So what’s the deal? It was the premiere of an ESPN documentary in their 30 for 30 series titled Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks directed by Dan Klores.

What is 30 for 30?  It’s ESPN’s 30th anniversary, and to commemorate the milestone have commissioned 30 documentaries by 30 filmmakers on unique topics.  Only a handful of titles have aired so far, but they’ve been great pieces so far.  I saw one on Jimmy the Greek that was pretty good…  One on how the University of Miami came to actually have a contending football team…  One on Muhammad Ali vs. Larry Holmes…  And a pretty good one on the USFL.  There’s one about the Baltimore Colts marching band, but I haven’t seen that one yet.  So far, they’ve been good topics, and great 2-hour (with commercials) documentaries.

So this film is set to premiere on Sunday March 14th on ESPN with many re-broadcasts soon thereafter.

It’s about a basketball player named Reggie Miller, and the rivalry that sprouted between him and the Knicks and a very specific Knick fan – Spike Lee (yes, the filmmaker).  It also talked about the rivalry known as “the hicks vs. the Knicks” which I was somewhat unaware of back then.

To be honest, I can’t be that subjective about much of this.  Why, because I was a Pacer fan back then…  (I didn’t hate the Knicks…  Just John Starks)

Notice the past tense in my admiration for the Pacers and the NBA?  Yeah.  Because I think the NBA has degenerated into a piece of crap sports league with no leadership among the athletes or the administrators.  It doesn’t help that the Pacers have turned to crap since the departure of Reggie Miller from the team…

But this piece details a fun time for Indianapolis when the Pacers had a good squad, the NBA had great match ups, and the NBA had a good proportion of college graduates.

So you may or may not be interested in this…  It took me back to a time when I liked a sport, had a home team that I respected, and have fond memories of that time in general.  There’s a pretty good amount of comedy in the piece based on what actually happened and some new details.

So I’ll gladly watch it again, and may try and purchase it to have.  Watching Miller score 8 points in under 20 seconds to win a playoff game by two is a thing of beauty.

I wouldn’t say I was a late-comer to the podcast party… But I wasn’t an early adopter. Sure, I’ve been watching and listening a few specific programs for years, but lately it’s become a bigger portion of my life that I take with me daily thanks to the wondrous iPhone.

Kinda like having the radio on on the background, but it keeps my mind turning a little better than music at times…  It’s especially more effective during longer work outs because they keep my mind on something else and not the fact that I’m trying to do something for an extended period of time.  Music is better for shorter workouts.  At work I go back and fourth depending on what I have available and what I’m doing.

I don’t actually have enough podcasts to fill the time… So I’m constantly looking for new ones while weeding out the ones that don’t live up to my needs.

Let’s see what’s on the list right now:

• Boagworld
• Diggnation
• Double Feature
• Epic FU
• The /Filmcast
• Know Your Meme
• MacBreak Weekly
• The Nation: The Breakdown
• NSFW
• The Official Lost Podcast
• Pixel Perfect
• PTI
• Science… sort of
• Sitepoint Podcast
• SModcast
• TEDTalks
• Tekzilla
• This Week in Computer Hardware
• This Week in Media
• This Week in Tech

Podcasts that are still on a trial basis:  Curiouslty Aroused, Mock the Weak, The Nerdist…

I haven’t found any good local podcasts, but I haven’t been searching that much…  should I look hard, or should I not have to look hard?

But let me know if you have any suggestions for podcasts.

Yeah, that’s some beauty pageant kind of deep thinking…

Anyway…  Get to the point already. Drum roll please…

It seems of late that personal blogs have gone the way of Vanilla Ice.  Into the realm of jokes like “oh, you have a blog?” or those that have blogs and think they are some media rock star…  Sure, there are notable exceptions…  but those aren’t the rule.

Why has this come about?  Well, it’s because of Facebook you silly goose.  I know many people that had personal blogs, but they’ve gone away thanks to Facebook.  And weirder still, I know more than a few that then get pissed at the intrusiveness of Facebook and quit it all when a blog was doing them so well in the first place.

The ability for an individual to create a blog is a great thing.  It’s a space that a person can define what they want to express, how they express it, and so many more things.  Facebook kinda gave those things with the ease of connecting with a myriad of different people.  I’m fine with saying I’m friends with whomever from my grade school and high school misadventures, but it’s gotten to be such a watered down proposition to be friends with someone on Facebook.

I guess the quick and easy communication with an ability to express ones self just steers people more and more towards Facebook to the expense of other communication outlets (both digital and analog).

And don’t get me started on the Farmville crap…  Anyway…  Refocus…

The funniest thing about it all was that I don’t hear from many friends as much now that we’re “friends” on Facebook.  I think it’s because they feel that tabs are being kept just because we all change our status from time to time.

It all saddens me a little.  I love the blog as a platform and space to be yourself…  Facebook itself started out as a great idea, but it’s become what AOL was at its worst but ten times as powerful.

In the meantime, I’m gonna continue to blog to my invisible audience.  I wish more would blog.  I realize that it requires more time and effort, but it also means more to me when I can read something that took time and effort…  Not just some fleeting link to a story in a feed with a short little rant or plea to join in some weird, crappy little flash app.  Not just some status update and people liking something about weather, babies, or politics.

By the way, I want “Dislike” and “I Dont Care” options on my status updates on Facebook.  It’d be more helpful than just “like” or comment.

Something has bugged the he’ll outta me since I first saw the show… I recognized the drum loop used in the theme song, and I couldn’t identify where. It bugged the hell outta me every time we saw the intro…  Until a few days ago when my iTunes on shuffle hit something…

The drum loop that had been in the back of my head was right there…  It’s the same as part of the song Poison from The Prodigy.

Hell, I’ve only found one minor reference to it with a very specific search. Muteboy72 on tumblr posted about it a few weeks ago (here and here).

It had really been gnawing at me for awhile, and now I’m glad I’ve got it figured out.

Since that’s now solved, I guess I can tackle that room-temperature super conductor problem. It’s that or perpetual motion.

So I’m gonna post anytime I make an addition to that page, because it’s gotta be pretty good for me to put it there.

What got me consider a new link today?  A Tumblr photography blog called Black and WTF.

I’m a photographer that likes the weird and funny from time to time as I like things that make me laugh or think WTF for a second…

So apparently, this is the third book in a series by Huston. Oops…  That explains the numerous references to backstory that seemed oddly brief.

I read it anyway. I needed something to wash the taste of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road out of my mind.

Good? Sometimes. It’s never bad, but not great either.

It’s a work of fiction that is in the crime drama realm that is entertaining, but not astounding.  It’s all first person, and sometimes there’s a little jumping around in time to add an interesting effect to the reader.  I can’t quite tell if you were supposed to like the main character or not.  There are allusions to some things that make it so you’re supposed to be able to go either way as the reader.

If there was a problem with the book, it’s that I didn’t feel terribly invested in it.  I didn’t really care what happened.  There was no character that I rooted for.  Most of the way through the book, I didn’t feel like I cared in any way how it ended – and the story wasn’t good enough to pull me back in.

As far as reading it on the iPhone, I found that to be fine.  It didn’t hurt my eyes, and it was very easy to leave and come back to any point in the book.  I’ll really like the iPad if it has the same app (it was recently acquired by Amazon, so we’ll see if they do anything to it).

So, I know that’s not much of a review.  I’ve downloaded the other two books from this series (they’re all available for free download right now on the Stanza iPhone app).  I love free, but I wonder if it’s a “you get what you pay for” kinda deal.  I’m not sure if I’m gonna read them now or if I’m gonna go dig around and do something like re-read the Jack Ryan books or some other good standby that I know I’ll like and enjoy.

That’s what I want right now in my free time. Not the annoyance of The Road, and not the antipathy of A Dangerous Man.  I need something that can engage me in those rare times I have to read a few pages.

It’s been something that’s been growing for awhile, but it really came out in the recent trip to Vegas when seeing everyone and their supposed fashion accessories.  CK – LV – MK – D & G

You know what I’m talking about?  You may not care, and it’s not that big a deal.  I would just think that after a point someone would figure out that these fashion designers are relying too heavily on unoriginal things.

I’ve tried to think about where this may have come from, and I guess Chanel – but that was more of a logotype and not a literal initial since one of the C’s is a horizontal reflection.  But after that? I can’t think of another major fashion initial coming along until CK…  Then recently it’s just gotten out of freakin’ control.

I’m not sure who was next…  Louis Vuitton…  Dolce & Gabbana…  Some other fashion people…  I don’t really care.

While the CK incident may have pushed me over the blogging edge, it was Michael Kors that pushed me over the initial edge.  I’ve only seen a few things here and there, and i never thought much about them.  But when I went into the Kors store in Vegas, so much had this really bad MK logo that really, really annoyed me.  It rubbed me in completely the wrong way.  Now when I hear his name, I have an initial bad thought because of poor style choice and unoriginality.

Having a logo consisting of initials is one thing, but overusing it on many products not only devalues your brand, but your long term name in a field that is supposed to value innovation, quality, and originality.

So yeah.  Yet another post that really has no audience and is quite inconsequential…  So be it.