Friday, April 4, 2008

Random Thoughts, Sights and Sounds - A Potpourri of Knowledge

Let's go Tar Heels (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap).

Let's go Bruins (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap). And no not those Bruins, the organization masquerading around Boston pretending to be a professional hockey organization (by the way, I love the way people from Canada say the word 'organization' with the extra accent on 'z' and the brief pause just before they roll out the 'z' - it's cool).

Though as a side note, the Boston Bruins have a big weekend ahead of them trying to make the Eastern Conference playoffs and then in turn lose in the first round. Doing this will score yours truly a nice bottle of Cabo Wabo tequila (everything in life revolves around Van Halen) vs. the bottle of Patron tequila I put up in case the B's get through the first round.

With the proverbial "if the season ended today" look at the Eastern Conference standings there would be several great opening round playoff matchups, Pittsburgh-Washington (Sidney Crosby vs. Alex Ovechin), Montreal-Boston (where the Bruins would pull a Bill Parcells and throw up in their mouths after losing to the Habs 49 straight times this season) and the Rangers-Devils.

Now that I've filled my hockey talk quota for the next three months, back to what's really important this weekend - the North Carolina Tar Heels and the UCLA Bruins. If both advance to next Monday's title game, it will prolong the hopes of the 'Basketball Jones' entry of finishing first in the Seacoast Tournament Bracket Pool.

Sunday marks the season debut of Josh Beckett in a marquee pitching matchup of Beckett vs. Roy Halliday, making for NESN's version of 'Must See TV' for the final game of the Red Sox series vs. the Blue Jays.

The reason that the potential for this matchup to be so good is that there aren't that many proven, established top of the rotation pitchers in the American League anymore. You have Beckett, Halliday and C.C. Sabathia. There are several good, up-and-coming starters in the AL (Justin Verlander, Scott Kazmir, Felix Hernandez, Fausto Carmona) or guys who are solid (John Lackey, Mark Burhle, Chien-Ming Wang) but none of the aforementioned guys are at the level of Beckett, Halliday or Sabathia.

After four days in Canada, hopefully the Red Sox players might have an answer to this puzzling question, "Am I better off exchanging Yen for Canadian dollars, or American Dollars for Canadian dollars? Or will Yen to American to Canadian make the most sense (in regards to maximizing the dollar amount)?"

This is a question that baffles us all.

Finally, I'd like to have a 'Stop the Presses' moment, to point out that a comment was left on this blog site (number three overall in the history of this blog and the first one in 49 days) regarding the Bracket Alternatives article that was posted on Thursday.

It's good to know that some of the 'Beautiful People' out there are fans of the Chicks Dig blog, as the comment came from a graduate of the most popular college with the male population - Arizona State, recently voted number 1 in terms of having the most attractive female student body (the previous five words put together are music to my ears).

It's good to know that the ladies out there are putting as much thought into creating their own types of brackets as the men are.

Have a Great Weekend.

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