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These kid's should give up on their dreams

So I know this guy. For the sake of anonymity, let's call him Armeen P (Poor). After graduating from college, when many of his friends entered the Teach For America program to inspire underprivileged children, he courageously chose the path less traveled: to teach a bunch of rich snobs at a private high school where he gets paid lots of money and works very few hours. The rare yet bold "anti-Teach For America." I won't comment on his job choice; he is a history major yet teaches freshman biology and chemistry, so it makes sense. He also coaches freshman basketball, even though his only sports accomplishment to date has been his Freshman Parents-Weekend Table Tennis Championship. And he came off the bench of a high school team that supposedly went 1-26. So you would think that most parents would be happy to pay thousands of dollars a year to have this guy teach your kids and coach them basketball. However, I have two points of contention:

1. In my opinion, an extra credit question on an exam should be used to reward the student who listened closely in class or read the textbook closely. Therefore the question is usually quite harder than the regular exam questions. This is how it should be. It is positive reinforcement for the students who study hard and creates an incentive for the slackers to work harder. Coach P doesn't think so. Here are some of his actual extra credit questions on his biology exams:

Name one of the two varsity sports that Mr. Poor played in high school.

What's Mr. Poor's dog's name?

Superbowl bonus prediction: whoever gets the closest to the real score gets a field goal added on to their score... aka 3 points.

I think this is wrong. This is random and arbitrarily awards points to the students. Coach P thinks that extra credit means "extra to the material." Who is right? I am.

2. I was fortunate enough to witness one of his team's basketball games. The team he was playing against had 7 kids on the team and none of them were above 5 feet. Coach P's team had plenty of kids above 5 feet, including one kid who probably should have been playing varsity. At halftime, his team was up 36-6. His star player was in the game running circles around the other team hitting reverse layups. I felt like this game was going to be a story on Yahoo or CNN, like the Dallas Academy girl's basketball team that lost 100-0. Not only that, but one of his kids was blatently pushing other kids to the ground and throwing elbows. In a freshman basketball game. In the second half. When they were up 40. Here's to you, Mr. Freshman High School Basketball Coach Who Needlessly Runs Up The Score To Make Up For His Lost Childhood Basketball Dreams.

Picture evidence:



Thoughts?

Here is my extra credit question: How many times have I played solitaire on my cell phone? There is a stats button that keeps track of every game so I have an exact number. The closest guess gets a poem written about them in the next post.

Nick was in a FRAT, FRAT, FRAT

Over at thehonestbro.blogspot.com, Nick puts forth his statement of purpose. First of all, I don't know what a statement of purpose is, but I assume it is a statement of purpose. But I've never heard anyone call it a statement of purpose. Anyways, after reading his unnecessarily long-winded and overly verbose statement of purpose, all I got out of it was "I'm in a frat, I drink a lot of beer, I was in college and drank so much beer that I passed out in my frat." After this douchebaggery, he comes back at me yesterday with this: "I avoid Rudy like the plague." Unbelievable. If you don't cry at the end of Rudy you are a pussy. I don't think I can trust someone who doesn't like the movie Rudy. It's kind of how I don't think I can be friends with someone who doesn't know how to play basketball. I don't think I've ever had a friend who didn't at least enjoy playing pickup. That's just how it is. To make matters even worse, he said he hates Hooisers as well. I'm not going into that because it will take too many words.

So this means I have to write my statement of purpose. Here it is:

To get more hits on my blog than Nick's blog.

That's pretty much it. I hope people visit my page often then leave, then come back a second later, then leave, then tell someone about my blog, then come back with that person, but on separate computers, then hit the refresh button constantly. During this quest, I will sprinkle in some of my thoughts to keep people interested for at least a second. That's why I will try to make the titles of my blog posts very shocking.

And insert clips like this, but allow me to introduce it. I was recently watching Kickboxer which stars my second favorite actor of all time (behind Tom Cruise of course), Jean Claude Van Damme. By the way Nick payed $7 for this which is way undervalued. The movie was fantastic. The reason I love him is because of his unique combination of raw fighting skills and very raw acting skills. He did maybe 5 splits, and one time he did the splits while punching a guy in the nuts (because he was so low to the ground and the guy didn't see it because JCVD just did the fucking splits). The other reason I love him is because he pulls out moves like this.



I can't get enough.

Why your kids should play football

Even though Arizona's season is slowly becoming a disaster, I still follow the team diligently, and then this occurs that just riles my feathers:



I haven't seen such a brutal play in basketball, maybe ever. This is probably worse than the Artest melee because Budinger was defenseless on the ground and the aggression came out of nowhere. And the dude was smiling and his teammates were giving him high fives! I think in an instance like this, Budinger should be awarded a "penalty shot." Budinger gets a running start and a free shot at Coleman while he stands motionless with his hands tied behind his back, his mouth gagged, and his family tied to a railroad with an oncoming train on its way.

To make matters even more ridiculous, this Houston sports writer says "In a ridiculous call, the officials ejected Aubrey Coleman after he inadvertantly stepped on Arizona forward Chase Budinger." (Cougar hoops: Coleman ejected at Arizona)

Is this guy serious? I mean really? Like, what? Either he's blind, has 45 chromosomes, or is the dirtiest pickup basketball player I have ever heard of. There are many comments on his article, and 95% of them are Houston fans rightfully critizing this assbag for his assbagedness. I urge everyone (Nick, maybe Armo? Is anyone else reading this?) to comment as well. This is more important than just bringing a criminal to justice, this is about defending one of the only extremely athletic and talented white basketball players that doesn't spend most of their time swinging towels in the air and taking charges at the end of games (Scalabrine?).

Also, check out the third comment down in that article. A commenter who calls himself "The Big Hitter" revels in the Cougars victory over the Wildcats. Unfortunately for little miss Big Hitter, Arizona staged a fantastically furious finish to comeback and force a final overtime, where they fundamentally found their form and finished in front, i.e. Arizona ending up winning.

Coming next week, I write a post where 80% of the words begin with the letter F.

The best idea ever?

Ready? Okay, it's a Jeopardy online game. But it's so much more. It's the new online poker. Let's say you can play in 3-person Jeopardy games where you bet $1, $3, $5, or even higher. If it's a $1 game, the winner takes $2.50 and the house takes 50 cents. It makes so much cents!!!!

An online Jeopardy game would be perfect. 3 people would enter online and use the spacebar as their buzzer. The person would enter and type in an answer in under 5 seconds. The game would be played exactly like the real Jeopardy game, including double jeopardy and what not. You wouldn't have to enter "what is" or "who is", but you would have to type in the answer with correct spelling, and a program would determine if it's an acceptable answer. Who wouldn't LOVE this? Everyone loves trivia, and everyone loves competing against their friends in trivia. This is the perfect storm of awesomeness.

There could even be a section where it allows for the awkward interview. You would type in something about yourself and a computer program simulating Trebek's voice would ask you questions. Therefore you would have a chance to talk about your trip to China where someone mistook you for an Asian. It would be hilARious.

Is there even an online trivia interactive game where you can play for money? How has this not been done yet? If this can be patented, I would patent the biznatch out of this. This is a gold mine. And yes, I'm registered for the Tuesday night online quiz to determine the next Jeopardy contestants.

Gambling is a real addiction

Whenever I have money to spend, which I guess is either always or never depending on how you look at it (because I don't work and my parents give me money to eat and do laundry and whatever) I take and then just gamble (or buy beer). This is not turning out well at all. I watch a lot of sports and feel like I have a good read, but I hardly ever win. On ESPN's streak for the cash, I am 2-14 since I've started. A piece of wood could flip a coin and go 7-7. Last night I bet on the Mavericks (6 games above .500, superior Western Conference) to beat the bucks (below .500, inferior Eastern Conference) and the Mavs not only lost, they lost by almost 40.

Sometimes I wake up and place some bets before I even get out of bed. This morning, I had my laptop next to my alarm clock. My alarm went off, I turned it off, opened my computer, put down 3 bets on the Australian Open on tennis players I haven't seen play tennis in years. One guy I can't even pronounce his name but I am sure he will lose. Last year I famously lost all my money betting on Federer and Henin to win the Aussie Open. Federer lost to Djokovic in the biggest loss of his career to that point, and Henin lost the promptly retired. I wish I could place a bet, then go back and change it to the opposite a few seconds later.

If Roddick, Fish, and Ferrer win tonight, I take everything back. If they don't, then I would advise not to gamble on sports when you are still in a half-dream state where you are on the island from Lost dodging bullets from the freighter people trying to find a way off the island.