Well, the NBA trade deadline was largely a dud. Three o’clock rolled up and there isn’t much to say about what happened. And no, that’s not because I’m not a basketball guy.
Today’s deals:
To the Celtics: Will Solomon
To the Raptors: Patrick O’Bryant Analysis: The Raps make another trade. Not that it’ll help…
To the Bulls: Tim Thomas, Jerome James, Anthony Roberson
To the Knicks: Larry Hughes Analysis: Who are they and why should I care?
To the Knicks: Chris Wilcox
To the Thunder: Malik Rose, cash Analysis: I’d give the win to the Thunder because cash is king.
To the Kings: Rashad McCants, Calvin Booth
To the T-Wolves: Bobby Brown, Shelden Williams Analysis: Wait. Wasn’t Bobby Brown a singer and married to Whitney Houston?
To the Magic: Rafer Alston (Hou)
To the Rockets: Kyle Lowry (Mem), Brian Cook (Orl)
To the Grizzlies: 1st round draft pick (Orl) Analysis: The biggest trade of the day because it had the most teams. Oh, and a former Rap was traded.
So to make up for this, here’s an appropriate re-imagining of a scene of Return of the Jedi. After all, it’s not like there’s any basketball to talk about.
Not the greatest name ever but it’ll do for now. Remember, that’s what the comment form is for.
Montreal 3 @ Washington 4 (SO) — Alex Ovechkin decided he was getting bored of the same old, same old goals. Last night, he stole the puck from Roman Hamrlik, backhand passed it to himself off the boards, broke in, got tripped, and proceeded to score from his back in what is the goal of the year. Meanwhile, the Habs are struggling to keep pace in the Eastern Conference. And as a bonus, here’s that Ovi goal.
NY Islanders 1 @ NY Rangers 3 — I don’t know how to summarize a straight-forward game like this one. Does “The win moves the Rangers one point ahead of the Habs in the standings” work? How about “Chris Drury had three assists”?
Nashville 2 @ Detroit 6 — A lesson for the Preds and the rest of the NHL: Don’t take penalties against the Red Wings. The Wings went 5/6 with the man advantage to decimate Nashville. Nic Lidstrom and Johan Franzen (free agent in the summer) both had a pair of goals.
St. Louis 3 @ Columbus 4 — The Blue Jackets’ win puts them six games above .500 in franchise history and they currently sit 6th in the West. They nearly coughed it up by giving up 2 goals late in the third but managed to hold on. The Jackets are the only team in the NHL not to have made the playoffs in franchise history. Prepare to hear that endlessly for the next two months.
Los Angeles 4 @ Anaheim 3 — Yeah, they’re free… Free fallin’! The Ducks have gone from contenders to pretenders over the last month and cemented that status with a loss to last year’s cellar-dwelling Kings. Jonathan Quick had 28 saves for the win. Look for him to suit up in the red, white, and blue in Van-city next February.
Welcome to the trial run of The Lowdown Blog. This can either go well or be an unmitigated disaster. If you have any tips for us today, send them to thelowdown@live.ca.
Facebook says they don’t own your pictures and information. They still own your soul. (Toronto Star)
Should Selig be indicted for letting the MLB become a joke? And, more importantly, should Jesse Ventura start dressing like he did in the mid-80’s? (Yahoo Sports)
Piss on the locker room and the administration will piss on your season. (Daily Chronicle via Deadspin)
A history of stupid ads tattooed on stupider people. I’ll being getting one next week. (New York Times)
Starbucks is doing instant coffee? And for only for $1 a cup! Meanwhile, I’m paying about 3-cents a cup for Maxwell House like a sucker. (CBC)
In Soviet Russia, government names you. (Olivia Munn)
I’ll take things that could go bankrupt for $500, Alex. These owners of the UFC are in danger of going bankrupt. (Sports by Brooks)
Another reason why Canadian college football is better than U.S. college football. (The Big Lead)
Kevin Garnett tells TNT’s Craig Sager what he can do with his All-Star suit.
The title pretty much says it all. We’re going to make a trial run of what I envision to be a typical day on The Lowdown Blog after we officially open the doors on May 1st. My current plans have a morning linkdump to start the day off. There will be a few posts during the day that will either be various news updates from around the world. Well, not just news but news, sports, entertainment, and randominity. Of course, nothing is set in stone yet so it will be a day of mostly flying by the seat of my pants. And no guarantee but I would anticipate The Lowdown Blog debut of Lowdown radio host Jackie Ho tomorrow.
You can keep up on tomorrow’s madness by subscribing to our news (RSS) feed by clicking here.
Well, it’s been an interesting week around here at Lowdown HQ. A monsoon washed through London leaving the parts of campus along the Thames flooded. We taped a show but we couldn’t get a hold of the interviewee we wanted. There’s a new boss in town at UWO that I unfortunately won’t work for. And tomorrow I’m due to colour commentate basketball which is only a problem considering that I know more about BASEketball than basketball. Continue reading →
It’s not often that I feel compelled to write up a random blog post based on a simple occurance in everyday life. But when I think about it, as a campus radio personality, everyday life for me tends to be fairly different from everyday life for most folks. No offence, but this is the greatest line of work in the world and I’m a little disappointed that I won’t be able to continue when I graduate in 3 months’ time.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. Friday night was “Rock the Rink” night at Western’s Thompson Arena. Any fans who wore purple shirts got in for free and everyone else had to buy a purple shirt. That made it a packed house at Thompson Arena, which is a pretty unusual occurrence, of about 700 people by most estimates. Most teams try to do a white-out or a black-out or whatever team colour but I think this is the first time in recorded history that a hockey crowd was a sea of purple. Add to this the fact that it was “Seniors Night” which meant there was a special pregame ceremony to honour all the graduating players before the game and this was geared up to be a special night. Continue reading →
One of the big storylines that always leads up to the Super Bowl and has nothing to do with football itself is the Super Bowl ads. This year, a lot of hype was generated by a 60-second ad for the upcoming Dreamworks movie Monsters and Aliens and SoBe Lifewater. In addition to the $6-million price tag for the spot, it’s making headlines for being the first 3D Super Bowl ad. NBC is also giving 3D a go beyond the Super Bowl by broadcasting an episode of Chuck in 3D (appropriately titled Chuck vs. the Third Dimension). So here’s some reasons to hold on to your 3D glasses and tune in Monday at 8:00 PM:
1. Yvonne Strahovski
Yvonne plays CIA agent Sarah Walker. Not only can she kick the ass of most the global terrorist network, she looks kick ass (sorry, horrid play on words) doing so often seen in various states of (un-) dress. If the pictures below don’t do her justice, then wait for a Chuck trademark slow-mo glam cam moment… in 3D.
Sarah plays Chuck’s sister Ellie. While Yvonne tends to get the top billing in the looks department, Sarah isn’t someone you would turn a blind eye to. She even got her own glam cam moment earlier this season.
If there’s one thing that the producers of Chuck to better than everyone else, it’s casting guest stars without screwing up the show with ridiculous stories (see Nanny, The). So far this season, we’ve seen Michael Clarke Duncan, John Larroquette, Michael Strahan, Tony Hale and Gary Cole among others with an appearance tonight by Dominic Monaghan in 3D. For the guys, the guest casting has been nothing short of stellar with Rachel Bilson, Melinda Clarke, Nicole Richie, Jordana Brewster, and an upcoming appearance by Tricia Helfer.
Chuck is sort of like James Bond meets… a sci-fi show that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is making continuous nerd cultural references. And in a sci-fi spy action-comedy show like Chuck you would expect car chases, explosions, shootings, saving the world, hot women, and lots of sci-fi/geek references which is all true here. Oh, I almost forgot… CATFIGHTS!
5. First Full TV Show in 3D
Now that we have Super Bowl ads in 3D, this was the next logical step. This isn’t the first time NBC has shown things in 3D. They played parts of a two-part episode of Third Rock from the Sun in 3D. Chuck vs. the Third Dimension will be shown entirely in 3D using Color-Code 3D technology. The only catch is that you need those blue-and-yellow 3D glasses (which you can pickup at Pepsi and SoBe displays in the US). If you can’t get your hands on a pair of 3D glasses, show star Zachary Levi says that drinking 2.1 to 2.4 cans of beer can solve your problem. In Canada, with exchange, that’s 4.3 to 5.1 cans of Canadian beer.
(3)6. The Bus
Jerome Bettis guest stars in this episode making him the second retired NFLer to appear this season. I don’t know what exactly he’s up to but the preview shows him as a Buy More employee. How can it possibly go badly?
7. It’s the Best Show You’re Not Watching
I know you probably get that a lot, especially with the save FNL campaign the blogosphere is running right now. I’d love to see a fourth season of FNL but I’ve become resigned to the fact that clear eyes and full hearts might sometimes lose. With NBC giving Jay Leno an hour of primetime broadcasting each night starting next season (though I expect that experiment to fail spectacularly), we have to save Chuck from a fate that the recession has made more likely for quality programming.
Along with all the stuff I’ve mentioned above, this is one of the best written shows on television. The little bits that you hear throughout the show tie together nicely at the end of the show. There’s all sorts of references to pop and nerd culture scattered throughout the show. The acting is some of the best on television. Even though Chuck and Sarah’s relationship is the fakest on television (because it’s just a CIA cover), it comes off as the realest one on TV.
If you still aren’t convinced, here’s NBC’s promo for Chuck vs. the Third Dimension.
If that isn’t enough, at the very least watch some past episodes of Chuck. And don’t forget to tune into NBC (CityTV in Canada) tonight at 8:00 PM.
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