If a kid in the 3rd grade wins his class’s spelling bee contest, should he be called the spelling bee champion of the whole school? That’s an obvious answer, right?

So then how is it that the winner of Major League Baseball’s championship series, The World Series, is crowned World Champs — even though Team USA (fielding what was arguably an MLB all-star caliber team) only got as far as the semifinals in the World Baseball Classic?

How about you just call it “MLB Champions” until you’re arguably the best country in the world at the sport? The same goes for all other American sport that refers to their own champions the same way.

steven spielberg and will smith are in talks for an oldboy remake. this was reported on variety so it holds a little more water than your standard internet rumor mill… but. really? oldboy? I’m surprised spielberg, or even smith, is even considering doing oldboy. have they even seen it? it’s not a PG-13 summer blockbuster-type story! it’s got to be teetering on NC-17 to come close to the original imagery! why can’t they leave asian classics alone?

hey at least justin lin had the sense to walk away from it. but will these two have that sense?

then again scorcese never watched infernal affairs before doing the departed and we all know what happened next.

UPDATE: upon will smith’s string-pulling, the co-writer for I am legend will be writing the screenplay for this remake. great.

is how little their loss at marquette is publicized. neither espn nor sports illustrated sites have it on the main page as if the game didn’t even happen! what the fuck.

sportswriters who rode the uconn bandwagon really fucking hard must be shy or something.

in my post from a few days ago I was going on about how I thought uconn were so completely overrated based on their inflated 10-0 record in home wins against unranked opponents. and I quote the AP:

Connecticut (11-1, 0-1) looked out of sync after playing its past seven games at home against opponents such as Morehead State, Stony Brook and Quinnipiac.

well guess what? they had their first conference game against marquette (who aren’t even that good) and were embarrassed 94-79. my favorite quote from the article comes from uconn’s starting PG:

“The No. 2 team just lost by 25 points,” Williams said. “That just goes to show that anything can happen at any point.”

I rest my case.

so I’m peeping the weekly college basketball rankings and I’m seeing the familiar names near the top week in and week out (with notable exception to texas and louisville who have since fallen from grace). I saw dook whip the living shit out of (then) #2 ranked texas so I’m gonna begrudgingly give them the respect they’re due. but what about the other team getting hyped? uconn.

uconn’s ranked #2 in both usa today and AP polls as they are currently undefeated. I recently saw a score where they beat unranked morehead state 129-61 with a halftime score of 61-30. now what motivated them to run up the score like that against an obviously much lesser talented team? where’s the sportmanship? take one look at their current schedule and with the exception of #8 gonzaga (whom they BARELY beat with a buzzer beater) they haven’t played A SINGLE RANKED TEAM (arizona was ranked at the time, but they were clearly overrated and have since fallen out of the top 25). all these sportswriters are going crazy over uconn — for what? blowing away unranked teams PLAYING ON HOME COURT? please. I’m going to let this slide as “we want to get in as much winning as we can until we lose rudy gay to the nba next year.” any half decent team can have an undefeated record playing at home against the likes of pepperdine, army, new hampshire, texas southern and stony brook. it just pisses me off they schedule cupcake schools and run up the scoreboard. I can’t wait until they get their asses handed to them. huskies, I got one word for you: louisville.

so back in the summer I was pissing and moaning about the legion of doom’s release date being pushed back yet again to january ‘06. to refresh your memory, the legion of doom is this collective that recently put together an album of emo mashups and wanted to release it legally so the artists will get their fair share.

the thing with doing things like this is, as honorable as it may be, you’re setting yourself up for dealing with miles and miles of red tape to get all the rights cleared. and let me tell you, working with legal teams is possibly the most trying experiences you can ever go through. here’s why:

1. they take for-FUCKING-ever to accomplish anything.
2. they’re never 100% sure of anything they sign off on.
3. they’ll come back with revisions even after they’ve given approval.

what do I think they should do? release all the songs over peer-to-peer networks without making any official announcements of their intentions. things like this will spread word of mouth while they can claim innocence.

why won’t they do it? because if this happens they’ll lose all credibility with the actual artists and they’ll be nothing more than audio pirates to the artists they worked with. not to mention all the wasted effort and money spent on legalities.

what will most likely happen? seeing how they already have their foot in the door with their song on the Saw II soundtrack they’re under no pressure to get this album released.

from a fan’s pespective there’s no point in ancitipating this release. it’s better to forget this thing was ever mentioned and if it DOES ever see the light of day it’ll be a pleasant surprise.

it snowed this weekend! very little but there was definite snow accumulation on the ground sunday morning. I would like to use this as a segueway into kentucky getting embarrassed by unc, but our shooting wasn’t cold. in fact we shot the ball really well. we just got out-hustled by a rebuilding carolina team that starts 3 freshmen and 2 role players from last year.

how is it that we have 3 7 footers and none of them can rebound? I watched alleyne (one of our 7 footers) stand there and watch as a player 6″ shorter than him sky high for a rebound. pathetic. wasn’t he supposed to go to fordham? or like rutgers? why is he at kentucky? our point guard leads the team in rebounds. that should tell you something.

but I digress.

in other news I started playing this online game called Project Rockstar. you get to play a band manager and you assemble a musical group (or soloist) from a pool of fictitious talent and make them grow. I started a techno dance duo and called them Click & Drag. they recently cut a single called “Frodo Built My Hotrod” and they’re in the process of flyering the streets to promote it. wooo.

fuck halloween. it’s stupid, and it’s really the worst in nyc because it gives childish grown-ups an excuse to go BALLS OUT freak-o. we got plenty of freaks here without it being halloween.

fuck it.

so the knicks managed to get eddy curry from the bulls. speaking purely as a fanatical fantasy basketball fan, I have never seen a starting center average as few rebounds as this guy. I remember time and time again checking in with this guy’s stats over the past two seasons and never was I impressed with his numbers. not something you’d expect from a guy who was once heralded as “baby shaq” and is commanding a $60M salary.

here’s a guy who’s a wide-body 6′11 starting center averaging the amount of rebounds expected out of a decent guard 6 inches shorter.

my thoughts on the transaction? well, his old jersey number with the bulls (#2) is already taken by mo taylor so he’ll either have to negotiate with him or pick something else.

so I’ve been freelancing with this one talent agent, see. he has me going to these auditions, mostly print ad auditions.

I get to these auditions and I’m seriously surrounded by morons. absolute morons. the one for yesterday for example, there are signs around the waiting area that say that if you came in for the same audition last week you don’t need to be here (no shit). well, this woman who appears to be coordinating this audition comes out of her office at one point and makes an announcement that reiterates what’s said on the sign.

well this one dude pipes up and is like, “I don’t know if I was here last week.” WHAT. the woman didn’t even blink, probably because she’s so used to this flakiness (usually reserved for a pie crust). the dude’s explanation was that he goes on so many of these things he can’t keep them straight. meanwhile this other dude asked the woman to repeat the announcement, and proceeded to go way deep in thought. what’s to think about? either you were there or you weren’t. and then this conversation took place right next to me between these two dudes who weren’t listening to anything what the other one said. and over on the other end of the room some woman was bitching about the rates she was getting paid as a union extra.

so now I look at the millions of advertisements we’re bombarded with on a daily basis and I wonder what kind of flakes these people are/had to put up with in order to get that gig. and I come out feeling REALLY FUCKING SMART.

something tells me I’m going to have a similar experience when I have my jury duty next week.