It's Friday, people. The Astros are over .500, baseball is back and the weekend is almost here. Exult. Feel good about yourself? You should.
Not everyone is catching the same good vibrations as you though_Kesha Nichols is one such person. You have no reason to know who she is, other than the fact that she was engaged to San Antonio Spurs forward Richard Jefferson. The operative word here is, was. Slick Rick left Nichols at the altar. That fact alone is pretty crappy, but it gets much, much worse. Even the authors of, He's Just Not That Into You, probably couldn't conceive of something like this:
[H]e told his beautiful bride-to-be that their wedding was off in an e-mail — stunning her just days before their planned posh nuptials …he’s giving her a "six-figure" settlement so she can start a new life.
In light of the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, I think all guys can use this as precedent as a way to ligitimately end things with a woman if things have gotten rocky.
Whenever I learned how to drive, I picked up everything pretty quickly except for learning how to park. To this day I'm terrible at it. What's more emasculating than being out with people, and having to re park multiple times to get the car between the lines. Regardless, at least I haven't parked anywhere near as poorly as these people have. Also, take pride in the fact that only half of those photos look like they're from America. We may not have a thousand years of culture, but by God we can park our Expeditions, damn it.
Jeff Bagwell excelled at a lot of things on the baseball field. Hardball Times looks at how this effected the number of double plays he was expected to hit into.
Growing up, I played my fair share of driveway basketball, and practicing trick shots were always a fun way to break up a day. This guy's take on the trick shot got a chuckle or two out of me. Is there a baseball equivalent to the trick shot? How about this: Carlos Lee takes a baseball, and fries it until it reaches a golden brown. He then walks to home plate, smacks a dinger, thus causing the fried exterior to crumble off, and then eats the fried goodness before any of it reaches the ground.
Anyone else a fan of the TV show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives? It's a cool half hour program on Food Network that basically follows around host Guy Fieti as he travels across the country, exploring various kitchy eateries. He recently filmed a segment in Houston, where he ate at Ziggy and Kenny's, T-Bone Tom's and my personal favorite, Niko Niko's [ DQ insert: Niko Nikos=solid gold. Also, you know it's been the All-Star Break when the Food Network becomes link dump fodder. ]. If you've never seen the show, my advice to make sure you're well fed before watching, as Guy tends to get your stomach grumbling on his culinary journey.
I know DQ mentioned this yesterday, but it bears repeating: Lance Berkman has been an Astro for a decade now. Congrats and thank you, Lance. It couldn't have been easy for him, taking over as team leader after the retirements of Bagwell and Craig Biggio, but he has handled himself extremely well. He's not the same as either of those two, but like his predecessors, Lance is the consumate professional.
Jerome Solomon clearly isn't reading TCB, because his motto for the rest of 2009 is "In Ed Wade we trust." Fair enough, Jerome, but the bumper stickers will have to wait until we win something.