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sorry, bunch of different things to talk about and putting them into small groups just wouldn’t make sense…– this artest-for-peja deal is turning into a real fuck up. first of all, i don’t really see how the deal benefits either side. indy gets peja for the rest of this season and then sees him roll off to free agency. i don’t see him pushing them over the top this year, so why? sacramento gets artest who will undoubtedly be a distraction in the market and will be completely bored on a lackluster team with no dominant personality. this is, of course, if he doesn’t explode and destroy the team. you throw in the fact that someone leaked the story before it was a done deal, no one got artest’s blessing from the kings’ side, and peja now hates the kings, and you have a total cluster-fuck. this deal now NEEDS to get done, even if it doesn’t help either team. if it doesn’t get done, both guys need to be gone within the next month anyway. i swear, sometimes i really feel like i could run these teams.– so we have another person from our team leaving, this time for another large software company in the northwest. i’ve said it before, but i think that one of the strangest adjustments to the real world has been the understanding that people will get up and leave at any time. it makes the ending to every relationship at a job strangely sudden. it’s kinda like the first lord of the rings movie when, like me, you were not aware that the movie would have no ending. you get to the end and you’re like “um, is that it? i thought there was going to be more. ah well. later.” then you try to choke jordan for not telling you the movie was ending-less.

– thinking seriously about playing in a few WSOP events this year. i think the recent tunica tournaments seem to indicate that the growth of poker seems to be hitting a plateau, if not a decline. i mean, if i think about my friends, very few of them play poker anymore. as with all booms, a few end up staying and most end up going away. wouldn’t it be interesting if this year’s world series had less players than last year? that’d be bizarre. anyhow. need to closely look at the calendar to examine which events to play in. more on this soon.

– in case you’ve been buried in a hole for a week, kobe scored 81 points the other night against toronto. i commented to a coworker yesterday that his 81 points reminds me of the days when my brother and i would play NBA Jam on the super nintendo and try to score as many points as possible. our strategy? we would be the detroit pistons. my brother would be isiah, because he could shoot so well and was so quick. i would be bill laimbeer, because he was a dirty player who i could use to throw the computer guys on the ground. i think we once got isiah 212 points in one game. to me, that’s what kobe is like right now. and like those old NBA Jam games, kobe leaves spectators so unsatisfied by his ridiculous feats. we would always get to the end of the game and think “well, that was cool. um, should we do it again?” there was no sense of accomplishment because it was relatively meaningless and forgettable. kobe is now that way. to me, he can AVERAGE 60 points for a season and i wouldn’t care. what does he need to do to show me something interesting? win a title. sorry, but that’s it. show us all that you can be something more than a cartoonish caricature of a basketball player. show us a winner. if not, i can just lump you with dominique wilkens, alex rodriguez, and dan marino in my head.

– i’m goin to watch my favorite comedian next month (a month from today exactly). if you’re interested in going, feel free to let me know:

Club Name: San Jose Improv
Show Name: Dave Attell
Show Date/Time: Saturday, 2/25/06 7:00P