You give me the caption

for this photo in the comments section!

Watching NBA semi-finals...

Ahh, it's fun to watch Kobe.

You know, I haven't been to work since last Friday? It's been a nice run of not going to the office (although, technically I did go to my office on Monday night to finish a story so they'd have it on Tuesday morning).

I'm watching the L.A./San Antonio game tonight. Three opinions: 1. Kobe is the best player of basketball on the planet at this time, 2. Popovich is the best coach in the NBA, he just has an old team right now, 3. Doug Collins is a great color man. I'd like to have a beer with him someday, I bet he has some great basketball stories.

Oh, game came back on, be right back...

OK, I'm back. Brent Barry just hit his fourth three of the game. Aren't we due for some more Barry offspring in the NBA by now? I'm talking Rick Barry's grandsons. Wouldn't they be getting to NBA age by now? Brent has to be 38, 39, right?

I want to call my dad or Solo with these thoughts, but I think it's too late to call them... so I'll blog them to myself.

Game came back on, crap!

Oooh, I just saw my first "The Dark Knight" preview on TV.

It's a 2-point game. Oberto was just jawing at Rony Turiaf. If I was Turiaf, I'd tell Oberto, "Dude, I've got a goat's heart, and I've still got more rebounds than you this series!" (It was his heart, right? And was it a goat heart, or like an emu heart? Doug Collins would know...)

Collins just said Barry was 36. I think he shaved a couple years as a favor.

Marv Albert still creeps me out, btw. ("YES!")

Oh, game on...

88-79 L.A, Pop just took a T.O. This Spurs team looks like so many KU NCAA teams under Roy Williams, where every player is just playing tight, or tired. You know individually, they're all way better than this, but collectively, they just look like dog crap.

Speaking of dog crap, I have to watch my language now. Turns out Evey dropped an, "Oh, shit." on Adrianne. Whoops. In my own defense, I lived for three years with Will Baxter, it was imperative that I learn his language. Now, I need to clean up my language, because my little girl is parroting everything we say.

Prediction: Kansas City gets an NBA team. And I can't afford to go to many games. And Michael Finley is the coach.

GAMe ON...

OK, so on the last play... there should have been a foul called on Derek Fisher -- a two-shot, non-shooting foul. That call was missed, obviously. It was not in the act of shooting, though, so ne three free throws like Marv suggested.

But, hey -- deal with it. Barry got the ball wide-open to begin with, then he put himself in a compromised situation. There was no good look to be had after that dribble.

Btw, that was not a goaltend on Lamar Odom. That was a clean block. So the refs blew one for the Lakers, too. (At the worst, it was a foul, and send him to the line... but no goaltend.)

Wow... I wasted an entire post blabbing about the Lakers game. Sorry. Wish I could bury some worthwhile nugget at the end of the post here, to reward the one person who read to the end... but I got nothing. Nothing at all.

At least I have a few good, new Evey photos, eh?

Memorial Day

As Evelyn would say today, "Gracias. For. Free. Dom."

We're waving the red, white and blue here. Photos are of our family who have served our great nation. A big thank you to them.

Went and saw Indiana Jones today with Adro. It was pretty good. Not as good as Iron Man, but still a lot of fun.

Five years ago today

Hard to believe.

(Yup... that's Peking Taste chicken-on-a-stick... taken on John's last day at GCSAA back in 2002)

Adrianne's Mini-Me

Well, Evey is still fighting a cough. We took her back to the doctor today, and they told us that she's getting better, this cough isn't something to worry about unless it comes along with a fever, too. We're pretty skittish though, we don't want to get back to pneumonia, and the doc has told us that her immune system has been weakened right now as an after-effect of having pneumonia. So we're keeping a close eye on her.

OK! Here's what I have for you as our parting shot before Memorial Day Weekend here... Adrianne and her Mini-Me. The scanned photo is of Adrianne, age 2. And the other photo is of Evelyn a few months ago... I should use a more recent pic of our 17-month-old, but I thought this shot showed that same smile. We'll try to recreate that same shot on her 2nd birthday, perhaps.

So you see, there's no doubt about it, this girl looks like her Momma. (Whew!)

Will Baxter on NPR

Yeah, it's just my best man, Will Baxter, being interviewed on NPR. Ho-hum...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90534241

Fair warning: Though Will does not swear (for once) this is a story about the horrors he saw in Mynamar, so it's rated PG-13...

Spidey-slippers tingling!

Hello!

We went to see The Cure Monday night. Not a bad show, not a great show. The weather was perfect and so was the company (my wife, Matt and Erica, David and Joc).

I stayed home from work today... Evey's sick again. She was diagnosed with pink eye and ear infections on Monday. But she's already getting better, and I think she'll be fine by tomorrow.

Me and Adro are looking forward to a new season of Last Comic Standing, which starts on Thursday night.

And exciting news for the Bulls, nabbing the No. 1 pick in the draft, even after only having a 2% shot at getting it. I say take Beasley, you're already guard heavy with Hinrich and Gordon... you need a big.

OK, I'm taking down the survey results but I'll list them as a sidebar on the page so we can see what happens when the draft gets here... also, a new poll... this one is easy. Does Mario stay, or go?

Everything in its right place

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, it's been a busy busy week...

Tuesday night I spent getting ready for the RADIOHEAD show in St. Louis.

Wednesday and most of Thursday was spent driving to St. Louis, rocking out to Radiohead, driving home.

Now it's Friday. The show was AWESOME. It feels great to finally see this band live. They're probably my No. 2 favorite band of all time (them and Pearl Jam switch back and forth frequently).

Anyway, I'll spare any details for now, other than to say it was a great trip... Adro, Bart and Gabe went with me. And I came home with a smile on my face, and very very tired.

Included is a YouTube clip from the show, to give you a look at what we saw in person Wednesday night.




http://mel.opho.be/index.php/show-reviews/radiohead-verizon-wireless-amphitheatre-st-louis-mo-may-14-2008.html

The excitement continues!

I got some GREAT news today... my editor-in-chief returned from Minneapolis, where he attended the annual Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association annual meeting. TOCA is an association everyone on my staff belongs to, as do other industry magazines like Golfdom, GolfWeek SuperNews, TurfNet, Superintendent (you get the picture -- I'm sure you subscribe to a few of those I just mentioned).

He brought back 7 TOCA awards, one of which was the 2008 first place award for general feature writing, which I won for "A Shark's Tale," my December 2007 cover story on Greg Norman.

YEAHH!!!!

It's no Golf Writers Association of America award (I've written about the GWAA here before, those are the awards I REALLY covet) but it's a first place writing award, which makes me smile. I'm really, really happy about it, actually. I've won three TOCA awards before this, two were for photography, and one was for writing, but I was a co-author.

This one is solely mine, and it's in a category I just love -- general feature writing. It's the "best actor" award of magazine writing, in my eyes. Other categories were things like, "best story about a new product," or "best story by a left-handed, near-sighted author in the Pacific Northwest." OK, that last one is BS, but you get what I'm saying, right?

I've got this award, now I can start working harder on trying to crack through on the GWAA awards... I feel a step closer now, like maybe I'm doing something worthwhile every so often, I just need to keep working hard.

I re-read the story today, sat in my office and tried to just enjoy it, 8 months removed from writing it. I found a few parts in the story I would like to change right now, but that's the advantage of hindsight. I don't think it's my best writing... maybe I'm still a little burned up that I didn't win this award in 2007 for my story on New Orleans (our competitor won it on the same story... and that was crap, in my eyes). But it is a pretty good piece on Greg Norman, some fun insights on who he is, and why he's so adamant about protecting the environment.

I think I'll send thank you notes to everyone in the story who I interviewed. It feels like the right thing to do. Greg Norman, Steve Elkington, Pete Dye, Bill Kubly, among others, will all be getting a nice note from me in the mail.

You want a speech? How't this:

To quote the great Rod Tidwell, as played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire, "Wait, wait, wait, wait... just... let me enjoy this for a minute."

what a mother's day!!!

Man, I got good news all over the place today...

And I'm not just talking about CBS replaying the KU championship game today...

1. Congrats to Ted and Heather Bokern, who welcomed Noah to the world today at 3 a.m. I'm sure we'll have photos soon. What a mother's day for Ted and Heather!

2. I found out today that my great friends THE NEUTEBOOMS are expecting a baby... Holy crap, this knocked me back like a champ! You have no idea how proud I am of these two! WOW!

More soon... I'm busy freaking out about the thought of my boy Neuty being a dad!

(pictured: my mom and dad, grandma, wife and daugther on mother's day)

Happy Mother's Day!

Ahh, Mother's Day. I love it. Moms rock. Especially the mother of my child. And the mom of me. And the mom of my wife.

(And you, too, if you're a mom.)

I enjoy this Mother's Day stuff, because I also enjoy Father's Day now. It's cool to be a parent. I'll blame Hallmark for overkill on the holidays, but the parent days... I'm way down with that.

Attached is a photo of Evey taken tonight. She's doing much better, thanks. But someone forgot to tell her it's Mom's weekend. She's been a daddy's girl this weekend, big time. She doesn't want me to put her down at all. Yikes.

Hey, the wind is blowing something fierce out. As long as it's not a tornado...

I spent most of the evening playing with two new toys, my digital photo frame (from my sis) and my iPod alarm clock (from my mom and dad). Cool gadgets both, I think I'm going to really dig them.

Tomorrow morning, Resurrection Sunday on the Buzz. I'll be there. Will you? (96.5 on the local FM dial, or http://www.965thebuzz.com/ for... well, for my own self-righteousness, really.)

I get to see Radiohead Wednesday night. WOW!

Major breakthrough for the Will Baxter machine

I've been remiss in getting this information out sooner... Evey's pneumonia has had me behind the 8-ball all week... but...

Will had a photo on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times.

And he's inside this week's Newsweek, too.

Oh, and right now he's shooting for the London Telegraph...

(He's in Myanmar shooting the aftermath of the cyclone.)

Go get 'em, Baxter!

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/05/05/world/0505-MYANMAR_13.html

Pneumonia?!?!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately... Evey has pneumonia, we found out Monday... I'm home with her today, she's bouncing back nicely, as these photos show...

Me and Lerv in Charlotte

This shot is of me and Lervik at dinner last night in Charlotte, N.C.

This one's for Lervik

My Dad, me, Sean and Nick, on Bourbon Street after the 'Hawks beat Marquette.