Awful Tattoos.

These are two of the worst tattoos I have ever seen, and they are both on the same person: White-supremacist MMA fighter Melvin Costa. [Amazingly there exists no Wikipedia page for this guy, so I just stuck in a link to a random blog post about his tattoos.]

Holy Hockey, it's Playoff Time!

Ahh, yes. Today is the first of a two-day break that separates the six-and-a-half months of "regular season" from the inexplicably long two-month "postseason." I know hockey isn't the most popular topic around here, but the teams from Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis have each had rather notable years.

Let's start with Chicago because, well, saying anything nice about the Blackhawks churns my stomach. This is a young team improving rapidly, and they made the playoffs this year for the first time since 2002 (they haven't been any good, though, for a decade and a half). Chicago should make easy work of its first series with Calgary, though I make no predictions beyond that. Going forward, everything looks great for the next 5 years for the Hawks, who will be perennial contenders for the Cup - if they can resolve the issue of their aging goaltender. Bonus points: President Obama's favorite Chicago-style pizza comes from St. Louis' awesomely-named Pi, about a tenth of a mile from my apartment.

Another interesting development comes out of Boston, where the perrenially mediocre Bruins have had an astonishingly good season and have claimed the top spot in the East. I don't really know much about the B's except that they've got some solid goaltending, but their Goal Differential numbers have been outstanding, coming in at +80 for the year - more than 1.5 times that of any other team. I'd have to say that Boston is a narrow favorite as my top choice for the Cup, but competition is pretty tough this year. Winning the East is one thing, but getting by San Jose or Detroit in the finals would be another feat entirely.

Finally, the opportunity to dote on my St. Louis Blues. This Blues season is one of the most amazing I've ever seen in sports and is not getting enough attention in the news.

The Blues missed the playoffs in 1979 and 2006 - and not once in between. Their fall from grace was rapid, however. In 1999-2000 they boasted the league's best record. However, the lockout of 2004-2005 brought many rule changes, and the new salary cap decimated a team that had the league's third-highest payroll. When the new NHL debuted, the 2005-2006 Blues finished dead last in the league.

What has been so amazing as a fan, is that after the lockout, the team's management recognized that they couldn't contend, and did something completely unheard of in sports - they pretty much said they would write off the next few seasons and focus on building a top-caliber team for the future. 2008-09 was supposed to be one of those big resurgence years for us.

Hopes dimmed quickly, however, when #1 overall draft pick Erik Johnson was lost for the season, as was captain Eric Brewer. Future hall-of-famer Paul Kariya was lost for the season a month later, and star center Andy McDonald missed over two-thirds of the season. As if all that wasn't enough, goaltender Manny Legace was an all-star last year; today he's in the minors. All said and done, 41 games into the 82 game season the Blues had only 16 wins and were 15th of out 15 in the Western Conference.

In the second half of the season, however, the Blues went an NHL-best 25-9-7, capped by a 9-1-1 record in their last nine games. On Thursday St. Louis was in 9th place - outside of the playoff picture. After clinching a playoff berth by defeating #6 Columbus, the Blues poured salt in the wound by winning their season finale in Colorado, demoting Columbus to the #7 seed, meaning they would play Detroit (+51 goal differential) instead of Vancouver (+26).

I'm clearly going on too long, and breaking this up over several 5-minute periods has probably robbed me of any coherence, but I'll wrap it up. It's been a truly amazing season for a sports fan here. And finally, the NHL recently chose it's "goal of the year," an honor bestowed upon 22-year-old Blues forward TJ Oshie, a future superstar. It's not the most spectacular goal of the season, but watch as Oshie works his way around four different Canucks - all in the offensive zone - before making 2007 MVP nominee Robert Luongo look silly in net:

Baracketology

UPDATED:
Chris's 2009 NCAA Bracket
Obama's 2009 NCAA Bracket


I just love that the bracket has its own presidential seal.

(And let me add, by the way, that he has Syracuse beating Temple, whereas I have both teams losing before that game even gets played - we'll see who wins this epic showdown of knowhow (of which the president apparently has quite a bit) vs. basic mathematics!)

You Can't Buy Class.

When photographs showing Michael Phelps smoking pot came out, he handled the situation rather maturely. After his fairly reasonable attempts at disappearing the pictures failed (if I remember correctly he offered to write articles for the paper if they agreed to not publish), Phelps immediately admitted the legitimacy of the pictures and apologized for "[...] behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment." Phelps did not attempt to change public opinion on marijuana laws, or to gain special treatment by qualifying his actions; rather, Phelps said, "I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. [...] For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again." I disagree with the furor over Phelps' slip-up, but I do not think this situation could have been handled in a more professional manner. Phelps even went on to say that his suspension of three months was fair and warranted. Class act all around.

I can finally get to my point: a 23 year-old swimmer should not be acting more maturely and with more grace than, I don't know, maybe a Super Bowl-winning receiver or a Gold-Glove winning infielder. This isn't to say that Phelps should lower his standards, but that Plaxico and A-Roid show raise theirs.

Plaxico is not only a jerk who shot himself in the leg in a nightclub because he was holding a gun in the waistband of a pair of sweatpants, but also a person who doesn't pay any bills on time. Seriously. He has been sued at least nine times for unpaid debts since he entered the NFL in 2000. That is an average of once a year if we are generous and include 2009. Once he even paid a debt (only after a court ruling) with a check that bounced! This guy is less than two years into a five-year, $27.25 million contract, which tells me he is just being a dick for no reason. If shooting himself in the leg doesn't change his attitude, I doubt he will ever come to the point where he can be respected in the way that Phelps was and should be again.

My other example is one that is near and dear to my heart, Mr. Alex Rodriguez! I had my own reasons for hating the guy, so I was quite happy when the Red Sox 'lost' the chase for Rodriguez and the Yankees signed him to a record-breaking contract. [My hatred stemmed from both interviews watched on TV and a game I attended where A-Rod, after turning an inning-ending double play while playing for the Rangers, pretended to throw the ball to the crowd, laughed, and then took the ball into the dugout. Dick.] Now that he has finally admitted to using illegal performance enhancing drugs I can relax knowing that if he goes down as one of the best players ever it will be with a giant asterisk next to all of his statistics. I can only hope that the asterisk is composed of three syringes...a guy can dream, can't he?

A much fun as it is to watch sports stars run their names into the ground I truly hope that rookies everywhere are forced to take notes on Phelps' handling of the controversy surrounding his pot smoking. As always, money cannot buy class or grace under pressure, as Michael Vick, A-Rod, and Burress can all tell you.

Poor Michael Phelps

He lives in a damn fishbowl. No pun intended.

A few quick links.

Let's get the blogging week started with a few interesting pages to check out:

• Nate Silver's writeup of "So Just Who Did Vote For The Bailout?" - A lot of interesting stuff in this one, including a statistical analysis of factors contributing to voting patterns on the first bailout bill last year and a brief discussion of the implications of writing one's own definitions of terms like Progressive.
• The Daily Beast - "The Best of Blago" - He is not only crazy; he has the ability to take legitimate literary quotations and warp them to suit his purposes. Wonderful spin, Rod.
• Bit.ly - An alternative to the Tiny URL service, Bit.ly has all of the same features, but is also copying (in their entirety), cataloging, and organizing all sites that users create shortened URLs for. It will take a while or the benefits to pan out (beyond the link-shortening, that is), but it should be interesting to see what researchers can pull off with that amount of information.
• Red Bull Snowscrapers - On February 5 a bunch of professional snowboarders will be jumping off a 90' ramp built in East River Park. Carly and I drove past this last week and saw the main ramp being built. The ramp is pretty cool, with the main support being provided by stacked shipping containers (see photo below). I kind of want to figure out a way to see this from afar so I don't have to hang out with a bunch of snowboarders to see one person jump this. Check out this site for more pictures of the actual ramps.
  

• Update: I also meant to include the fact that Texas dealt a blow to creationism in a recent schoolboard ruling.
  

Great Sports Article

RealClearSports hit a bullseye with its article "10 Most Underreported Sports Stories of 2008." Though it's given in the annoying one-at-a-time-and-click-to-see-the-next-item-on-the-list format, it's even worth a quick look for the non-sports-fan.

Also worth a read (maybe not so much for non-sports-fans) is the "10 Most Inaccurate Sports Predictions of 2008," though even I have to admit that giving top honors to the prediction that the Patriots would win the Super Bowl (last year) is pretty lazy.