were predicting them as a final four team, beating both UNC and Georgetown. I guess they were confusing a great player with a great team. Durant was the best player in college this year, and he should turn pro right away, even if he'll only be the second pick. He has a great jumper, and although a lot of people have gotten too high on him right now, he looks like he'll be an all-star in three years. I just don;t see him leading a team in the pros, was Glenn Robinson really any less dominant in college? And the big Dog did it against better competition. As great a year as durant had in college, the definite choice is still Greg Oden, and while he hasn't dominated this year, Shaq, Ewing, and Hakeem didn't dominate as freshmen either.

Of course the Tourney lost some luster for me on Saturday when the mighty BC Eagles lost to Georgetown. I didn't really expect BC to win, although when they had an eight point lead in the second half I started believing a little. But they just couldn't compete with The Hoyas on the inside. The local talk has been whether or not BC could have beaten G-town if they still had Sean Williams. It's impossible to say, but given how close the game ended up being, it couldn;t have hurt, but the real issue is that they wouldn't have had to play a team as good as Georgetown if Williams had still been there. Either way it doesn't matter, BC made the right choice by sending Williams and McClain packing. I still think that Williams has the ability to play in the NBA, but he needs to commit more to basketball, and maybe this situation will help him realize that he needs to give more if he wants to make it in the NBA. I was starting to feel down about BC's future, given that at the end of the season their team was basically three deep and two of those three are graduating. So I looked up BC's recruits for next year, and they have five guys signed, four of whom are in the ESPN150. And they have another seven-footer considering coming as well. He's leaning toward Georgetown, a constant nemesis going back to the time when they swiped up local phenom Patrick Ewing out from under Gary Williams, but you have to think that any seven footer would rather come to BC with their rich legacy of great centers, such as Troy Bowers, Mickey Curley, and Nate Doornekamp. So maybe they can keep up their current string of NCAA appearances. And who knows, maybe Tyler Roche or Shamari Spears will take their games to the next level, and John Oates and Tyrelle Blair will prove to be enough as a combo to compete on the top half of the ACC again.

The other big news in college basketball was the firing of Tommy Amaker by Michigan. It's about time, Amaker has been a flop since leaving Duke as an assistant. He was able to get big recruits at seton Hall, but never won there and then hopped to Michigan where he never qualified for the NCAA tourney. Maybe now we understand why Johnny Dawkins has never ventured out from under Coach K's wing, it'll be interesting to see what amaker does now, if he is a true coach he'll try to get a job with a lower division 1 team, but I'm guessing he'll resurface as an assistant with Coach K or one of his proteges. Maybe he could work at New Hampshire next year,they need a good coach there.

On a closing note, I was sad to see Brandon Rogers get voted off of American Idol this week, he had the talent to go to the final few singers, but he was never able to put it together, perhaps some people are just destined to be good back-up singers. I really wish the fans would let that poor Sanjaya be voted off, he doesn't seem comfortable in his own skin, and he shouldn't be subjected to the torture that is performing then being told he's awful, sadly I don;t think they'll be so merciful anytime soon.

That's all I'm giving for now, until next time,

-Bender Out

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

A couple of shocking moves this week. The first is the Knicks extension of Isiah Thomas' tenure as team President. The reasoning, reportedly, is that the organization is using the team's current position as the eighth place team in the eastern conference as proof that Isiah is a success as GM and as a coach. I would say it was shocking, but the fact that Isiah even had a job going into this season has rendered any future developments as commonplace. I can only view this from the perspective of a Celtics fan and perennial Isiah hater, and from that perspective, this move makes me giddy. Being guaranteed of the Knicks future failures just makes me want to celebrate. Isiah is usually a good judge of talent when it comes to the draft, and he ever realized that was his strength, the team might be able to build on this season's "success." But based on Zeke's history, I feel like there's no chance of that. So here's to the Knicks organization, for making my day, and giving me just a little more hope for the Celtics in the future.

The second most bizarre news this week came from Louisiana, where "Big Baby" Glen Davis has declared for the draft. Unless he figures out the joy of exercise and conditioning before draft day, he will be lucky to go in the second round, and his agent will quickly be fielding calls from Europe. The only way this makes any sense is if Davis realizes that if he spends another year in college he will be further exposed as a fraud and he'll never get a sniff at the NBA, maybe at this point he still has enough of a big name that some GM will take a flyer on him in the hopes that he'll pull a Udonis Haslem and transform himself in to an NBA level athlete and for once live up to his billing.

A quick non-sports note, I saw 300 this weekend and it is every bit as cool as the trailer made it seem. A lot of critics panned it, but if you like cool action movies, this will be the most satisfying one since Kill Bill. It's very graphic and they even threw in some gratuitous sex and nudity, basically staying true to the elements that make graphic novels fun. Another good quality to this movie was that I haven;'t missed a day at the gym since I saw it. I don;t really know much of the cast, I recognized a couple from other movies, but they're all jacked, even the deformed guy was in much better shape than me, now I understand better why the gay pilot in Airplane asked the young boy if he ever watched Gladiator movies. Anyway thats it for today.

-Bender Out

The Madness Has Begun

In some people's minds the official start of March Madness is this week with the announcement of the field of 65. But really the madness has been going on since at least Thursday with the start of the Big East tourney, if not even earlier. A few quick thoughts before I get into the specifics of the brackets. I think Tyler Hansbrough averaged at least two elbows/slaps to opponents faces during the ACC tournament. He pulled a Kobe on Jared Dudley during the semi-final and pretty much intentionally punched Dudley in the face under the guise of getting tangled up, then pulled a similar, although more incidental, move on Brandon Costner in the final. To me this is just more evidence that when Gerald Henderson broke his nose, that was no accident. The whole ACC Tournament showed two things, first, UNC was by far the best team in the league, and second, the league was very deep. I feel like if FSU were in any other league, they be dancing right now, unfortunately you can't take two thirds of any league, no matter how good they are at this point.

The highlight of this weekend to me was the crazy finishes in the mid and low majors, the league tournaments in these conferences really are a microcosm of the National Championship Tournament. These teams are fighting for their lives and just making the tourney is the equivalent of winning the big dance. The best finish came in the MAC where Miami of Ohio hit a miracle shot to win a berth. The only low major game that I watched completely was Albany's upset of Vermont up in Burlington. The level of play is obviously noticeably worse, but the action can be really intense and the effort is the same if not better form any game you watch all season.

OK, onto my review of the seedings. The most important part of the selection show is of course the snubs, because their season just ended when they thought they still had a shot. I'm especially sensitive to their plight, I remember in 2003 when BC seemingly had done enough to get into the tournament, they had ten wins in the Big East during the regular season and had made it to the semi-finals of the Big East tourney, as if they needed more to fill out their resume, they beat NC State, another bubble team, handily on the road and they had beaten UConn by 20 in Storrs. But the selection came and went without BC's name being called, as you can tell I still have bad memories of it to this day. The biggest shocker today, Syracuse was left out. The Orange had seemingly locked up a spot with a huge win over Georgetown a couple weeks back, but now the Orange's season is really over, believe me, they don;t care that much about the NIT. Not as surprising was FSU being left out. But they seemed to deserve it more than a lot of the other bubble teams . They upset Florida, the team who was named the top seed overall by the selection committee, and they also won at Duke, which was still a decent feet this year. The Seminoles didn;t lose to anyone outside of the RPI top 50, but unfortunately the ACC was so deep this year that they were the eighth best team in a twelve team league, and the committee didn;t want to take that many teams from one league.

As for the teams that got in, my hometown Eagles got the seed they probably deserved, and they should be able to beat Texas Tech in the first round, but it's no sure thing. Their reward if they can beat Texas Tech? Getting beat up by Georgetown. I guess the NCAA wants them to get eliminated by one of their former Big East rivals every year, as they were by Villanova last year. Best case scenario would have been to get a six seed, and hope to play one of the weaker three seeds in the second round, but all in all they'd have to view a second round exit as a nice accomplishment. speaking of Georgetown, I've decided that the Big East was a one team league similar to the way the ACC was dominated by one team. Georgetown seemingly got the best draw out of anyone in terms of having an easy ride to the Elite 8. If they're playing against UNC for a chance at the final four, I'll have a lot of trouble choosing who to root for. They're probably my two least favorite teams right now, the one highlight might come when Tyler Hansbrough tries to pull his junk and either Pat Ewing Jr. or Roy Hibbert knocks him out. I know it's a long shot, but really it's the only scenario I'd enjoy. By the way, the dumbest comment of the day came on ESPN, Digger Phelps said that Georgetown would sneak up on everyone. Who the hell are they gonna sneak up on you moron, they're one of the favorites to win the whole thing, but you think they're gonna sneak up on everyone. Why don;t you just concentrate on finding a puce Highliter to match your new tie, and let the real analysts say something.

A few other notes, how did Florida get ranked as the number 1 overall team? Are we just ignoring their three game losing streak because they dominated their weak opponents in the SEC tournament. They let recent performance greatly dictate every other seed in the tourney, but not this one for some reason. Ohio State deserved that honor, especially because they dominated a worthy team, Wisconsin, in their conference tourney. I was gonna make my predictions for the Final four, but I'm not very good at that sort of thing, and I'd probably just end up naming the four number 1 seeds. I will predict that UNC will meet Texas in the sweet 16, leading to a ton of people predicting Texas to win, but UNC will handle them easily. I'll also predict a couple upsets for Georgia Tech against UNLV and Wisconsin, and maybe even a trip to the elite 8. I'm also going to begrudgingly predict a run for Duke, I'm not sold on either Pitt or UCLA in the tournament. Of course I made these predictions about UCLA last year. My last prediction is that I'll play hookie on Thursday and Friday afternoon.

Can;t wait til Thursday at noon, til then...

-Bender Out

Idol chatter

Shocking results from American Idol last night where one of the girls who could actually sing was sent home. Sabrina Sloan was probably the fourth best singe, and she even looked like a pop star to boot. I don;t know if it was because she sang that En Vogue song this week or if people just didn't like her for some unknown reason, perhaps she should've followed my advice and dressed sluttier, who knows what could've happened. The second biggest surprise was that Sundance Head was sent packing. I was never really that impressed by him, they'd been hyping him up since his initial audition, but he never really backed it up. He sang "Jeremy" on Tuesday, and when I heard him doing it I wanted to cry a little, part of my soul died that night and I'll never be the same. But seriously, that song had no business being on American Idol, I feel like a lot of the audience doesn't even know that song, and his rendition came off a lot like SevenMaryThree, which was a southern rock imitation of those grunge bands from the mid-90s. So truthfully I'm not that upset about Sundance going home, it's more of a situation where I wish they would have put poor Sanjaya out of his misery. Sanjaya has a decent voice but he's akward for a 17 year-old let alone too akward to be on this show, he should come back in about five years. The other two dismissals were a lot more satisfying to me, Antonella Barba was borderline to make it to the final 24, and then with her scandal and everything else it became abvious that she was getting voted through for all the wrong reasons, she'll be better off to just get out of the spotlight and go back to being a normal, attractive young woman who sings well at karaoke night. I actually was very happy to see Jared cotter get voted off. Of all the contestants he seemed to have the most out of touch sense of self. After he was voted off, he seemed legitimitely pissed and shocked, and he even said as much. He probably thought he was the favorite before he got voted off last night, but in reality his singing was medocre by competition standards. The show should pick up next week when they start their theme episodes and only one person will get voted off per week. Hopefully Sanjaya will get voted off, but if not him my predition is Jordin Sparks again. She seems to not really have her own niche and comes off as a less talented version of Melinda, but that's just one man's opinion. That's all I've got on Idol for this week, I'll be back soon to talk about March Madness, a lot of crazinees this week to see who will get into the tourney, til then.

-Bender Out

Feeling Sporty

Lots of big things happening in the sports world, and I know you'd all feel incomplete without my comments.

The Pats are going to Super bowl XLII. The biggest prize in this year's free agent class is coming to town, along with some other parts that have us Pats fans feeling downright giddy. Adalius Thomas, a guy built like a defensive tackle, who can run like a safety will be Bill Belichick's newest weapon next year. The possibilities are seemingly endless, the way the mastermind will frustrate Pats opponents next year in so many new ways, it should be very fun to watch. But the great news does not stop there, they also picked up some complimentary pieces to help the offense. Their latest acquisition, Wes Welker is a do everything mighty mite in the mold of Troy Brown. He's not a traditional number one receiver but he should be able to get at least 50 catches next year and provide help on special teams. They also signed Kyle Brady, as a cheaper alternative to Daniel Graham as a blocking tight end. Brady is clearly less explosive than Graham, he won;t be taking a screen pass to the house, and he probably won;t be pancaking Julius Peppers anytime soon, the way Graham did in super bowl XXXVIII, but he will serve their needs as a strong blocker to help spring their run game and provide extra protection against a strong pass rush. They were also able to pick up sammy Morris as a number two back to Laurence Maroney. Morris is clearly a downgrade from Corey Dillon, but he comes at a much lower price tag and he won;t be asked to do as much as Dillon because they expect Maroney to blossom into an elite runner next year. As a side note this makes Maroney a true sleeper for fantasy football next year where should perform as a top ten back. The best part of all this news is that the Pats still have two first round picks in next month's draft and they should still be able to sign useful pieces on the cheap as has been their hallmark in recent years. I don;t mean to put the cart before the horse, but I'm already considering buying a new hat and gloves for next year's parade.

This whole off-season has been very exciting, it's getting to the point where the football off-season is more exciting than the "hot stove." The only difference really is that just about everyone thinks they can be a baseball GM whereas with football they know better. But the amount of changeover in football is so much greater due to there be no guaranteed contracts and a hard salary cap, this year especially there is so much going on, I can't imagine that a fan of any team isn;t excited on some level right now. And all this excitement is before the draft, which is by far the most popular draft of any major sport, and before the many cuts that usually come June 1st, which leads to a second set of crazy movement. Just look at The Dolphins, sure they lost Nick Saban as their coach, and Wes Welker, an emerging young receiver, but today they signed Joey Porter, which in their minds has to override any negatives fo the off-season. At this time of year the possibilities are endless, even Raiders fans think their team could be good next year (although there's really no possible way,) and how can you blame them. Football just needs to come up with a cool nickname for this time of year i.e. "Hot Stove" so they can market it the way baseball does, hopefully ESPN will come up with something in the next few weeks.

Ok, that's enough about Football, it is of course March which is the time when College Basketball is king. right now we're in the early stages, where everyone is just dying to be one of the 65 teams who are still alive come sunday. The mighty BU Terriers have already fallen by the wayside, so that really opens up things for Kansas or Ohio State. There's nothing quite like the phenomenon where you can root hard for a team that you had never seen play before that game, but it happens every March. Last night I wanted very badly for Santa Clara to knock off Gonzaga, whom I now consider the Duke of the mid-majors, and by next thursday it will be far more prevalent.

Speaking of Duke, I just have to weigh in on the Gerald Henderson elbow incident. In the interest of full disclosure, I don;t like Duke, never have. I root against Coach K, I root against Tommy Amaker, and on down all the way to Elton Brand and Shelden Williams. So with all that out of the way, I have to say that the elbow looked very intentional, and I think the punishment fit the crime. You can't increase the suspension just because of the damage that the elbow did. I think that Gerald Henderson wanted to hit Hanborough hard, maybe he didn;t mean to hit him in the nose and break it, but he definitely meant to hit him hard for no real reason other than the fact that he had the opportunity. The fact that Hansborough seems to be genuinely disliked by his opponents because of his physical, sometimes chippy play also may have played a role, and in my mind is perhaps evidence against Henderson in this case. I actually enjoyed watching the reaction of both players afterward, Henderson had look to suggest, "yeah I did, and I'm not sorry." Wheareas "Psycho T" looked like he really wanted to go after Henderson, but there were too many people around. It's too bad they aren't seeded differently so they would be likely to play again in the ACC tournament, but I don;t think Duke has the horses to make it there this year.

One final note on the incident, I thought coach K came off like a real A-hole in the postgame when he insinuated that it was Roy Williams' fault for leaving Hansborough in after the game had been decided. Duke has always had this holier than thou attitude, Coach K's kids would never do something wrong even when the evidence says otherwise. How could anything ever be the fault of a Duke player, has there ever been an explanation for why Laettner wasn't suspended for stomping on the Kentucky player back in 92? I doubt Coach K admits that Laettner did that, he probably argues that Laettner just meant to step on the ground.

I'll be back with more College Basketball soon with so much going on.

-Bender Out

Brief Hiatus

I'm back to do a little recap of the last week. I've been in mourning since Eddie Murphy was snubbed at the Oscars last week. That whole best supporting actor category was full of great candidates, I would've been somewhat happy with any decision so long as Mark Walberg didn't get the nod. I always end up rooting for the person who is least likely to be back for a second chance, such as Bill Murray a couple years ago in Lost in Translation. This year both Eddie Murphy and Jackie Earle Haley fit the bill, I don;t think anyone could've imagined Murphy or Haley ever getting a nomination, in fact most people didn't even know that the former Kelly Leak was still acting. Anyway, seeing Alan Arkin win the Oscar was a little disappointing even though I like him and he seemingly got the edge because he's been pretty great for a long time and this was in some ways a lifetime achievement award. I enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine and I enjoy the idea of a comedy getting a nomination, but Little Miss Sunshine didn't seem best picture worthy to me, and it somehow became one of the more overrated comedies in recent history.

I just have to comment on American Idol, in case you were worried I'm still completely hung up on the show even though the shows came and went without a comment so far. Well there's so much still on my mind three full days later. First off, Kelly Pickler still looks phenomenal, she may look a little different, switching to a more traditional country look and filling out in some areas, but she was filling out that blue dress better than the designer had ever imagined. On to the eliminations. I was pissed to see Leslie Hunt sent packing, she sang well enough and she had a quiet unassuming nature, I'm just thinking that her lack of self promotion and ego in addition to that awful song did her in. I had never heard that song before, but from now on I'm going to remember it as the stupid song that eliminated two contestants in one week. Poor AJ Tabaldo was done in by that song, and perhaps the whole, "is he gay?" thing. As for Nick and Alaina, they didn't really impress me, despite the fact that Nick was a local kid, he was still my least favorite, and alaina was probably going to go only as far as her looks could take her. My last note on the show was that Sanjaya completely over-acted the shocked reaction that he wasn;t going home. He probably really did think he deserved to go home, but he wanted to make sure that even the least perceptive viewers could tell that was his thinking. It was the level of acting you might see in one of those awful Skinemax movies, not the great ones that featured Shannon Tweed or Lisa Boyle/Cassandra Leigh, I'm talking about the really low budget ones like the new one with Tanya from the Real World. But I digress, I'll give Sanjaya a pass because he's young, my predictions for next weeks eliminations are Sanjaya, Jared Cotter, (both of which will have Paula near tears) for the men, and Haley and Jordin for the women, proving that people will continue to vote for Antonella for all the wrong reasons. By the way, Paula won't shed a tear for any woman eliminated.

A few quick TV notes, the season finales of both Monk and Psych aired on Friday. Do yourself a favor and add both of these shows to your Tivo, they are similar quirky mystery/comedy shows which I enjoy greatly. On Psych there's great chemistry within the cast and Dule Hill seems a lot more suited to this comedic sidekick role than being a bit player in a vastly overrated White house drama. And if you don;t know about Monk by now, you really should, it was always a good show but it really kicked it up to the next level when Traylor Howard joined the cast, she really should be this generation's Meg Ryan, I don;t understand why she hasn't done more movies.

Speaking of that overrated White House drama, I completely gave up on Studio 60. It was a great idea for a show, but the execution hasn't quite done it for me. They should have spent more time figuring out how to write funny jokes, and less time on the "who cares" romance between Matthew Perry and that blonde Christian character. The Black Donnellys, which is currently airing in Studio 60's spot was surprisingly good, to the point where I'll be watching the next few episodes in hopes of it being the next great show.

Thats all I'm gonna get into for now, I'll be back soon to update all my sports thoughts, there's been a lot going on especially in College Basketball. but for now...

-Bender Out