f2f2s |

I know this update took a while to write, but I had to make sure I got all the pictures and videos right since it was quite a day.  I wish I’d gotten it all done before the Brazil game yesterday, but I had quite a time travelling between NYC and ATL and that took up a bit of my time.

This was all made possible to begin with because I was able to work from home that day and woke up super early to get a bunch of reports finalized for the CEO, CFO and VP of Marketing (who, I later found out, was in a pub in London watching the USA/Spain game just like me).  A sacrifice well worth it after what transpired.

Since I’ve referenced if often I figure I should give you an idea of what Nevada Smith’s is like on a national team game day.  Here’s a snapshot of a game that started at 230pm in the middle of the workweek

Awesome.  If you want some more on the bar, here’s a really cool documentary I saw on The Offside Rules (more on this dude later as well).  It’s by far the best place to watch a game in New York.  If you are ever up here for any big game day, even just a Saturday during EPL season, make sure you stop by.

Well, I won’t waste my time with a recap of the Spain game since you can find that in any number of places but needless to say the whole place, minus about a half dozen Spanish fans, was absolutely buzzing after Jozy’s first goal.  This video is brought to you by the NYRB’s Empire Supporters Club and is a chant I’m sure they became familiar with when during Jozy’s time there. It’s only the last part, but I think you get the idea.

The early second half was characterized by every USA fan just begging for the clock to tick faster.  However, once Dempsey put in the second goal the place erupted as everyone realized that “OMG WE BEAT SPAIN!!!”  While I wish I had some video from the celebrations after the two goals, I think that this vid of the final seconds leading in to full time will have to do.

America

Now, being the soccer aficianado that I am, I knew that the other big event going on Wednesday was Steve Nash’s Showdown in Chinatown.  I stuck around the bar for a bit after the game, made friends with the others who hung around (the aforementioned ESC), and we decided to brave the rain and head down to Chinatown to watch some street soccer.

This sign in Little Italy began many chants towards young Giusepppe.

Well, lucky for me, one of the guys I met and was hanging out with turned out to be noted soccer blogger and general all around badass SF from The Offside Rules.  When we got to the Roosevelt Park for the game, he hooked me up something fierce so I could get on the field.

Here’s some of what I was able to get pregame and during the first half.

That popular dude in the middle was swarmed by folk all day.  Judging by how easy it was to get access to the other people involved, clearly everyone wants him to come to the Knicks.

Henry, discussing his potential Red Bulls move once he’s finished in Barca.

Chris Bosh is tall

Quite tall.  But we talked GT and and I tried to convince him to come to Atlanta in 2010.

“Grant, how would feel if Laettner named one of his sharks after you?”

“Tony, do you like Freedom Fries?”
Tony: “I will kill you”

And a few action shots from the game.

Salamon Kalou basically ran this game, but the chants of “Is this Chelsea?” after he skyed shot after shot were pretty funny.

I think I got most of the participants in this shot.

Here’s your super secret snapshot of the set of Ashton Kutcher’s movie being filmed at my old high school.

Since I know you’re so interested, we actually don’t even have a class of 1994 as the school wasn’t built until 1998, and there was no senior class until 2000.

Thank you to HS friend Kristen for the photo.

First game, we lost due to a terrible red card and a traitor

Second game, well, Jim Mora sums this one up

But the third game… Oh the third game.

Against all odds baby!

Now bring on Spain on Wednesday in the semi-final!

A few ideas I’ve had of shows I would watch/blogs I would read.  I trust that you are smart enough to figure out which idea may attach to which category(s)

You’re Not Hot Enough to Say That
Inspired partly by the very funny website Overheard in New York and partly by just how amazed I am at what ugly people are willing to say about much much hotter people.  The kicker was this afternoon when I was walking back from lunch and heard a girl refer to someone as looking like a “30 year old softball player.”  I found this kinda funny so I turned around only to see this 5 foot 2, 230 pounder waddling up behind me.  Take these quotes, add in a quick camera phone snapshot, and boom!  Instant success.

Where Are They Now
Now, this one is a little more vague because it can apply to many ideas.  I’ve just always been enthralled by what has happened to fringe celebrities since they came crashing down to Earth.  First up, I want to know about ex-American Gladiators as I discussed in this post a couple years ago.  Are you really going to tell me you wouldn’t watch/read about someone tracking Bronco down and asking him questions like “So really, how many times per week do get drunk at the bar and start rambling on about being a Gladiator?” and “How did you feel about the movie Gladiator?” or “How many different jobs have you gotten as a personal trainer at gyms just by putting ‘Gladiator’ on your resume?”  HUUUUUGE success.
Another option, finding people from start up companies that failed spectacularly and talking to them.  I’m not talking about, “well, we gave it a good shot for a few year but then ran through our couple million in funding.”  Oh no, I want to talk to people like Boo.com and ask them “Wait, you really spent over $180m in 6 months just trying to launch a retail store?”  Or maybe talk to the people at The Learning Company and ask “So how lucky do you feel that you got Mattel to buy you for $3.5billion when they were only able to sell you for $30m the next year?”

Added Outside Commentary
This idea came from a mix of Bill Simmons talking about a Mystery Science Theater-esque podcast where he would record a podcast of commentary timed perfectly to a movie you could watch with it and the earlier idea from Sam’s sister about “Watch Brad Watch Sports.”  That concept was basically instead of you watching a Braves game on TBS, you would watch the Braves game from a camera set up behind our friend Brad as he was watching TBS and get his commentary and outrageous reactions throughout.
If you get a significantly funny/informed/outlandish person to do this, it would be a hit.

I know people want to hate Microsoft because, well, they’re Microsoft, but I feel like Google’s got all the love from everyone now despite some recent events that aren’t quite in line with “Don’t Be Evil.”

Plus Microsoft just put out a new search engine and I figured it Google ever wasn’t giving me what I wanted I’d check it out.

Well, today was that day as I tried to search for an article I had seen a couple years ago about Scotts Company altering insurance premiums for employees based on how healthily they lived.  It’s a similar story to the one that was published recent in the Wall Street Journal about Safeway and I wanted to send it to someone for comparison.

Try as I might, I just could not get Google to find anything.  I got a lot of results about heathcare clinics run by guys named Scott and how Mr. Scott wanted to change insurance and blah blah blah.  So I tried Bing.

BING!

After getting it to work on Bing very quickly and easily, I went back and tried the exact same search string on Google in case I hadn’t already, just to see what would happen.  Here are the results for the search on “scotts company health care insurance article”

Google search result (click picture for bigger version)

As you can see, it took 7 results for Google to give me anything worthwhile, since the only thing worthwhile was an actual copy of the article.  The previous 6 results are varying levels of unrelated.

Bing search result (again, click the picture for bigger version)

Now, not only is the first result what I’m looking for, but almost everything that comes back at the top of the search is relevant.  And when it’s not the article, at least it’s about the right company, which should be expected if that’s the first word in the search.

So yeah Google, step your game up.

This past weekend was the Big Apple BBQ festival.  Being from Atlanta, I was interested to see just what exactly New Yorkers could do when it came to barbecue.

Overall I was fairly impressed, although a lot of that came from the North Carolinians and Texans they invited up to cook.  The NY barbecue joints were better than I expected, but not great.

This was a pretty standard line.  The tent out in the distance is where we were headed after a few snaking turns.  All of the people leaving the long lines for Southern BBQ to get in the short lines for NY BBQ were doing it wrong.  It’s worth the wait.

Whole hog sandwich and coleslaw from The Pit, based out of North Carolina.  Nice vinegar-y taste on a very good sandwich.  The sides as a whole were surprisingly weak.  Someone who had been here before tried to explain why to me, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I wanted some Brunswick stew somewhere along the line.

Billy Mays made an appearence to shill some Oxy Clean.  As soon as he showed up a mass of people formed to watch him do something they’ve seen dozens of times before.  It’s crazy.  People love this guy.

Unfortunately the rain started coming pretty hard so we left the BBQ street fest and went to a restaurant called Wildwoods instead.  Pretty good food, but I was more happy with the fact that they had Firefly.  I introduced a couple South Africans to it, and they took pretty well to a sweet tea vodka.

As I lay here, watching the Lakers/Magic game and clearing out my google reader starred items, I came across these two videos that are surprisingly recent and enjoyable.

First there’s a quiz show that takes place on a roller coaster, and then a 17 yo Canadian girl beat boxing.

AHHHHHHHH

Julia Dales seems cool

Can all Canadians do this?

You may recall that last year I did a ton of work on US Open Cup updates, finding hometown stories and recapping all of the scores here.  Well, the USOC website (http://usopencup.com) does such an awesome job now that I don’t feel the need to go through all that effort.  And there is the fact that I have a job I enjoy doing that takes up my time during the day as well.  And Atlanta doesn’t have a team anymore outside of a very new amateur side I’ve never heard of.

Plus, I have another project on the side, an NBA auction draft.  Basically how it works is that 30 teams each have $1000 to spend on current NBA players.  They have a total roster size of 8, and each day 10 more players are auctioned off.  This is going to last 5 weeks, so 350 players will be available.

If this sounds like something interesting, you can watch the procedings here: http://auction.f2f2s.com

I’ve spent a lot of time after work over the past week putting it all together, so while it’s pretty bland to look at hopefully you enjoy what’s inside.

I told you I’d get a post up with all of the links from the past couple weeks sooner or later.

And remember, don’t get too close to Gooch if he has a big bottle of champagne in his hands, even if you are a very attractive Belgian blonde.

Could social gaming run afoul of gambling laws? (VentureBeat)
I hate to wish misfortune on any industry, but if lawmakers coming down on these companies who are clearly doing nothing wrong does something to help remove the ridiculous laws that make it harder for me and others to play poker, then I’m all for it.

Han Solo, P.I. is one Pitch Perfect Mashup (Gizmodo)
Someone remade the Magnum P.I. intro with shots from Star Wars.  These videos…Jesus.
First look at the new intro

And now check out the two intros side-by-side to really appreciate how awesome it is

Ferris Bueller House Up For Sale (Luxist)
If you want the house that Cameron lived in, with glass garage included, you can have it now for about $2.3 million.

You Want to See Explosive, NBA Fans? (Deadspin)
The fans of Greek team Olympiakos (Josh Childress’s current team) were a little unhappy about losing to big rival Panathinaikos.

Hmmm, I think it’s gonna rain today.

Ugh.  I guess this is what I get for working from home today.