always love a comment from willis reed...

and as you all know, comments will be rewarded with lots of love. hope all is well in cleveland willis. lebron was the man and here's hoping the tribe turns it around. always room on the yankee bandwagon for you willis. come to new york and we'll have a drink and talk about it.

love k.g...

But even Kidd was not the most productive player in the league. As Malcolm Gladwell revealed yesterday on his website, I analyzed the 2005-06 season and the player who led the league in Wins Produced was Kevin Garnett. Garnett finished the season with 26 Wins Produced. This marks the fourth consecutive season Garnett has been the most productive player in the NBA. Yet the sportswriters didn’t show KG any love when it comes to the MVP voting. Not a single sportswriter named him on an MVP ballot. He also wasn’t named to the All-NBA First Team, Second Team, or Third Team.

The problem for KG is not his game, but his teammates. In 2002-03 Garnett produced 31.5 wins. The rest of his team produced 15.1. The next season Garnett produced 30.5 wins while the rest of the T-Wolves produced 25.3 victories. The increased productivity of his teammates allowed the writers to notice Garnett and give him the league MVP award.

In 2004-05, as we note in the book, Garnett was essentially the same player who won the MVP. He produced 30 wins, but his teammates only produced 14.8 victories. This past season, just to make life even less fun, his teammates only produced 9.4 wins. So over the past four seasons, Garnett’s teammates have averaged 16.1 wins per year. Although Garnett is averaging close to 30 wins per season, it is not enough to overcome the performance of his co-workers.

And that is the tragedy of Kevin Garnett. Year after year he is the most productive player in the league. And year after year he plays with many players who are not only not average, but quite a bit below average.

forgot to post this earlier....

Desmond Dekker, the Jamaican singer whose 1969 hit, "The Israelites," opened up a worldwide audience for reggae, died on Wednesday. He was 64.

Mr. Dekker was named Desmond Adolphus Dacres when he was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1941. As a teenager he worked in a welding shop alongside Bob Marley and auditioned unsuccessfully for various producers until Mr. Marley encouraged him to try out for his own first producer, Leslie Kong.

Mr. Kong produced Mr. Dekker's first single, "Honour Thy Father and Mother," in 1963, and it reached No. 1 in Jamaica. Like many of Mr. Dekker's songs, it carried a message. A string of Jamaican hits followed, including "It Pays," "Sinners Come Home" and "Labour for Learning." Mr. Dekker had a total of 20 No. 1 hits in Jamaica.

A series of songs including "Rude Boy Train" and "Rudie Got Soul" made Mr. Dekker a hero of Jamaica's rough urban "rude boy" culture.

great wwII posters...

need to know more about mexican wrestling...

"Nacho Libre" borrows its inspiration as well, some of it from historical sources. A 1963 Mexican lucha movie called "El Señor Tormenta" told the story of a priest who becomes a luchador in order to save his orphanage. The film encouraged a real priest, the Rev. Sergio Gutierrez Benítez, to take up wrestling in order to save a shelter for homeless children in the port city of Veracruz. Fighting under the name Fray Tormenta (Brother Storm), he appeared in more than 1,000 matches and raised enough money to shelter more than 3,000 street kids.

once upon a time not long ago...

world cup t.v. schedule...

i'll be rooting for Yu Jin Jung...

it's that time of year again. yu is from n.y. and is going to dominate. observe and respect.

finally...

randy pitches a great game against the first-place tigers (odd to be saying that eh?)

very excited for sinorice moss...

borat in cannes...

you should really check out the rest of them as well.

i heard you got the fever for the flavor...

great win by the yanks last nite...

finally got ortiz out in a big spot. kyle farnsworth? who knew?

two hot game 7's tonite...

europe loves hard core metal...

these guys (lordi) won the eurovision contest, which is like a more serious european version of american idol. they look like raider fans to me.

so the player coach can get his noodle on...

found this site after checking out entertainment weekly's top 25 music sites. they even have a show that i think the player coach, myself and earl babst attended at the old boston garden. friend of fredeeky's turntable lab is number 8. respect. also, here's a t-shirt for the player coach i found on their web site.

thanks to jimmy page...

for introducing me to the hype machine...hopefully this will allow me to link up the bliz to more hot jams and thus increase it's entertainment value ten fold. observe and respect some jams! also feel free to lob a request or two up and i'll see what i can do to make your dreams come true.

good baseball fight this weekend...

some others (fredeeky was at the benitez/martinez game, reggie loves the marichel incident and nolan ryan beating down robin ventura was an all-time highlight):

holy crap, it's a hipster report...

thanks to high life, a loyal reader and fredeeky's attorney...



Figured I would fire off a short one before I leave for Kansas City [note number of songs that could be referenced here] to keep the readers placated. Nothing much new these days, but two bands that are sharing a bill Monday night at the Mercury Lounge deserve a mention. I am guessing the place clears out after Sunset Rubdown - once again, hyped bands opening for a mildly successful, not that awesome rock band. (for those keeping tabs Frog Eyes is headlining with Sunset Rubdown and Beirut opening)



Beirut - Gulag Orkestar - this album is probably a little out there for most of our readers, but really worth the effort. If Stephin Merritt and Ennio Morricone made an album together it would sound something like this. Checkout Postcards From Italy, which is clearly the highlight. This guy is 19, played almost everything on the album himself (trumpet included), and Jeremey Barnes of NMH plays drums here and there. Give Postcards a few spins and you will come around to its Spaghetti Western brilliance. Blondie!!!!!!!



Sunset Rubdown - terrible band name aside, this album is pretty awesome. As mentioned all over the internets, this is Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade's "other band" and that is exactly what it sounds like. His lyrics are kind of terrible at times, but really grow on me. I think this would be awesome live.



And something for the masses from the vault. I busted out one of my all time favorites this weekend - Violent Femmes/Violent Femmes. This album never gets old. As a sixth grader I can still remember rocking out to Add It Up at summer camp. So fucking good. Throw this on and turn it up. Never has an acoustic guitar sounded so brutal. How this never made it onto my ipod is beyond me (although I did have three other VF albums on there...)

chuck taylor is a commenting machine...

and you know i loves the comments. he even references big head todd and the monsters. big up all over your self chuck taylor.

looks like they finally found andre's safe-house...

Inside, he took just a few snapshots to document the scene. Beer cans by the tens of thousands. Mountains of cans burying the furniture. The water and heat were shut off, apparently on purpose by the tenant, who evidently drank Coors Light beer exclusively for the eight years he lived there.

The cans were recycled for 800 dollars, an estimated 70,000 cans: 24 beers a day for 8 years.

for ron-ron...

sub-standard juice is so delish...

It has become a big no-no in school lunchboxes because of its unhealthy reputation.

But it seems that Sunny D, formerly known as Sunny Delight, is not half as bad for children as it is for fish.

Around 8,000 litres of concentrate used to make the drink leaked into a watercourse on Wednesday morning, turning the river bright yellow.

Dozens of fish were found floating on the surface, poisoned by the lurid mixture.

The spill of 'sub-standard' juice was a category one pollution incident, the most serious kind, according to the Environment Agency.

It was caused by a split in an underground fibreglass tank at the Gerber Foods Soft Drink factory in Bridgwater, Somerset. Approximately six tons of juice and concentrate, due for disposal, seeped into a tributary of the River Parrett.

mets take two of three...

considering how banged up the yanks are, i'm not too miserable with the outcome. nice job by gay-rod to hit into a double play with runners on first and second and one out in the eighth. that guy is killing me. anyway, the games were all entertaining and that's all you really want in these regular season matchups. more than we can say for game seven of the cavs/pistons yesterday. the second half of that one was a real stinker.

one of the greatest hip-hop jams of all time...

the real deal...

do it yourself motivational posters...

paintings from video games...

ahh, yes, Road Rash will always hold a special place in my heart. When I think of the sega game console, I immediately think of dust, probably because it was black. The ability not only to race, but also to steal cops billy clubs and hit other participants proved to be the exact formula to get me addicted. Plus these early digital landscapes are gorgeous.

a walk to work with fredeeky...

as you all know i likes my walking. it's a great lazy man's excercise, particularly in new york where there is lots of stimuli for your brain. the last time i took my beloved readers along on a walk from work with me it was a late night winter type of situation. today i bring you the spring time walk to work experience. most of these shots were taken secretly on the east side of sixth avenue and the west side of broadway from fredeeky's house to times square. enjoy the sharing.













as always, the jams are a large part of the walking to work experience. here's what i listened to:

on my radio -- the selector//blue eyes -- uncle tupelo//the wind -- cat stevens//graceland -- paul simon and willie nelson//love cats -- the cure//you are a runner and i am my father's son -- wolf parade//blinded by the light -- the streets//yazoo st. scandal -- bob dylan & the band//damn it feels good to be a gangster -- geto boys

not the toughest group of songs i've listened to (thank god the geto boys came on at the end), but observe and respect my honesty