July 5th 2010

I fall into peer pressure pretty easy and even more than peer pressure I am sucker for a good compliment so when two friends of mine told me that they missed reading my blog it immediately went to my head. I thought to myself "your right it would be downright selfish to deprive the world of my blog." Nobody is better at boosting my ego than me. I am probably the best ever at it.
I eventually want my blog to reach the status of a nation. A nation you say? Yes, a nation. I am not talking about declaring independence from blogspot.com. I am talking about a nation like the Red Sox Nation. How many followers do I have to get before I can refer to my followers as Travis Nation? Is four enough? If not I could ask my wife to read my blog and that would make it five. Whatever it may be I am up to the task.



In a previous post I said I wanted my blog to be more of a Jay-Z comeback than a Brett Favre comeback but it’s so long between posts that it is approaching Betty White level comeback. She went from Golden Girls to hosting Saturday Night Live and doing a skit where she talked about her dirty old dusty muffin. (Oddly, Jay-Z was the musical guest)


Once upon a time I had a format where I separated my blog into categories: Music, Movies, Sports, Nation/World Events, local events and my personal life. I think for organizational purposes I am going to get back to this method.






I originally started this blog as way to argue with Steve about sports. Since then it has blossomed into something else and I am totally fine with that. But lately I've been doing some thinking about my future. I love sports. It’s not a secret that I am obsessed with it so much that it has socially handicapped me to a degree that I would turn down thee most prestigious social event to sit at home and watch an NBA basketball game in late February. I spend hours online reading different sports articles. I love ESPN, NBA.com, Hoopsworld.com and Fox Sports. Recently, I was reading an article on my favorite sports website-Hoopsworld.com and I noticed that they were hiring for a sports writer in the Orlando and Portland area. I thought to myself "Wow! this would be awesome if I could write for them, too bad I don't live in Orlando or in Portland and I am in Pocatello, a non-sports town." I thought about this for a long time and it bothered me.


I thought to myself "Why not?" Why couldn't I become a sports writer?" Isn't that what Ray Ramona did on "Every Loves Raymond" just sit in his basement watch sports and then write about them in between making fun of his tall brother and his wife yelling at him? What is holding me back?" Then I started thinking about it some more. "Why don't I pursue a career in sports?" I truly think that no other profession on this Earth could make me as happy as a career where I could watch, write, talk about and read about basketball all day long.





I would be very happy being paid to write about sports but more than writing about sports I want to talk about sports via sports broadcasting. Then my cynical analytical thoughts started popping into my head. Each NBA team has two or three broadcasters at each game with one or two sideline reports, on a halftime show they probably have at max four people in the studio.

So if I am being generous each team has 9 people working at a game. You have three major networks and we will say each one has two full crews so each network has 18 people working for them, again that is being very generous. So if you add the individual team sports broadcasting team (9) and times it by thirty(the number of teams in the NBA) that gives you a total of 270 plus the 18 people on each of the three networks which would be fifty-four and then add that to 270 and you have a total of 324 available jobs in the nation.

An average NBA team carries 14 players so you have a total of 420 NBA players. Numbers wise it is easier to get into the NBA than it is to be a sports broadcaster in the NBA. I'm not making it into the NBA and the chances of becoming a professional sports broadcaster is statistically has fewer odds. This should be enough to derail me. Perhaps I am delusional but it hasn't derailed me. It has made me realize that I better do whatever I can to put me in the best position for that kind of job. I did some research. Penn State has the number one school for sports journalism in the nation and Syracuse has the number one program for sports broadcasting. I need both on my resume. I want to major in sports journalism at Penn State and then achieve my masters in sports broadcasting up at Syracuse. Now you can probably ask me tomorrow and I will have either changed my mind about what I want to do or reality will have hit and I will realize that this goal is pointless and unattainable. But as of now this is what I want to do. Penn State is very expensive and I think I am going to go to Idaho State for a year boost my GPA and hopefully make it more affordable via a scholarship. In the meantime I feel like I need to do something. I once read an article where casual fans could ask Stuart Scott any question and one person ask him how he could become a sportswriter and his simple suggestion was just to write as much as you’re possibly can about sports and then probably followed it up with some catchy and annoying catch phrase that just cheapens his profession. As much as I hate Stuart Scott I decided to follow his advice. So I decided to write a sports blog purely about sports. I don't know how but I want to try and get this sports blog to people that have some influence. I don't know how to get my small-time blog out to people but I gotta figure out how to start somewhere. Here is the link to my sports blog the first entry is purely about myself and how I became a Laker fan.







Television is my best friend. Commercials are my least favorite friend. I hate commercials so much that I can't stand to watch television live. I always wait for it to come on Hulu.com or netflix. But there are some television shows that I do want to talk about especially the television show "Lost". I watched all 5 seasons of Lost on DVD and watched the last season on television. Now knowing that it was the last season was gut-wrenching. It was like having a kid that is going to die in 17 weeks and then you will never see him again except if you watch your home videos of him and oh you can only see your kid for one hour on Tuesday.





Now I want to present you with a theory about Lost that I seem to really like. In a lot of religions, Christianity being one of them life is considered a test that you go through and if your good you go to heaven and if you’re bad you go to hell. This theory is that from the beginning of the show to the end of the show we were watching Jack's test. His life on this island was his real life and obviously Jack passed the test and maybe each of the characters have their own story and their own test but this show I think was Jack's test. Watch this clip, specifically the last two minutes of it.



Now what happened during that turbulence is Jack died there and when the plane calmed down that’s when Jack passed over and maybe the whole island, the adventure the whole thing happened during that turbulence. Remember Jack had told Kate that he had blacked out during the crash so he couldn't remember anything? Blacked out or died. The season finale when he met up with his father and his father told him that this whole ordeal was necessary for him to accept his death and he created this imaginary world in a way to procrastinate in a sense and what he needed to do was just give in and accept his fate. Now with that in mind, remember the first thing Rose said to him when the plane's turbulence finally wore off "You can let go now, its okay you can let go now" Metaphorically speaking she met you can let go of your life and accept death.

OK LOST TALK IS OVER----

But television talk is not over. I am a huge television on DVD fan and I love watching shows on Netflix. My wife and I are currently watching House on DVD we are on season 5. Usually what makes or break a television show for me is if I like a certain television character. Doesn't matter how dumb the show may be if I like that character then I like the show. Pretty simple equation. Take the show Supernatural, I hate all weird sci-fi shows like that and honestly I think the show itself is retarded. I absolutely can't stand them but I like the main character, Dean Winchester. Despite the show being retarded I still watch it for Dean and mainly because my wife makes me. You take the show NCIS which is extremely popular but I don't like any of the characters therefore I hate the show. Now Gregory House is by far the most entertaining and complex TV character of all time. His battle with his pain addiction, his cynical view of the world kind of reminds me of myself. I love the intelligent banter between Wilson and House. Just watching the show makes me feel smarter.

I am also very curious about this television show called Glee. I have it on my netflix queue but I want to get the first two seasons of Fringe, which by the way is fantastic before I get to Glee. This gives my readers plenty of time to convince me to watch or not watch Glee.




I really do want to make this blog a weekly thing. I doubt that will ever happen but if it does I would love to have a section where I talk about the latest movie that I've seen and it seems like I see a movie once a week. We are going to do a top ten countdown of the best movies I've seen this year.


Giving this movie #10 doesn't do it justice. This movie sucked. I pretty much hated every single moment of this movie. The story was uncohesive and unless you watched the television series before you probably didn't even get what was going on. M. Night Shyamalan is a fantastic director and this was definitely a disappointment. This movie was so hyped up mostly by my friend Shaun that I had huge expectations going into it. The problem with this movie was I knew going in it would have a weak story line and bad acting. I expected the special effects and the visual aspects to blow me away much like Avatar did. Avatar's story lined sucked, it was just the story of Pocahontas but they were blue people but it was masked by the awesome visual aspect of the show so people forgot how much the story sucked. The Last Airbender lacked everything.

I don't really even remember this movie just that it was lame and I didn't like watching it. I love Greek mythology but this one missed the mark. I do remember how the main character Perseus made a big deal about how he wanted to save the day without the power of the Gods and then ended up using Zues' sword and a flying a horse to defeat the Cracken.










I didn't hate this movie and I didn't like this movie. So for all the hoop-la about this movie and I can't remember a single thing about it obviously means it was pretty lame.
















I love Tina Fey and I love how she is bringing back funny for women. I seriously would consider herself a modern day Lucille Ball and Steve Carrell everything he does is hilarious. Call me a geek for liking this chick flick but it was a good movie.













I didn't like how they bumped Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle and this movie had too many one liners. It's basically going the way I thought it would- its turning into a little kid’s movie ala the first series of Batman movies. Major disappointment Robert.












Ian Hill will tell you that a lot of times why I hate movies is I go into the movie thinking it’s going to be retarded and no matter how the great the movie may be I am going to hate it because of my poor attitude. That was definitely the case with Prince of Persia I thought the movie would suck as much as Jake Gyllenhall. It turns out Gyllenhall still sucks but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I usually hate anything to do with time travel but this was actually pretty cool. It had a Pirates of Caribbean feel to it and was a lot of fun to watch.





Maybe I am just a big Leo fan and I love scary movies. This movie had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and the story was great and even though I called the completely crazy twist it was still a lot of fun to watch. Sadly, it had a Sixth Sense-esque twist to it so watching it again probably won't be any fun and I really think scary movies like this one are only scary on the big screen. If you haven't seen it- definitely watch it.








I loved Robin Hood. I really hope this turns into a franchise similar to the new Batman series. I loved Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and I don't want to say that this one was better I thought this one was extremely good. The reason it’s so high up on my list is because of the potential it is showing. The sequel, if there is one will be epic. I loved the story line that is developing and the relationship between Russell Crowe and Kate Blanchet is great. The filming and scenery were spectacular it was full of great shots and I almost enjoyed that as much as the movie itself.




I know I will get a lot of flak for saying this but Twilight was awesome. This movie was exponentially better than the other Twilight movies. The directing/producing of the film was top notch. Forks Oregon is such a scenic place and like in the movie Robin Hood I loved the shots in the film. They still had all of those cheesy love lines, that I am positive are just taken out of the book and have to be in the movies but they delivered them in such a way that it wasn't cheesy and fake like all the other movies. Bella is still a terrible actress but Edward and Jacob have improved. This was a lot more cohesive and I finally was able to build a connection with the characters which I couldn't in the other two movies. I decided that I am not really on team Edward because I don't like him. He looks constipated and has a Conan O'Brien pasty white look to him which works for funny tall Irish men but not on vampires. I like Jacob even less. I think he is a being a douche bag for going after Bella when he knows she is dating/engaged to Edward so I guess I am on team Edward. I do not think that Bella should become a vampire. Can't they free Edward from being a vampire like Aladdin freed the genie? If this was Disney that's what would happen.

I like kid movies and I figured Toy Story 3 would just be another kids movie and I was totally fine with that and even excited to see the movie. Toy Story 3 turned out to be a real movie with substance. It had everything that a movie needs to have to be a blockbuster hit. The movie made me laugh, it made me reminisce, it put me on the edge of my seat, and it even made me tear up a little bit. The movie just contained every emotion that you want to get out of a movie. The story line was fantastic and was a great conclusion to a fantastic franchise. Beauty and the Best was the last animated film to win movie of the year and I honestly believe that Toy Story 3 will end up being the movie of the year.







My longtime blog readers will remember the "Obama Score" and I really need to bring this back. Not only is the Obama score more accurate than his approval rating and by constantly updating his score it will hopefully help me keep up with current political events - something which I feel the need to be informed about.

So since I haven't done it in a while I went through his Presidency and briefly recapped on the issues I thought were important and scored them accordingly.

Since he has been the President the unemployment rate has gone up 9 times and has gone down 5 times so overall he has done an ok job with the unemployment rate so I am going to give him a +1

Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I am not knowledgeable on economics so I don’t know if the stimulus plan has actually worked but in Monopoly you have to pay all that money back. Plus I really don’t like how we still have Americans living off of their welfare checks because Obama enables them to do so and that is largely due to this act. So I am going to give it a -1

President Obama signs an executive order announcing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, and signs a prohibition on using torture and other illegal coercive techniques, such as waterboarding, during interrogations and detentions, requiring the Army field manual to be used as a guide. I guess closing down Guantanamo Bay is a good idea but if we can’t torture people how is Jack Bauer going to fight off terrorists? Anything that hinders Jack from doing his job I am against. – 1

Obama signs his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which promotes fair pay regardless of sex, race, or age. Homos need fair pay too, Homos need fair pay too. +1

Obama reveals his proposal for the 2010 United States federal budget which is $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009 +1

On March 9 Obama overturns rules limiting federal money being used for human embryonic stem cell research. +1

On March 27 Obama announces a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not really a new strategy just to continue with Bush’s strategy of sending more troops to Afghanistan. Sending more troops to Afghanistan is never a good idea but Obama realized his idea of just pulling everybody out of Afghanistan wasn't realistic This was his reality check. +1

May 4th – Obama hosts a Cinco De Mayo party. Yes, that’s right on May 4th. -1

Obama nominates federal judge Sonia Sotomayor because apparently wise Latino women are better than wise white guys. -1

On July 15 the Senate committee approves a plan to revamp the U.S. health care system - 1

Obama and Oprah go to Denmark to give a speech to the International Olympic Committee and fail to bring the Olympics to the USA. I have a hard time blaming anything on Oprah so I put all the blame on Obama. – 1

On October 9th Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize award for doing a mediocre job as a President. It gives me hope that I can win the Nobel Peace Prize award +1

On October 23rd he declared the spread of the H1N1 virus “a national emergency” and then five days later he overturned a 22-year-old law barring foreigners infected with HIV-AIDS from entering the country. I could understand this if Magic Johnson wasn’t a US Citizen and we needed him in the country. -1
On December 2nd Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. -1

President Obama commits $100,000,000 to help Haiti recover from the 2010 earthquake. I know this sounds terrible, but if we are in such a bad recession wouldn’t that $100,000,000 really help our citizens. I know it’s terrible of me but let’s take care of our own country first. He is going to get a -1 and a +1 for being a better man than me.

January 18th Obama sends his first twitter update +1

Obama approves The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This is the big one he screwed us over with his health care reform and then helped out struggling college students with the Education part of the bill. I am going to dock him a whopping negative 4 points for approving such an unconstitutional act but then give him a generous positive 2 points for helping out our college students.

March 31 - Obama announces that he will approve oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico . Yeah this wasn’t exactly his fault but it didn’t turn out so well so -1

Arizona introduces the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (introduced as Arizona Senate Bill 1070 which is strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades. I believe this was a result of Obama not doing anything about the illegal immigrants and Arizona felt like it was backed into a corner and wrongly and stupidly put this bill into place. If Obama was doing his job correctly I do not believe this would have happened. – 1

That brings us to the Obama Score. He was two points ahead but hasn't done so well since.