Mijo Orlandito

A buddy sent along this piece about Steve Lavin and St. Johns trying to recapture eligibility for a bit-too-old recruit.

Here's a clip of this dude in action.



Has it really come to this for SJU?  Are there so few kids in this country willing to resign themselves to having to hang out at Iguana’s that Lavin has to recruit 25-year old Dominicans?  To be fair, I can't imagine the bar scene being worse, even in Mormon country.

I can see both sides of the issue. The nuances and addenda and all the other bullshit are silly but, the rules exist because they don’t want 25-year olds playing college ball. At 25, this kid really should have better things to do. If he has a b-ball fix, join a Meetup group or something. Then again, they should let him play simply for being a Dominican who doesn’t lie about his age.

To get a bit more practical and serious, the issue here is, how do you let this guy play without opening loopholes for more sinister entries? I don’t see any harm in letting this guy get his jollies with one year of eligibility. But, would, say, Calipari/Pitino/Huggins (insert your own shady ball coach here) use this to bring in all types of vagrants?  You know Tarkanian would've worked the cartels to land the finest assassin; his teams were nothing without Moses Scurry.

Come on out and Greet...

Just for shits and giggles, I looked into getting opening day tickets at shitti field so I can bring a sign that says, wait ‘til next year.  I was quickly reminded why I don’t want to give them business.  Single game tickets don’t go on sale until 3/1; if, like Bokolis, you'll have better shit to do that Friday, for now, you'd have to get one of those packs.

The one I picked let me pick one "marquee" game and 5 from among the rest.  Even though they haven’t sold out the opening day, they list it as one of three “marquee” dates- the other two being the Yankees dates.  Leaving aside that they don't let you select the cheap seats- I figure it would take them longer to come upstairs and kick me out, cunts that they are- I think they were charging $110 for outfield seats...typical Wilpon shit.  Haha!  Yeah, right.

I think the fact that they have 4 different categories of games- in ascending order, Value, Premium, Classic, Marquee- is even more insulting.  Who are they bullshitting; it's all the same shit.  The biggest insult of all is the final series against Milwaukee.  The Thursday game is Value; Friday is Classic; Saturday is Premium.  Three different categories for games that won't mean shit.  Premium means $140 for box seats that aren’t even that good.  You couldn’t pay Bokolis $140 to go there and make a mess for them to clean.

Below is a price chart, as big as I could make it, to the detriment of the formatting. Notice that, at the bottom, it says "Pricing may fluctuate due to dynamic pricing," implying that, if the Mets are still in it, they'll try and stick you up for even more money.  I presume that the flip side also applies:  when September 26 rolls around and they are so far out of it that they'll have to start 2014 five games back, these tickets will cost about four dollars and ninety-three cents.

In between now and then, if there is any karma, they'll get three days of pouring rain for July 15-17.

This little piggie cried...

Decio Lourenco saying fuck yo camera fool.  They say he was moving 110 km/h (~68.6 mph).

As soon as I saw the video still, I knew exactly wherethefuck this was.  Lourenco is heading down Kloof Nek in Cape Town, South Africa.  Kloof Nek is kind of the only road to get from downtown to Camps Bay- you can use Victoria Road to get to the beaches; it's more direct, but less practical- and head towards points south.  Lourenco is heading back towards downtown, starting from the turn-off for Table Mountain.  It appears to be about 6AM.  Of course, the vehicle on which the cam giving us the POV was mounted is what triggered the flash, not the skateboarder. I'm guessing the driver had the good sense to cover the plate.

Bokolis hated that sunamonbatching camera, so I take some pleasure at this cat thumbing his nose at the flash.  Beach bum that I am, I made the mistake of staying in Camps Bay- it was inconvenient to my business there- rather than in downtown.  As such, I was on that road back and forth.  Thankfully I cabbed it everywhere, because I'd've gotten enough speeding tickets to fill a wedding album.

Under it's-always-funny-until-someone-loses-an-eye, we have to balance our need for speed with our footprint on society.  While we can't have every other muthafucka firing down the hill like this, it's hard for Bokolis to call out this kid.  Frankly, this road is ideal for something like this; it would be calling me for sure.  Shee-yit, I'd've had cop cars blocking the side streets and waiting for me to take me back up.  Cape Town is basically on 40% discount for the US Dollar; with that kind of money, as Tony said, you can buy the supreme court.

Full marks to him for being minimally obstrusive, doing this in the early AM.  He also has cover from having a car trail him and they presumably understood how much clear road they had in front of them and understood the traffic patterns.  However, if he encounters a lubed-up, just-broke-night American who forgets what side of the road to drive on coming up the hill catches a pebble or some shit, it ain't like hitting a springbok.  Well, it might be; they could take his ass back to the township and eat him.

With A Flick of the Switch

Because I think everything on television is as bullshit as professional wrestling, they'll never get Bokolis to believe that some muthafucka at CBS didn't look at that 28-6 score and take matters into his Redstone's hands. That, after years and years of drubbings, we've had 10 consecutive compelling games (Colts-Bears not so much), with the last whitewashing now clouded by the coach possibly sandbagging the game, raises a people's eyebrow towards more engineered results.

The only time Bokolis really got excited during the game was when the Ravens recovered the fumble in the second quarter. I knew that to be the turning point. Their second TD was treated with a mater-of-fact it's just that easy and their third and fourth TDs were met with howling derision of the 49ers. After the Ravens ran back the kick out of the locker room, I was strutting around my living room like when I had the Cowboys back in XXVII.

Bokolis heard buzzing outside my window that Beyoncé turned it down and that's what caused the brown-out. I think it was the machine that pulls the extensions out of her hair that fried the motherboard.

I'll take this time to state that Bokolis has always a real distaste for Beyoncé...and not because she shot me down or some shit like that. To me, her bitches-gotta-get-paid projection, her whole persona, really, and her singing are overdone/fake.

I don't know much about all that Illuminati-stunt nonsense, but her ethered and murdered-on-his-own-shit husband has been rumored for years as being down. So, for all y'all know, she was fucking with y'all to wind y'all up.

As for her perceived hotness, Artie Lange's assessment- from the neck up she looks like Naomi Campbell; from the neck down she looks like Earl Campbell- is in line with Bokolis' view.

In any event, Bokolis wouldn't know if she turned it down because I wasn't paying attention until the other two- the valet and the other one- showed up. My television- or my imagination- allowed me to see not only the camel toe on the valet, but the razor bumps underneath the cat suit. Most of all, I was appreciating the other one's body.  Bokolis didn't hear any singing. But, I'll admit that I view artistic performance as tantamount to circus performance.

(deep breath and exhale)

Let's get off that bullshit.

Yes, the game- during the delay, I was already on www.cheapcarribean.com, planning a celebration. But, my pet cynic knew there was some shit about to go down. Sure enough, after the Ravens had gone 9+ quarters of football, allowing only 2 offensive TDs, the 49ers sure caught up in a hurry, scoring TDs on consecutive drives. That's just what production wanted; the brown-out attracted the extra piles of eyes, and the comeback kept them.

As they couldn't stop telling you, Flacco is going to get pai-yay-yay-yay-eed. 11-0 TD-Int in the playoffs gets you Eli immunity; you can't ever fuck with 11-0. As for Kaepernick, he has Bokolis' respect as the dip to my disdain. Now let me see you do the same thing twice.

In whingeing about the non-call in the endzone on 4th down, Harbaugh-A (Jim) justified Bokolis' contempt. I'm a very much the cookie-crumbles-type, so when they didn't call holding on the 49ers on 4th down vs Atlanta, that's just how it goes (hitting the middle because of it kind of helped). This time, when the 49ers were on the womp side of the call, instead of being gracious, Harbaugh-A showed himself to be the cunt that he is, blowing off steam at the post-mortem.

He also complained about holding- a moot point- on the safety. For the Ravens to take a safety there was a no-brainer. Not only do you get to kick from 20 yards further upfield, but, by burning clock, you consign the opponent to have to run back the kick (unless you commit a penalty during the free-kick play). That is how Bokolis played it out in my head, replete with blatant holding. Since holding in the endzone results in a safety- which is the designed result of the play- you can hold all you want; don't break the hold until Hebner's 4-count you hear a whistle.

I might have used a field player instead of the punter. But, using the punter proved to be the correct play because the element of surprise- and blatant holding- allowed the Ravens to burn eight of the 12 seconds. If, say, Ray Rice was back there, the 49ers would've been tipped off and rushed 11. They plausibly could have forced the ball carrier out of bounds quickly enough to allow time for a return and one play from scrimmage.

Didn't happen though, leaving Harbaugh-A to whinge about holding without truly understanding what the holding accomplished. He probably didn't get the joke until Harbaugh-B explained the punch-line to him.

Rugby for fairies...Ray Lewis Testimonial match

As usual, Bokolis largely steered clear of the two weeks of wasted time leading up to Super Bowl XLVII...I used to be so good at Roman Numerals, but I couldn't tell you if that's 47.  Nonetheless, I heard that "they" tried their damnedest to lynch Flacco for allowing some form of the word "retarded" to come out his mouth.  Some other(s) spouted off about don't be havin' no homos in my locker room, as if the NFL isn't as gay a sport as it gets, this side of figure skating.  I heard about deer vel...huh?!  Then I remembered about IGF-1 and thought, yeah, that was some real shit right there.

I couldn't get away from the nonsense of rehashing Ray Lewis' involvment in an incident 13 years ago where two people got taken off of here.  The rehashing itself wasn't the nonsense, just that people want to keep rubbing his nose in it.  Out came the haters- as distinguished from bona fide criticism- howling about how he should be locked up and he's a murderer.  That's why they don't give y'all gavels.

Like most of them, Bokolis isn't interested in the facts of the case.  Unlike them, I'll admit as much- here's why.  Sometimes, what is worse than coming up against some more serious muthafuckas than you is to hang with some more serious muthafuckas.  If you get into some shit with some killers, unless they're in the business of knocking off cats, you can work shit out.  If it's your boys that's cooking the beef, if they're willing to take it farther than you're willing to go, you can't tell them shit...because while they're at it, they'll clip your ass too.

What I'm saying is that Ray was hanging with just such a couple of cowboys and found himself saying oh! shit! when he'd rather have just seen that shit squashed.  After helping in the cover-up- a criminal trial and civil trial later, he knows he lucked thefuck out.

Despite that he's tried to be reasonably cool act consistent with someone who knows he learned a relatively painless lesson, people continue to hate on him as if he's rubbing it in our faces.  You ask, how cool is he playing it with that pre-game dance?  Hey, men follow him and he acts accordingly.  We only see it because they make sure to show it.  Get it straight- the sports media, led, of course, buy the self-professed, are rubbing it in our faces.  Since y'all muthafuckas can't get off ESPN's dick, you're awash in fluff and the insignificant.  They will feed you whatever it takes to get you wound up because, if you're wound up, you're watching and clicking.

If need be, I wouldn't put it past them to put a couple of dead hookers in someone's room.

Ravens (+3.5) over 49ers:  I've gotten 4, but I'll use the most common line here.  The 49ers should have lost last time out; the Ravens should have lost in the divisional round.  Both of the 49ers' wins involved the opposition bitching out. The hiring of Jim Caldwell as offensive coordinator has brought out the best in Flacco, who, on his last two postseasons, has gotten Bokolis to leave him alone.  It comes down to whether you believe that the 49ers can keep the Ravens defense off-balance as they did with the Packers and Falcons, or that the Ravens will find something that works against Kaepernick and can continue to ride a productive Flacco to again do better than the previous week.