I Have Love for New York!

Surprise, Surprise, TMZ.com is reporting that New York's romance with Season 1 winner Tango has hit the skids. While we can't be sure what exactly happened, New York waxed poetically about the failed relationship in 2 simple words: "Fuck Tango!"

For any man brave and classy enough to attempt to woo New York and impress her wonderful, loving mother, She is now accepting casting calls for Season 2 at ilovenewyork2.com. And as an added bonus, we the public get to vote on who makes it on the show. I think we can all agree that Scrapface(currently #3 in votes) needs to be in the house. Unfortunately, this probably means that "Take a Chance on Love" with Season 1 runner-up Chance won't happen just yet.

NFL Draft Notes

Solid draft for Pittsburgh, getting Lawrence Timmons and LaMarr Woodley with their first two picks. Both these guys should help to fill the hole left by the departed Joey Porter and ease Mike Tomlin's expected transition into a 4-3 defense. I would have like to see them address the cornerback issue in the earlier rounds though, just to put some pressure on Ike Taylor to step up and earn the big money the Steelers gave him last year.

It looks like all the big-time hype just wasn't enough to overcome Brady Quinn's lack of big-time ability, as he fell down to #22 before the Cleveland Browns picked him up. Even then, the Browns had to trade a 1st round pick to move up and get him, which may come back to haunt them when Quinn flames out as he discovers that the talent in the NFL is slightly more elevated than that of the cushy hand-picked schedule that he faced at Notre Dame.

I think that the Dolphins and Bills both came out ahead of the Browns in the QB department, getting John Beck and Trent Edwards respectively, in the later rounds. Both of these guys were much less heralded than Quinn, but from a pure talent perspective, both of them are at least as good as Brady Quinn. The only downside is that they don't have the chiseled abs, flowing locks, and smoking hot sister that Quinn brought to the table.

Best Names in the NFL Draft

The 10 best names from this weekends NFL Draft(in the order they were drafted):

#60 - Samson Satele - Miami Dolphins
#65 - Quentin Moses - Oakland Raiders
#98 - Quinn Pitcock - Indianapolis Colts
#124 - Mansfield Wrotto - Seattle Seahawks
#125 - Jermon Bushrod - New Orleans Saints
#179 - HB Blades - Washington Redskins
#234 - Syndric Steptoe - Cleveland Browns
#235 - Chansi Stuckey - NY Jets
#239 - CJ Ah You - Buffalo Bills
#255 - Ramzee Robinson - Detroit Tigers


Honorable Mentions

#116 - Zak DeOssie - NY Giants
#126 - Dashon Goldson - San Francisco 49ers
#143 - Dallas Sartz - Washington Redskins

People's Most Beautiful People

Drew Barrymore is People's Most Beautiful Person? Don't get me wrong, Drew definitely belongs on the list, but the mental image of her in bed with Tom Green should be enough in itself to drop her from the #1 spot.

Kudos however, to Drew, and the 11 other celebrities who chose to be photographed for the magazine without any makeup. Among the others posing without face paint are hotties Eva Longoria, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Alba, and Jessica Biel(damn, I guess Jessica's don't like makeup). Lets hope Jessica Simpson has been using her Proactiv Solution.

Crosby Jersey Fetches $47,520!

Holy Crap! Every year, the NHL auctions off autographed jerseys from the NHL Allstar Game. This year, the auction raised a total of $147,397. Almost a full third of that, $47,520, came from a single jersey: Sidney Crosby's first NHL Allstar jersey. That's right, someone paid almost $48,000 for a dirty shirt. And by the way, the next closest bid? Brendan Shanahan's at a measly $5681.

I Now Hate the Red Sox More Than the Yankees

It's official. Boston Red Sox fans are worse than Yankees fans. At least in the good ole days all you had to do was mention the the '86 series and that's all it took to shut them up(and if you were really lucky, they'd break down and cry). Now it seems you meet an asshole and they invariably turn out to be a Red Sox fan. Everyone without a decent team jumped on the Bosox bandwagon without a single regret. I'll admit, I rooted for the Red Sox in the 2004 Series, but now this shit is just getting out of hand. Don't try to tell me you're a lifelong Red Sox fan just because you're wearing a spotless Boston cap and an Ortiz jersey, especially when you've never been out of the Pacific timezone. That's all I heard this weekend whenever the game was on or ESPN was showing highlights. It was enough to make me do the unthinkable. That's right, I rooted for the Yankees this weekend. I even rooted for A-rod to hit more 9th inning homers. But alas, it did no good. If Boston sweeps the second series in NY next weekend, I might have to kill myself, or at least the next 15 Boston fans I see.

Penguins Eliminated

A disappointing end to a great season for the Penguins. No matter how it ended though, this was a groundbreaking season for this team. This is going to be a great team. Crosby, Malkin, and Staal are going to keep maturing and gain more experience, and if Fleury can keep improving and get a little more consistent, this team is going to be a serious contender far sooner than alot of people thought. Congratulations on a fantastic season boys.

In hoops news, it sounds like Oden is going to declare for the NBA draft. Teammates Mike Conley Jr and Daequan Cook are also expected to announce, althought they aren't hiring agents, so they'll retain the right to return to school if they want. I gotta say, Conley and Cook declaring is the best possible move for either of them. There's no way their draft status goes any higher by sticking around without Oden. I don't know much about the Cook kid, but without Oden, I think Conley is a slightly above average college guard. It'll be interesting to see how he pans out in the big times.

Young to Grace Next Madden Cover

Looks like you can write Vince Young in for a torn ACL sometime around week 6. Between the Madden curse and sophomore slump, the Titans are in serious trouble. Not that they were gonna be much good anyway, but this is the nail in the coffin.

Speaking of nails in coffins, the Penguins lost last night to fall behind 3-1 in the series. The Pens played solid, but couldn't quite get the job done. Ottaway goalie Ray Emery has looked pretty awesome so far in this series. Now they've got to win out, including two games on the road in Ottawa. The only good news is that Pittsburgh won both their regular season games in Ottawa, but it looks like this might be the end of the run for these guys. No matter what happens over the next 1-3 games though, this was a great season for this team.

Nice Work Gorzelanny!

Gorzelanny's line today: 8.1ip, 4h, 1er, 3bb, 2k

Buccos(+142 moneyline) beat the redbirds 6-1 as Gorzelanny had a near complete game win. Matt Capps came in to finish them off after Gorzo(we need a nickname for this guy, so I'm gonna try a few out) gave up a 1 out double and walked Pujols in the bottom of the 9th. The Pirates climbed back to .500 on the season.

Lets hope the Penguins can keep the Pittsburgh mojo going tonight at the Igloo in Game 4 against the Senators. They need this one if they want to have any sort of reasonable shot at winning this series.

Oprah takes on Imus Issue

Quick note on one of the big issues of the last couple weeks, Oprah's doing a weeklong deal on the Imus thing, as everyone continues to give Imus more credit than he is due. He's a two-bit hack who made a horribly unfunny joke and apologized and got suspended and that should have been the end of it. Instead Rutgers held an hourlong press conference, and you know if you've got cameras and race issues in the same spot Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are going to show up to whip the nation into a frenzy and line their pockets with a little silver under the guise of being civil rights activists. Besides both the good reverends needed something to take the spotlight off of how they contributed to the Duke case a year ago. Then once those two got involved, Corporate America decided to take a stand and drop sponsorship with CBS, which led to CBS firing Imus. I've got no problem with Imus being fired (although now you're going to have talk show hosts afraid to say anything un-pc or risque, which as a whole I think is a bad thing), but if you were going to fire him, you should've done it immediately. Waiting until sponsors start putting away their checkbooks just makes CBS look like money-grubbing bandwagoneers.

Check out these columns from [black columnist]Jason Whitlock, pretty interesting take. Whitlock was on a couple talk shows last week and called Sharpton and Jackson terrorists and will be on Oprah this week as well:

http://www.kansascity.com/159/story/66339.html
http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/71084.html
http://www.kansascity.com/159/story/73258.html

Crystal Gail Mangum and Michael Nifong Lied

About fucking time. State Prosecutors in the Duke Lacrosse Case are expected to announce today that all remaining charges will be dropped against the 3 lacrosse players accused of sexual assault. In December, the rape charge was dropped, and then in January, Mike "Fuckstick" Nifong asked to be dismissed from the case amid alleged ethics violations in his handling of the case. Alleged? Yeah, kinda like the Raiders allegedly sucked last year. This piece of shit completely ignored evidence that didn't support his case, withheld evidence from the Defense, and even after it became fairly evident that the victim didn't know her ass from her elbow and had been lying through her teeth the entire time, Nifong continued to parade the case around the country. Plastering the lacrosse players mug shots on every newspaper across the country and damaging their reputations for life. Why would he do this you ask? Well as it turns out, he was in the middle of a bid for re-election and needed some support from the African-American community in Durham. A nation-wide media frenzy concerning an alleged white-on-black crime seemed as good a way to get that support as any. And it worked, he did get re-elected, although that only lasted until the State Bar Association decided to investigate him. While the national media is at least partially to blame for the damage done, the bulk of responsibility undoubtedly lies with Nifong and the real injustice will be if this guy doesn't go to jail and get sued for everything he's worth by the three families of the lacrosse players.

In other news, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell brought the hammer down on Pacman Jones and Chris Henry and instituted a new NFL personal conduct policy. Pacman was suspended without pay for the entire 2007 season, which will cost him almost $1.3 million dollars. I bet he's going to wish he hadn't blown $80,000 on his little stripper rain storm in Vegas now. Chris Henry got off relatively easy, only be suspended without pay for the first 8 games of the season. He will only lose between $204,000 and $230,000, depending on when the Bengals bye week falls.

And speaking of bye weeks, the NFL announced the 2007 schedules today. Pittsburgh has several primetime games, including two home MNF games(including Joey Porter's Homecoming as the Dolphins travel to Pittsburgh), two Sunday Night games, and a Thursday night game. They will also face off against Seattle in a week 5 matchup at Heinz Field in a rematch of Super Bowl XL.

Let the tanking continue! Durant announced he will be entering the NBA draft this year. Assuming Oden also comes out, there is now a consolation prize in the lottery race. I know alot of people say that they should stay in school and all that, but come on. Neither of these guys will be properly challenged in the college game. Unless they plan on staying all four years to get their degree, it doesn't make any sense at all for them to stay another year. Think of it like this, neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs graduated college. Why? Because college no longer had anything to offer them, so they started their own companies. I don't think anyone faults them for this. Durant and Oden aren't aspiring businessmen, they're ball players. If they want to continue to improve and be challenged as ball players, they need to go to the next level. All this really means, is that you should absolutely not bet on any of the following teams for their final few games: Boston, Memphis(actually already clinched the worst record), Milwaukee, or Atlanta.

The NHL playoffs start tonight as well, so spend a few minutes and try and find the channel for Versus in your area. It's gonna be good.

Pirates Update

OK, I've been talking about the Pirates alot lately, mostly because I'm super excited about their start. Pirates take on last years champions, the St Louis Cardinals again tonight(actually it's bottom of the 5th, 0-0 as I type) to try and stay above .500. Now this is important, because according to "Junker and Crow" and ESPNRadio, the season up to this point is the first time the Bucs have been above .500 since Barry Bonds left in 1993. 14 years of not even cracking .500 once. Lets hope this is a sign of times to come. The only thing I'm not real happy about? The fact the oddsmakers have starting them at -120 and -130 favorites against the fucking World Champs!

Grindhouse Rocks

So I went and saw the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature "Grindhouse" last night and all I can say is Oh My Fucking God!!! I can't even begin to describe the complete badassness off this show. Both movies rocked, all the fake trailers rocked, it was 3+ hours of cinematic orgasm. Best theater experience of my life. Everyone walked out of the theater in complete awe.

And to top it all off, they also showed the preview for the new Die Hard movie that I didn't even know existed until last night. I'm super excited about this one too.

Crazy Guy of the Week

Man Swims Amazon

A 52 year old Slovenian man has completed a 3,272 mile long swim of the Amazon River. Starting at the rivers source in Peru, Martin Strel averaged around 50 miles a day on his historic(or as I like to call it, INSANE) swim. He managed to avoid piranhas, toothpick fish(this cute little guy swims up into your peehole or anus, sticks out a sharp spine to keep it in place and latches onto a vein or artery to feast), and even bull sharks that sometimes swim up into the river. Even after his doctor ordered him to quit, Strel finished the (pending) world record setting swim in a mere 9 weeks. Strel has broken the record for long-distance swimming 3 times before this. First with a 1,866 mile swim in the Danube in 2000, followed by a 2002 swim of 2,360 miles down the Mississippi, and finally with a 2004 jaunt of 2,487 miles through the Yangtze River in China. Congratulations Crazy Guy!!

Masters Final Round

Some guy named Zach Johnson(Joaquin Phoenix's twin?? You be the judge) pulled off the upset at Augusta today, winning with a overall score of +1, tied for the highest winning score ever at the Masters.



Tiger threatened off and on, and lead early on, but had bogies at crucial moments that kept him from his 5th green jacket. Retief Goosen looked dialed in early, but couldn't hang on despite a -3 rounder 69 for the day. Phil "Tits McGee" Mickelson continued his collapse with an early triple bogey and overall, looked like the "Phil at a Major" of old. I always enjoy watching Phil and Vijay fail, and this years Masters didn't disappoint.


One of the big items of this years tourney was the cold weather. The temps were all the way down in the 50's!! Pussies. Lets see them play spring golf in Montana when you have to wear a winter parka and long johns and have to use a neon colored ball so that you can find it in the snow. Then you can bitch about the cold weather.

Congrats to Zach on getting only his 2nd tour win ever, even though I'm pretty sure that Jesus didn't really help you out as much as you seem to think. Although now that I think about it, the Big Man probably wouldn't have minded spending the day on the links instead of in a stuffy church listening to everyone talk about his death.

Bucs Win Another

Zach Duke picked up his first win of the season, beating the Reds 6-3 as the Bucs moved to 4-2 on the season. Duke had a respectable line, pitching 6 innings while allowing 3 runs and getting 5 k's. Freddie Sanchez, last years NL Batting Champ, started his season off right after being on the DL with a sprained knee by going 2 of 4 with a double and an RBI.

Pirates will get their first home series of the regular season when the World Champion Cardinals travel to Pittsburgh to face Ian Snell on Monday.

Pirates drop last two/Saturday update

I'm a Pittsburgh fan in all sports. It's in my blood, I can't help it. From the time I knew what I was doing, I've been rooting for the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates. I was left to my own devices when choosing an NBA team, so I was a Pacer's fan, but hadn't had much allegiance to them since Miller left. Then I moved to Portland, and for the first time in my life I had a hometown professtional team so I adopted the Blazers as my NBA team. Things are looking up for the Blazers, and until a late season slump, they had a chance at even making the playoffs. Thanks to the stellar play of rookies Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, and even Sergio "Spanish Chocolate" Rodriguez and a new GM in Kevin Pritchard, the Blazers should gel into a very competitive team over the next few years.

But then we get to baseball. As anyone who has glanced at the box scores over the last 15 years knows, it ain't easy being a Pirates fan. We've had 14 straight losing seasons and for the last few years, have had a team that would probably struggle to compete in AAA. We haven't won an NL Pennant or a World Series since before I was born. The heartbreaking NL Championship Series against the Braves in the early 90's is a distant memory for me and other fans. Every year they have a few guys that really step up, and the Pirates immediately trade them for cheap prospects. You know it can't be good when the second-highest paid player for the Pirates this year doesn't even play for them anymore. Jason Kendall, the All-Star catcher now with the Oakland A's is on the books for $5 million this year. Jack Wilson at $5.4 million, is the only other player cracking the $4 million mark. I don't know what the opposite of "Moneyball" is, but the Pirates have it mastered.

But early happenings left a slight glimmer of black & gold hope flickering in the hearts of Pittsburgh fans. The Pirates recorded a season-opening series sweep for the first time since who knows when with a 3-0 start against the Houston Astros. Since then however, things have slipped a little bit. They've dropped 2 in a row to the Reds, helped in part today, by a Xavier Nady assist as an almost flyout popped out of his glove and over the fence for a Reds 2-run homer and the Bucs lost 7-5. Nontheless, I have hope. I don't expect them to win the NL Central or a Pennant or anything like that, but if we can pull a near-.500 record, we just might slip into the playoffs in the lowly National League. At the very least, I'm taking the over on wins this season with the line set at 70.5.

In other baseball news, A-Rod has silenced his critics for at least the next couple hours after hitting a walk-off grand slam today as the Yankees beat the Orioles.

And finally, Tiger Woods finished bogey, bogey today at Augusta, but then watched as everyone else collapsed down the stretch as well to put him in a tie for second with Justin Rose one back of Stuart Appleby who had a devastating triple bogey on 17. We'll see tomorrow if the Aussie curse at Augusta continues.

And finally, in the last game of the NHL regular season for the Penguins, they need to beat the Rangers and have the Senators to clinch first-round home ice. Good luck boys.

Welcome to the Copperhouse Dance Party

Ahhh, April. This seemed like as good a time as any to begin the (hopefully)awesomeness that is the Copper House Dance Party. About the name, it's pretty simple. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't. It's not something that can be explained and probably wouldn't interest you if it could be. I plan on focusing mostly on sports with some pop culture thrown in when something catches my interest. Football is my bread and butter, but I'm a fan of all things sports related. I don't know how long this will last, or if it will go anywhere, but we're gonna give it a go.

April is a bittersweet time for sports fans. You're still riding that high from March Madness(more later that later), you're heading into the NBA Playoffs, the NHL season will continue into the postseason for the first time in a long time for Penguins fans as we are carried into the playoffs on the shoulders of Sid the Kid and his team comprised of jaw dropping young talent and a few not-quite-past-their-prime vets like Mark Recchi and the newly acquired Gary Roberts. The Pens likely don't have the necessary defense to capture the cup for the first time since their glory days of the early 90's with Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux, but with a new arena deal, this should be the beginning of many good years to come. In addition to the NHL and NBA postseasons, we've got baseball's opening day and we're not far off from the WNBA(just kidding). But other than baseball, the summer begins to look bleak.

March Madness had a pretty solid beginning and middle but it peaked during the second weekend with the Elite Eight teams and followed that spectacular weekend up with a fairly uneventful Final Four and Championship. Congrats to the Gators, they pulled off their second straight Championship with the same starting five they used from last year. They pretty much walked over Ohio State, and I can't think of many times in the game where I was worried OSU would come back and win, much less cover the 5.5 point spread. OSU is a good team, but were overmatched by a quicker and more athletic Florida team. I think Georgetown would've matched up better, but they laid a giant turd against OSU in their Final Four matchup.

Now we get to listen to rumor after rumor about who's going pro and who's not, and which coaches are leaving for which jobs. We definitely got that area started off right, with rumors that Florida coach Billy Donovan was being courted heavily by Kentucky before, during, and after the Final Four. No definite word on that one, but it doesn't look good for Kentucky. Then we had the Creighton coach leave for Arkansas only to leave Arkansas a few days later to go back to Creighton. I'm sure theres an interesting story their somewhere. As for draft rumors, we've got plenty of choices. The bottom of the barrel NBA teams are in full tank mode to compete for their choice of Oden and Durant, both of whom are still refusing to make a public decision concerning their futures, answering questions with "No comment" and "Next question." The last couple days we've also been hearing rumors that 4 of the 5 Gator starters(Lee Humphrey is a senior) may be returning to try for a three-peat, but today Coach Donovan said he expects all four will declare for the draft by the end of the month, meaning this could be one of the most loaded drafts of my lifetime.

That will do it for my inaugural post. For now, my goal is a couple posts a week, and hopefully will pull in another blogger or two. With any luck, the lowly Pirates will continue their winning ways after a season opening sweep of the Astros and make for some good baseball content. If not, well, I'll probably resort to discussing the Bonds/Aaron homerun controversy like everyone else.