Manlio Rules

So, a few weeks back, Jay and I are at trivia (w/Ali and Mike, winnin ur champagne by bein smartsest), and he mentions that he is interested in going mountain biking sometime soon. Now, i’m not a great biker, most of my bike experience in the last 5 years came in Brooklyn when i would use my ultra heavy dual suspension hybrid bike to zoom around the boroughs, usually with Scott about 15 blocks ahead of me.

But anyways, we decided to go up to San Rafael, rent some mountain bikes, and see what all the fuss was about. We left around 10AM, headed north, rented the bikes, and put them on Jay’s car. then we followed the GPS to San Pedro Ave, which resulted in us u-turning out of a residential neighborhood. but we made it. we suited up, and headed for the hill… and damn, that was really hard. i am the kind of biker who hates to admit defeat and get off the bike, but this was just too much for me. 45 degree incline, rocks everywhere, big dips in the trail, i was having none of it. i could hardly stay balanced, let alone have any sort of strategy about avoiding the rocks. so i hit one after the other, waiting for the inevitable large rock that would pitch me over my handelbars and over the edge of the very narrow path.

luckily that did not happen, and we managed to make it all the way around and then down a harrowing slope (downhill = scarier than uphill) and back to the car. oh, and rental bike? your new fangled disc brakes failed to impress me with all their squeaking and the ineffectual stopping.

despite feeling that i was risking serious injury at every moment (which is suppose i also do when i snowboard, but i’m much more comfortable on a snowboard than a bicycle, and i don’t make a habit of going over rocks), i had a lot of fun. my next step is going to be seeing if i can refit my hybrid suspension frame with some nice mountain tires and get the gears working a little bit better. and then victory will be mine. victory!

As some of you know, i love baseball.

As fewer of you know, i enjoy playing softball quite a bit.

And as even less of you know (luckily), i’m borderline terrible at it. here’s why:

A. Someone (possibly Noam Chomsky) can’t keep his mouth shut. A lot (all) of this paragraph is heresy, but i remember being forced to quit baseball twice in my youth. The first and most crippling time to my future development was when i was about to graduate from the “farm” league to the “minors”, where the kids started pitching and things got a little more competitive (i was maybe 10). My mother heard a story that there was a fight between a coach and one of the parents in the minors, and decided she didn’t want me exposed to that level of competition, because chances were i’d be getting yelled at by other parents for sucking. so i wasn’t allowed to play the next year or ever again in the town leagues. Years later, i was told that the person who started the fight was Noam Chomsky, but it’s very, VERY ,possible that this is untrue, and i have no evidence aside from someone else’s story. But my development was cut off way too early because of the incident. this is the primary reason i am not a major leaguer as we speak.

B. I’m a left handed infielder. My high school coach, before he relegated me to the practice squad, told me that my best positional fit would be as an infielder, because i wasn’t so great at tracking fly balls and was much better fielding grounders. but i’m left handed, which means i have to play first base, and i’m not really enough of a power hitter to justify that, even at the high school level. sidenote: after i got demoted, my dad forced me to quit the team altogether. this led to me skipping one trimester of sports at my high school and having to double up sports credit the next year. to my knowledge this was the only time this had ever happened at my school. so in some ways, i’m a pioneer.

C. I’m not athletically gifted. at all really. i used to think that i just hadn’t found the right sport. now i know that the right sport is probably Wii tennis. and Jay kicked my ass at that a few weeks ago.

so that’s my story. tune in next time when i explain why my high school’s lack of a football team has certainly robbed the patriots of their best cornerback since Ty Law left.

via Deadspin

hi sports fans. so, here’s what’s been going on in my life since the start of the month.

1. Snowboarding. i went up to our cabin for the first time last weekend. the house is great, the snowboarding is great, i will be going back up there this weekend to get a few days in, though the conditions aren’t awesome, they’re much better than what i’m used to back east. my goal remains to get 25 days up this season. right now i’m at 2, but it still seems like it’s achievable. i hope. i might be making that up.

2. CES. i spent sunday-wednesday of this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, doing demo’s for the products that i built last year, and generally wandering around, gawking at huge tv’s. my main takeaway from CES is that everyone seems to be hawking HD camcorders, to let more of us make video blogs. maybe i’ll start doing a video blog on manlio rules, though i think i would lose almost 100% of the eloquence y’all have come to expect from me. but at least i could always have def leppard playing in the background.

3. Football. the pats are in the playoffs! go playoffs! i’m nervous about the SD game this sunday, but if anyone can stop LDT, it’s the Pats. I hope.

4. Trivia. Trivia nights have been pretty much my only social outlet since the start of the year. we keep winning, so that’s good. last week we somehow rolled with like 12 people. Lyandra and Amy were there as well, so my SF friends got to meet some of my NY friends, and vice versa.

and that’s pretty much it. seems awfully boring. i’ve got some shots of trivia 2 weeks ago that you can peruse, if you so desire. i’ll make sure to take ski cabin shots this weekend so everyone can drool at the awesomeness of wintering in Tahoe. wintering!

so, boot camp has been progressing slowly but surely. I missed all of last week because of work and general exhaustion, and we re-assesed this week. somehow i managed to do 8 less situps than last time. at this rate, in 4 months i will get down to 0 situps. but i improved in every other area, so that’s good. My side goal is to be able to run the 5k at brie’s wedding in 6 weeks. i think i’m well on my way towards that.

AND, today when we split the groups, i got assigned to the “A” team, which means the hardest workouts with the most in shape people, and ideally the best results… it kicked my ass for the day, we’ll see if i can keep up there.

went out for Amy’s birthday last night, decided that i will be watching many football games this year at Mad Dog in the Fog. should be fun.

so, i’m starting to think that perhaps what i should do this year is become a mainstay at giants stadium. I don’t really like the giants very much, but i’ve got a lot of time to kill, and the stadium is absolutely beautiful. like, real super nice.

Friday night i met my new softball team. I think i may be the best player on the team. anyone who has seen me play softball knows why this is a scary concept. anyone who hasn’t seen me play softball but has watched my conduct my affairs should also have some inking.

Saturday I did nothing. Except… well… ok, so i had an appointment to get a consultation about hair transplant surgery. I’ve been doing worse and worse coming to peace with my hair situation in the last few weeks, so i made an appointment. But getting there involved driving through North Beach, which i have never done before, and hopefully will not have to do again, because it’s very difficult. After an hour of driving, when i had missed my appointment by 20 minutes, i gave up, decided that my incompetence at geographic navigation was some sort of sign, and went home. later, on the internet, i found out that the general cost of hair transplant surgery is between $4000 and $9000, which is crazy talk. If i’m going to use $4000 strictly to make myself more attractive, i’m going to get some sort of crazy ass pectoral implants (ideally ones that shoot fireworks) and a ton of drugs, plus maybe a real bitchin guitar. I should start a hair club that preaches those philosophies. better pecs, better drugs, and a bitchin guitar. fuck your hair.

and sunday i went to see the pirates play the giants. i didn’t take any photos, so here are some shots of barry bonds when he played for the pirates and the giants.

note: bonds didn’t actually play in the game.

so, last week i spent wednesday through monday in vail, with luke, briehan, alex, dan, amy, and sharon. it was a ton of fun, the snow was good, the house was beautiful, and all of us had a great time, or at least i did. i assume everyone else did as well. thanks go to luke’s parents, who put up with us all week, and luke for inviting all of us out there. photos are below:

from a few weeks ago:

“the red sox signing ken griffey jr. would be like having children to save a marraige. sure, it could help things. but it could also end really really badly for a lot of people”

greetings all,

Alex suggested that i write a post about the state of the Red Sox as a team, and given my readership (PT, i’m looking at you), i thought that it would be a huge hit (not to be confused with a huge salary).

so, let’s review what we have. if the season were to start right now, this woudl be the sox presumable starting lineup:

2B: Mark Loretta
1B: Kevin Youkilis
DH: Ortiz
LF: Manny
RF: Trot Nixon
C: Varitek
3B: Mike Lowell
SS: Alex Cora
CF: Adam Stern

SP: Beckett
SP: Schilling
SP: Wakefield
SP: Wells
SP: Clement
SP: Arroyo
CL: Foulke

i have to say that this doesn’t make me feel good. add that we have good depth at 3B/1B (marte, snow) and almost no depth in the OF or the MI positions. I think that changes will happen before the year starts. as you can see, we have a glut of SP’s, and Wells will almost certainly be shipped off for OF help, with current rumors being that Jay Payton will get the nod. Dustin Pedoria is presumably working furiously on converting to SS, a position he hasn’t played since high school or something.

truth be told, this team reminds me of a poorly drafted fantasy team. It’s round 15 or so, you took too many pitchers in the first 7, and now you realize that grabbing two second basemen and no shortstop was a stupid idea, cause no one wants to trade you a SS without asking for something ridiculous. I did this a few years ago with a fantasy team, drafting a bunch of pitchers in the first 10 rounds, an almost no offense, and it was the only year in which i didn’t end up in the money for some fantasy baseball league of mine.

Of course things work differently with the red sox, and i can’t disparage any singular decision that they’ve made, but this is a team that is relying on quite a few “big ifs”. such as:

IF Beckett’s blister problems don’t continue
IF Lowell regains some semblance of form as a hitter
IF Schilling can be even somewhat effective
IF Foulke doesn’t shit the bed
IF Dustin Pedoria can contribute in the 2nd half
IF Kevin Youkilis turns into a decent hitter with 500AB’s (they’re projecting 15-20HR with a .400 OBP)
IF Manny remains somewhat happy
IF no one else gets injured (we are one jason varitek injury away from a starting lineup with John Flaherty)

then, and only then, will the red sox be a decent 95 win team this year. which, given toronto’s retooling and oaklands potential of having a full year with their rookie starters, will be exactly what it takes to win the WC

the yankees? forget about it. the yankees are the division front runners, and barring injury or rapid degredation amongst several of their players, i see no reason why they won’t take yet another division title.

now, things can change between then and now. one thing i did not mention is the Jo(h)ns, Papelbon and Lester, who the sox managed to hold onto this year, could both be excellent additions to the pitching staff, and would give us some room to trade a starter (arroyo) for a decent position player in case the Alex Cora at SS experiement doesn’t work out. There’s always the chance that Kapler can come back and contribute, but that was a pretty serious injury late in the season, and i don’t think he’s a full time player anyways. but we still need a 4th OF and pinch runner. besides, Trot will inevitably go on the DL for 3 weeks or so, as he does every year (not that i don’t love trot, but let’s be honest, he’s not durable).

So, with 45 days to go till pitchers and catchers report, we’re heavy on pitching and weak up the middle. And i don’t think those deals can be made now. so we hope that our strengths can beat out our weaknesses, and that toronto isn’t the looming giant they appear to be.

(sidenote: i actually think this is very possible. i like all of torontos additions, but each one of them had a pretty big question mark attached to them, be it experience as a closer, ability to get on base, or injury risk. Toronto could be a mirage)

my preseason prediction is that the sox win 92 games, and very very narrowly win the wild card.

and yet, we won. cause the other team didn’t show up. Which will make us the #1 seed going into the playoffs this weekend. but man, do we look like the weakest #1 seed ever. We scrimmaged each other in a nice little “keep your skillz up” game (team ITP vs the others), and i’ve seen better bocce played by cats, even cats who are currently doing other stuff and ignoring the game.

to make an excuse, let’s run down the roster:

Daya (was 4 martini’s deep by the time she got to the bar)
Sara (was exhausted)
KB (was sick)
Kevin (was jet lagged)
Alex (was fine, and it showed as he was the only one to play well consistently)
I (was in a pissy mood and hadn’t eaten, so i got trashed pretty quick)

i won’t go into the specifics of the game for everyone, but i personally threw several balls waaaaaay off target, and basically looked like a complete amateur (to the point where after i made 1 good shot, alex came out of the john, and was like “wow, manlio came through”). And playing poorly is ok, if it’s game 1. but this was game last. we come out with that crap on sunday, we’ll be the best #1 seed ever to not make it past our first playoff game.