Scrabble, basketball, and weathermen

I've started reading a book on the world of competitive Scrabble playing, called "Word Freak" by Stefan Fatsis, which I borrowed off Penglis several years ago. It's pretty good so far, although I'm not really learning any special techniques that will help me with my game. It's amazing the difference though between social games and competitive ones - if I'm playing I try to not use words that I couldn't put in sentence. Or at least give a definition for. I can honestly say though that I've never heard of 90% of the words that are used in the professional games described in this book. Words like "fustian", "eloiners", "oxtering" and "filariid".

After my rant about how all music sucks these days, I found something new that I like, an ep from Maynard Keenan's new project Puscifer. It's no Tool, but it's pretty good nevertheless.

If you're looking for quality basketball videos on youtube, check this out. http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=truehoop

This was my personal favourite . . .



Also, Bill Simmons took a break this week from talking about baseball and football on his podcast to talk about the NBA with Charles Barkley. Definitely worth listening to.

I got the first issue in my subscription to "Esquire" this week. I'm really enjoying it so far. There's a few too many ads for $10,000 wristwatches, but it does feature Chuck Klosterman as a regular columnist. And there's a really interesting - and quite lengthy - article on Kobe in this issue. Plus pictures of Charlize Theron. No down side really.

The Kobe story is up online if you want to check it out . . .

http://www.esquire.com/features/the-game/kobebryant1107-2

I got a phone call as I was walking into the office yesterday morning from my old buddy Keith Martin, at the printer with his almanac, checking a few last event dates with me. He asked me when the Barossa Under the Stars and Big Day Out were going to be. I had to fight the urge to say "Are you serious Keith? You don't have your Big Day Out tickets yet? Rage Against the Machine are playing! You can not miss this show!"