Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Griffey to return for 2010 season

One of the sports headlines that grabbed my attention today was Ken Griffey Jr. signing a one-year deal with the Seattle Mariners in what will be his 22nd season in the major leagues.


Griffey, who has been a poster-child for ages in Seattle, rejoined his old club before the start of the 2009 season and today's events indicate he will be playing at least one more season with the Mariners. Coming into last year, Griffey had World Series aspirations for his team, and although I give him credit for setting the bar high, he had a very sub par year, batting .214 with 19 home runs and 57 RBIs and the Mariners finished 85-77, 3rd in the AL West.

Well, flash forward to 2010, because once again, Griffey, at age 39 is back for another season and he apparantly has the feeling he can bring the Mariners to the fall classic. Hate to crush your dreams Mr.Griffey, but your playing for the Seattle Mariners, a team who has failed to make the playoffs since 2001. Even in the late 90's when the Mariners were a mildly descent ball club, the team choked in the postseason (see 2001 when the Mariners went 116-46 in the regular season and went 4-6 in the postseason) and never made that final step to the World Series.

What hurts even more is that Seattle front office is getting reshuffled (yeah, they finally hired a new GM), and unless the Mariners reach into their pockets and sign some free agents who won't be busts (ala Richie Sexson), Ken Griffey Jr. will be watching the playoffs from the comfort of his home, rather than celebrating a championship of sorts on the field as the current roster for the Mariners would get crushed by the Yankees, Red Sox or Angels.

In closing, I will tip my hat to Griffey for coming back to the majors for another season. He is one of the few players who I have respect for having natural talent and accomplishing so much without the help of a steroid needle or illegal substance. He may get a bad rap here and there for being a brat towards the media, but in all due respect, almost every professional athlete is that way to a degree.

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Posted by Kyle at 11:23 AM | | Comments

Jimmy The Greek Review

Tonight, ESPN aired one of their 30 for 30 documentaries on Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, a famous bookie who made a name for himself in football and the bookmaking industry.

In watching this one-hour short film, it was interesting to learn about the life of Jimmy The Greek. For those of you who don't know, he was a person who brought bookmaking, or as many call it "sports betting" out from the underground and into the limelight. Through owning his own business and working for NFL Today on CBS, he helped transform the bookmaking industry singlehandedly to what it is today in the United States, and he was a very well-known person up until his death in 1996.

What I found to be really impressive about this guy was his knowledge on bookmaking. From a betting standpoint, he knew his stuff, as many people turned to him for advice on handicapping everything from sports, to horse racing and even presidential elections. He had many interesting winning wagers that won him lots of dough, including a $10,000 bet that featured 17:1 odds on the 1948 election between Truman/Dewey, which net him a cool $170,000.

Overall, the short film on him was very interesting, and it did a great job documenting the life of Jimmy The Greek. If I had to choose one word to describe the greek's lifestyle, I would have to pick "intense". This film did a great job capturing the intense life that Jimmy The Greek lived and he seemed to be an individual who went full-throttle up until his death living his life to the fullest.

Also, prior to tonight, I had not seen any of the 30 for 30 documentaries that ESPN had aired, but after watching this one on Jimmy The Greek, I have to say I am impressed what ESPN is bringing to the table.

ESPN will have additional 30 for 30 documentaries airing on television through the end of this year, including a re air of Jimmy The Greek in the next couple days. Full Schedule

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Posted by Kyle at 12:11 AM | | Comments

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

I should probably be sleeping...

As I lay here, the time is approaching 4:30am, and I can only think of one thing. Why didn't I fall asleep three hours ago???


Over the past year, I seemed to have developed a crazy sleep schedule, as on average, I do not fall asleep until after 2am. Sure there isn't much happening in the early morning hours, but thanks to a 2:30-11pm work schedule, and a late night mentality developed during my college years, staying up deep into the night is a daily occurrence.

I will admit though, there are benefits of living a late night life. You don't have to deal with traffic on the ride home from work, picking up fast food can be a breeze, and even though its near midnight when you finally arrive home, there is a great amount of TV programming on late at night (and if there is breaking late night news on CNN, your damn right I am going to be the first person to know about it).

All in all, you might as well stamp "Late Night Rowdie" across my face, as I just cannot seem to go to bed at a reasonable hour these days and savor staying up late into the night. Maybe I should start taking some NyQuil at night, and that will help me get to bed at a reasonable hour.

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Posted by Kyle at 1:48 AM | | Comments

Monday, November 02, 2009

Blog Much???

At this point in time, the answer would have to be, "no".

Hopefully, that will change in the coming months though as I am hoping to post three to five times a week, rather than what seems to be once per year. At the current rate, I seem to be dropping blog posts in bunches at the most random times, and about the most random things possible, which was not my initial goal of establishing The Wheel of Cheese blog.

I just recently thought of my lack of posts, as one of my posts around this time last November had to do with the 24 hours of basketball that were aired on the ESPN family of networks to start off the college basketball season. I remember being excited, as I hoped to start my blog up again, and shortly after that post, I posted one more time to end the year of 2008. Whats even more sad is that over the course of 2008, I did not break the 20-post mark. Even more so, in 2009, I am just now getting close to breaking the 10-post mark.

In the future, I shall be aiming to keep up a consistent amount of posts, and cover a wide variety of topics. To give myself some motivation, I have decided to create a contest, in what will be dubbed the Swine Flu Challenge. The contest is pretty simple...between The Wheel of Cheese and the Swine Flu, whichever lasts the longest, will be declared the winner.

Lets just hope it doesn't come down to the flu knocking me out of contention in this contest :)

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Posted by Kyle at 1:19 AM | | Comments

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

09.09.09

Today is a day that will happen only once in a person's lifetime...literally.

With September 9, 2009 currently happening, I thought I would make a quick blog post about it. For some reason, this day sticks out more to me than 08.08.08 did, as Google is showing a redesigned home page for this historic day and I've heard plenty of people making jokes about it. This day will get even crazier when the clock strikes 09:09:09pm later on today. I will say this though...today will never stack up to when I saw the time 12:34:56 on July 8, 2009. That's right folks, 12:34:56 07/08/09...pretty crazy.

I've sat around wondering if anything interesting will happen today to me, and I've come to the conclusion that anything can go down. I have a job interview today, an 8 hour workday, and I'll probably go to Subway for dinner, so there is plenty of potential for something unusually good to happen to me today. Heck, I should probably go buy a lottery ticket because the Powerball drawing is $67 million and with this randomness occurring, I might just win...or maybe I won't.

The thing to me that makes this day even more special, the next 09.09.09 won't occur until the year 3009, and when that happens, humans will probably have blown Earth up into a million pieces, and won't have signs of life on it...

So its safe to say there will never be another 09.09.09 again!

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Posted by Kyle at 10:29 AM | | Comments

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Brand New Sweater

One thing I think is very interesting about sports is the massive amount of jerseys being introduced these days. Some teams have just a simple home/away jersey combination (ex- New York Yankees), while some seem to have more jersey combos than teams in their conference (ex - Oregon Ducks). This brings me to the thought of the newest jersey to be unveiled, the Minnesota Wild's third jersey.

Since their inception into the National Hockey League (NHL) in 2000, the Wild have had a very minor changes to their jerseys. First it was the traditional home/away jerseys (green/white), which sat pretty good with fans (myself included). In 2007, that changed as the Wild unveiled a new home jersey which was part of the Reebok Edge jersey system. Since then, that jersey has replaced the former green home sweater, and the Wild has remained one of the few NHL teams without a third jersey.

That is until now, as the Wild unveiled their new third uniform at the Minnesota State Fair. I've known about this for awhile now (the jersey was leaked at Icethetics.info a few days prior), but after getting a nice closeup view of the jersey, I would have to say I am not completely sold on the jersey. I will admit, it has a nice Minnesota-Northern-Iron Range feel to it, but the overall design is not as good as the other jerseys the Wild currently wear. From the front, the jersey looks absolutely great, but there are three things that bother me when I look at this jersey in comparison to the current home/away sweaters...

1) Overall Design - Looks like the home uniform with different colors and a new logo.
2) Blandness - The design is good, but not as high quality as other Wild jerseys.
3) Too Much White - The white stripes/numbers/name plates stand out too much from the green color of the jersey. I would have liked to see some darker colors used (ex - gold/red).

With those three negatives in mind, its still awesome to see that the Wild came out with a new jersey for the 2009-10 season. I guess it will probably take a little while for this design to wear on me, but odds are, I'll probably like the new sweater once I get to see the Wild wearing it this season.

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Posted by Kyle at 9:41 PM | | Comments

Monday, August 17, 2009

Mallrats

It may have taken two nights to complete, but I finally finished watching the movie Mallrats. I watched it in two 45 minute sessions due to being very sleepy, but thanks to On Demand (shameless plug), I was able to start and pickup right where I had left off the following day.

Brief Review: If I had to sum up the movie in one word, it would be great. The movie itself has many funny and odd moments throughout, which adds up to a rather unique, yet simple storyline. The movie itself takes place in Minnesota, which was an additional plus as I enjoy movies that are filmed in Minnesota.

Note: For those of you who don't know, Mallrats was released in 1995, and filmed at Eden Prairie Center. I've never been to that mall, but after seeing this movie, I am tempted to go there just to loiter and do absolutely nothing (well maybe shop since it is a mall). The movie also had a spot at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport, and the rest appears to be filmed in sunny Los Angeles, California. For some reason, this screams D2: The Mighty Ducks, as many of their scenes were filmed in Minnesota and the rest was filmed in California as well.

Another cool thing about this movie is that since it was filmed 14 years ago, you'll notice little nuances such as the older clothing styles, pro hockey teams that no longer exist, stationwagon and movie actors who look younger. Overall, its like going back in a time machine and seeing what life looked like 15 years ago.

Best Quote: The movie itself had lots of memorable quotes, and my personal favorite came when Brodie started to play a hockey video game shortly before getting dumped by his girlfriend...

[Brodie picks up a controller and continues a paused video game]

Rene: What are you doing? You promised me breakfast.

Brodie: "Breakfast, shmreakfast. Look at the score, for Christ's sake. It's only the second period and I'm up 12 to 2. Breakfasts come and go, Rene, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime."

Sure that quote will make any person who enjoys sports laugh, and what makes that even more funny is that the Hartford Whalers are no longer an NHL franchise.

Yay/Nay???: If you haven't seen the movie Mallrats yet, I would highly recommend it. It may not be a best-seller, or a movie that is referenced as frequently as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but the movie does have quite a few laughs and the romantic-comedy style movie is more funny than cheesy.

Movie Rating = 3 out of 5 stars

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Posted by Kyle at 10:11 PM | | Comments

Monday, July 06, 2009

Reliving My Youth


This weekend, I am proud to say, I relived my youth and went on a slip-n-slide for the first time in a long time.

The action was intense, and by the time everything was set and done, I had marks on my chest, water in my ears/nose, a little bit of sun tan and memories to last me for awhile.

As I sit here writing this, my body aches, and my back is stiffer than a board...but I will definitely say it was well worth it. I guess you could say your never too old to relive your youth. This post also has me wanting to go purchase a slip-n-slide for my own personal use in my own yard...haha.

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Posted by Kyle at 11:06 AM | | Comments