Sweet 16

No, not that kind of sweet 16. Dietze and I survived a rainstorm to watch LSU take down the Dukies and then saw an amazing finish between WV and Texas. Then Em and I caught the LSU/Texas game.

Not pictured are Dietze and I.

so here are some video clips, big baby and lsu beating up on the dukies, the texas cheerleaders and ambiguously cheerful mascot, and the Texas game winner.

Ski Trip at the Canyons, Park City

Yet another long video. This one not funny unless you enjoy seeing me run into a christmas tree, and not featuring any shirtless sports action.

it was beautiful out in Utah and we had better snow every single day than any single day i've had on the snow before. Emily's not featured b/c she was unable to make it this year. hopefully we'll have her out on a snowboard next year.

oh, btw, stephen loved the snow, but he thought it was a little windy on the gondola.

As a note, i am a little behind on blog postings. This ski trip was from March, and since then, i've got some shots from drew's bachelor party in the bahamas and my trip to nicaragua. hopefully i'll get that out there shortly.

anyway, here's the snowboard video. Please note, this video has a rap themed soundtrack, and as such has some explicit language. I am still looking for a radio-edit version of Dr Dre. This blog posting is rated "R" due to strong language.

Draft Wrapup

I'd like to thank everyone who made it down, and congratulate Collie on the birth of his first child just before the draft. I'd also like to congratulate Brad on successfully inducing labor far enough in advance to actually make it to the draft. I'm not wasting any time here, b/c the below video will take up 9 minutes of your life. If you have nothing else worth doing, I'd say it's worth it...

Roll the Tape!!!

Draft Day II Dominicano!!!

All right, to fully capture the spirit of the Dominican crowd (which basically was basically somewhere between a dance club in a sketchy neighborhood and a knife fight), I'm going to go straight to the video. i will say, i had a blast, but at no point did i feel 100% confident that i would not be injured or killed in a giant gang war. Each inning the crowd got more and more raucous and by the end, the security guards had one finger on the trigger at all times, but it was a good game, and afforded us the opportunity to have the lovely YouAreMyFantasy.com spokesmodels pull the draft order for us.

we also had one domincan who was quite a borracho who kept accusing us of being aussies and throwing out anti-aussie insults at us. it's really weird having someone try to insult you based off of a misunderstanding they have about who you are. i would give a funny "for instance", but that might offend missle mike. anyway, my response to el borracho's exhortations about kangaroos was "no soy aussie, soy dominicano!!"

Roll the Tape!!!

btw, this guy wasn't dominican (like me) but he meant so much to BP that i just wanted to give him a shoutout.

it's these kinds of relationships that make the draft so special.

Fantasy Baseball Draft - Venezuela Game

ok, where to start? hmmmm, dietze and i drove down on thursday. all was normal until we got to orlando.....at which point we ran out of gas. i had mistakenly thought that my car was green-friendly, and it being a sunny day, had assumed that solar power would take me all the way there. however, my car does indeed still run on fossil fuel. the neat part, however, was that after a school bus honked at me and i pulled over on the roadside; within 30 seconds a truck with yellow lights flashing, and a man flashing a yellow smile showed up to hook me up with some gas. it was basically like an in-flight refueling and i got two gallons of free gas.

once we arrived, we went to a thursday night game - ozzies against the venezuelans. the venezuelans had obvious talent

but the ozzies were stacked too

so we knew it was going to be a good matchup.

one highlight of the game was that we got to see the worst jersey of all time

the crowd was awesome and they loved us.

that venezuelan in the front is actually my cousin ronnie.

here we are with all of our friends again.

coming into this game, all i knew about venezuela was red wine, oil and hugo chavez (hence my trademark "viva chavez!!" cheer which drew mixed response). however, things went pretty well until bp began to incite a riot

even jeff got swept up in the revolutionary tide!

what i learned was that the venezuelans also REALLY love to play music and dance, but more than that, they REALLY REALLY loved to have their picture taken. i'm not kidding. there was no shortage of people any time a camera came out. i would love to see if this holds true in venezuela as well. it might be the best place in the world to take party shots.

anyway, here's my video tribute to the venezuelans.

DRAFT DAY 2.....TO BE CONTINUED