The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

Tomorrow is Tuesday the 30th of November and Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! superstar is going to lose. This will finally end his streak of 74 straight wins. I don't think anyone will even come close to that ever again. Unfortunately, I have class on Tuesday night and I might not make it home in time to watch. If worse comes to worse, I may actually leave class early to get home.

I bet Ken wins the Tournament of Champions pretty handily as well. I guess we'll see, though. Anything can happen when you get all those smart folks together.

What's crazy about this loss, in my opinion, is that a loss like this didn't come sooner. He was leading after double jeopardy and got the final question wrong, while his opponent got it right and went ahead on the last question. Usually, Ken was so far ahead at the end of the game that it didn't matter if he got the question right or wrong, he would win anyway. A couple of times the issue was still in doubt, but everyone got the final question wrong and Ken was still the winner.

It's going to take me a couple of weeks to get used to not watching Ken on the show and getting used to the regular old format where there's new champions all the time and Alex Trebek is the big star.

Unlike all you posers out there, I am a loyal Jeopardy! watcher and I have been for years. With or without Ken, I will be getting my fix on and loving the show. Also with Ken gone I can feel like I'm smart again since I can usually answer questions on a broader range than most of the folks on the show. That's not to say that I know all the answers, but the breadth of my knowledge is vast while the depth may not be as deep as the real good players, like Ken for example. A few times during his run I knew the answer to a question that he didn't know and I got to feel smart. That didn't happen very often, however.

Anyway, peace out, Ken. You're the man. I would suggest starting a Win Ben Stein's Money type of game show so nerds like me can continue to go up against you.

My friend Brian started the BPloG. You should read it.

The Knicks are actually playing pretty well together so far this year. They had a couple of ugly losses in the beginning of the season but their last two wins were pretty convincing. Granted one was against the Hawks who me and 4 friends could beat, but nonetheless, they never let them back into the game which is a trademark of theirs. Also the other win was against Cleveland, who is actually a good team.

Not only do I think the Knicks are going to end up with Ron Artest, I'm going to love it when they do. I said all along they should have drafted him to begin with when they had the chance, but they suck at drafting guys. If they do get Artest, I think the press will be mainly positive too. Everyone's recent favorite Knick teams featured guys like Charles Oakley, Xavier McDaniel, John Starks, and even Patrick Ewing who were scrappy and would sooner punch you (or headbutt you in Starks' case) than take your shit. Everyone loved when Sprewell got here and this will, hopefully, be a similar situation.

The Knicks never should have gotten rid of Sprewell, by the way, even though he's acting like a winy little bitch now about his contract. Also Sprewell's hairstyle this season is terrible.

The Knicks absolutely need to get rid of Tim Thomas who sucks.

I don't understand all the hating on Kurt Thomas who is a badass. He's a poor man's Kenyon Martin except Kurt can also shoot the outside shot. He's one of my favorite Knicks.

Michael Sweetney is awesome. He looks kindof awkward running around and then he's gotten an offensive rebound and laid it back in. Good shit.

Jamal Crawford shoots every time he touches the ball and he's not as good a shooter as he thinks he is. Alan Houston, who is a good shooter, has much better shot selection. Houston is sortof a bitch, though, and who knows when he'll be back. Crawford has hit a couple of good shots, but I'll bet his shooting percentage is really low. In the high .30s or low .40s.

The Knicks are 5-5 and are actually in first place in the Atlantic conference ahead of Boston, Toronto, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. I think they might actually win that terrible conference unless Philly turns it around. There's no one else to challenge them. That's a sad state of affairs.

The Knicks are 4-1 at home which is a good sign. Their only home loss was an embarrassing showing in the season opener against Boston.

Anyway, I could go on like this forever, I guess I'll stop. I realized a while back that the Knicks are definitely my favorite sports team. I route for them above all other teams. If the Knicks were somehow playing the Yankees or the Jets, I would route for the Knicks.

A line from Bill Simmons' column on ESPN.com:

"In a related story, if you scrolled through the lineups of all 30 teams before the season, then asked yourself, "What pair of teammates would be the most likely candidates to start a fight in the stands, eventually leading to the ugliest sequence in NBA history?", the heavy favorites would have been Artest and Jackson in Indiana, with Zach Randolph and Ruben Patterson a distant second in Portland. Those are the facts. That might have been a shocking night, but at no point did anyone who follows the NBA on a regular basis say to themselves, "I can't believe Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson are taking on Row 3 in the Palace right now!" Sketchiest pair of teammates in the league, roughest group of fans in the league. Not a good combo."

This is so true. I wouldn't count out J-Dub and Bonzi Wells in Memphis, either, but they're good guys now. Incidentally, I have the NBA League Pass and I watch a lot of the games. The Memphis announcers insist on calling Jason Williams "J-Will" every time he touches the ball, which is ridiculously annoying.

Also after watching the feeds from other local stations, I'm glad that I live in New York where the announcers are all pretty good. The obvious exception was Michael Kay and the guy he used to announce the Yankee games with on the radio whose name I can't remember right now. They're not together any more, though because one does radio and the other does TV, but gosh were they awful.

I guess the Heat are going to win the East now. Detroit is not as good as they were last year. The Pacers are fucked. The Nets are downright awful. And those were the best three teams last year. The only team to markedly improve is the Heat.

Minnesota is no good any more since Cassell and Sprewell decided they were bitches and not team players. I wait for Golden State to get better and they never do. Troy Murphy is the man, though. Seattle looks real good. If Sacramento gets deeper, they might be the favorite in the West. At the moment San Antonio is still the best team in the league.

Maybe I'll make a whole 'nother post about the Knicks.

Anyone who is a big enough basketball fan to be courtside at the Pistons/Pacers game last night should know enough to know this: Don't fuck with Ron Artest.

Before he went into the stands last night, Artest's actions were not even questionable. The foul against Ben Wallace was not a cheap shot. It was unnecessary, but it was not illegitimate. Ben Wallace overreacted and tried to get at Artest. Even then, Artest didn't fly off the handle. He backed away from the fight and even when Wallace continued to come after him he kept relatively cool.

The dumbass fan who threw a full beer at Ron Artest deserves to get beat up. The behavior of some of the fans in Detroit was deplorable, though, even on top of that one dumb guy. The guy who originally threw the beer was not the guy Artest went after, a mistake on Artest's part. The guy in the baseball hat apparently threw the beer and he was the one trying to hold Artest back. Then after he held him back, he started punching him from behind. What a dick.

Then some big black guy comes out of nowhere and starts punching on Freddy Jones, also from behind, who was trying to break up the fight. That guy is a fucking fool too.

The absolute dumbest guys, though, were the two pudgy guys who looked like brothers who actually went on to the court and fronted like they wanted to fight Ron Artest. Artest jacked the one guy in the face and then backed away. Then, the other guy got what he deserved when Jermaine O'Neal ran up and punched the shit out of him.

If you were in a riot, which is what this came down to be, would you further instigate the situation by throwing popcorn and pouring beer and water on the guys who just ran into the stands to beat up someone like you? I wouldn't, but that's what the fans who were standing next to the tunnel did. As they were pulling the Pacers off the floor, the guys right next to the railings dumped whole sodas and bottles of water and beer directly on the players, most notably Jermaine O'Neal, who were within grasping distance. That's just dumb.

Bottom line, everyone who knows anything about basketball knows that Ron Artest has a screw loose and you shouldn't throw shit at him. Artest obviously should not have gone into the stands, but that does not take the blame for this fiasco off the shoulders of the guy who threw shit at him.

In an interview with the Onion AV Club, Chris Rock makes a point about comedy that never really occurred to me before:

I'm always of the mindset that if only smart people like your shit, it ain't that smart. If a guy drives a truck and he doesn't get your jokes, something's wrong there. I'm not saying you have to dumb it down, but they sell newspapers to everybody, not just the smartest people in the country. Everybody buys the newspaper. Everybody kind of watches the news. Your comedy can appeal to a wider audience if it's funny.

I think his quote is applicable not only to comedy, but to any art, or really any expression of one's self. If only the smart people get it, then it's really not that smart. The genius is in making your big ideas seem small.

A couple of my friends have brand new blogs. I don't suppose I need to actually promote them, since I think the only people who read my blog are the three people whose blogs I'm going to link to, but it's all good, I guess.

The originator of the blog amongst my friends was Joe, who always seems to start new trends, beavis. Anyhow, after his blog went up I decided that keeping a blog was much easier than keeping up the whole website that I have, so I started one too. Also I just wanted to be like Joe.

Anyhow, within the last week, two of my other friends have started blogs, and that's fun too. Matt Dabney aka Matt Daffy aka Daffy aka "They call that nigga Matt Daffy 'cause he crazy" started a blog that's mainly about his new baby at the moment, but will probably branch out into new topics. Though the baby posts are cool.

Max Steel, who doesn't have a nickname that I can think of, but who does have the name of a cartoon superhero, also recently started a blog that has the potential to be particularly interesting and life-altering for any regular readers. Max is a deep thinker and a record of his thoughts are bound to be useful in some capacity or another.

This post will eventually fade away, so you can click the permanent links on the right side there to get to those interesting blogs at any time.

The rap world lost quite a character over the weekend with the death of Russell Jones aka Ol' Dirty Bastard aka ODB aka Dirt McGirt aka Big Baby Jesus just two days before his 36th birthday.

ODB was a character and a half and it probably comes as no surprise to any of us that at various points in his life he recived treatment for his mental health. Here are some of the things I remember ODB for:

Going up on the stage during the Grammys after Wu Tang didn't win and saying that they should have won not only because they were the best rap group, but also because he had gone to the trouble of getting a new outfit.

Doing a segment on MTV News where even after he blew up with the Wu Tang Clan he was still receiving welfare checks. He and Kurt Loder rolled up in a limo to the welfare office to get his check.

He was on TRL with a couple of people he had collaborated with on a song. They were talking about how they each represented charity or another and Carson Daly or whoever was hosting says, "Well, this artist represents this charity and this artist represents such and such a charity. ODB, what charity do you represent?" ODB, without a moment's hesitation says, "None. I don't represent no damn charity. I represent myself."

He actually named his second solo album "Nigga Please".

On top of all this, he left behind 13 children. Now we all know that ODB was crazy, who in the world is sleeping with this man and having 13 of his children? I wonder how many baby mommas he had.

In a direct quote from ODB's mom, she says that Dirt McGirt was, "The kindest most generous soul on earth". We know you love your son and all, but the hyperbole here is really unwarranted. Anyone who is arrested at some point for being in a shootout with police is not the kindest, most generous soul on earth.

He was funny, though.

Ron Artest was recently suspended from the Indiana Pacers for 2 games for reasons that were originally undisclosed by the team. Incidentally, I'm paraphrasing a lot of Artest's quotes.

When Artest was asked why he was suspended however, he was very straightforward. He was suspended because he asked the coach for a month off from the team because he was stressed out about an album he has coming out. He's not on the album, it's an R&B album by some group he's producing.

The coach of the Pacers again originally did not admit why he was suspending Artest, only that he "compromised the integrity of the team." When asked about compromising the team's integrity, Artest responded, "Man, I don't even know what that means. I been meaning to ask my dad about that or look it up or something. Anyone got a dictionary?"

In another interview Artest said, "Man, I'm from Queensbridge, I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm tired now, but I want to win the championship. If I take this time off, I can come back and help this team win the championship." I'm glad that he's representing my adopted borough so well.

He would have been perfect on the Knicks. Except that they drafted fucking Frederic Weis instead of Artest. Can you believe that shit?

On Meet the Press this morning the secondary guests after Karl Rove and Barack Obama were William Safire and Maureen Dowd, both New York Times columnists, who were on to discuss the election results.

Maureen Dowd had this to say about Dubya:

"Bush is not pandering to the religious right. He is the religious right."

This is a beautifully worded point. I think it speaks to his motivations and it's important for people to realize this in trying to understand him.

Also a snippet from her column this week:

"The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance, and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagrees to heel. W. ran a Jihad in America."

You're either with him or against him. Just ask France.

Here's a picture of the election results by county. You may have seen the map with red four bush and blue for kerry and it looks like Bush rules the world, but this purple map is a little more nuanced.

It shows that there are democrats who live outside of the big cities, they just happen to be outnumbered by the repoublicans in most places across the country. The one phenomenon I don't understand is how there seems to be a bunch of democrats who live all along the Mississippi River. It's clearly a trend, but I can't think of why that might be. Maybe it's just that people who live near water are more sane.

Click on the map to go to the site. Once you're there click on the link to get to the even bigger map. It shows the data a bit more clearly.

Well, I'm not particularly happy with Dubya winning a second term, but at least he actually did win this time. I was kindof embarrassed at all the bitching the Democrats did last time even though it was clear that Gore didn't have a shot given the circumstances. Kerry was gracious in defeat and at the very least it will be fun to keep getting to refer to "Dubya" and "Big Time" Cheney.

I think in 2000 if every single vote were counted the way it was intended to be cast, then Gore should have won. So it's kindof lame that he didn't.

This year it's pretty obvious that Bush is the winner. What's weird to me is that more people voted for him this time than did last time. I would have thought that Democrats would be all upset about Gore not winning especially after winning the popular vote and would come out in spades this time. Also Bush isn't doing a very good job, in my opinion, so he would have turned off some of his voters from last time. I guess I was wrong on both fronts.

I can see it now. Giuliani v. Rodham-Clinton in 2008. If that were to take place, I would actually consider voting for Giuliani, though I don't have anything against Clinton, per se.