Jonathan's blog

Tralfaz was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs with a 5-point loss. I thought it was a decent rookie season for the coach who made his share of mistakes but did OK. I've been referring to Tralfaz as "our team", but apparently Elliot wasn't happy with my management and insists that he wants to have his own team next year...a 6-year-old with his own fantasy football team? He was excited when I was talking about "next year" because he thought I meant January. He's got the Backyard Football computer game that he loves, and he's started writing down the stats from the games he plays (T=touchdown, S=sack, Fr=fumble recovery). Tonight I watched CostasNOW. Like always, the montage summary of the year in sports tugged at your heart strings, especially with Explosions in the Sky as the soundtrack. Also, Charles Barkley admitted that he's lost between 5 and 10 million dollars gambling.

Here are some TV recommendations from The Week magazine:

• Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers, Mon, Dec 11, 9 PM, Sundance
• Wedding Wars (trailer), Mon, Dec 11, 9 PM, A&E
• The Lost Room (trailer), Mon-Wed, Dec 11-13, 9 PM, Sci Fi
• Taking the Hill (trailer), Tue, Dec 12, 9 PM, Discovery Times
• One Punk Under God (trailer), Wed, Dec 13, 9 PM, Sundance
• Harvey, Sun, Dec 17, 2 PM, Turner Classic Movies
• Explorer: Secret Lives of Jesus, Sun, Dec 17, 9 PM, National Geographic

I thought this article by Tommy Craggs on Slate about John Wooden and basketball was interesting. An excerpt:

Wooden, and our beatification of the man, has had its toxic effect on the game. It's certainly there in the NBA, which over the past year or so has hired a chief strategist of President Bush's re-election campaign to win back Middle America; instituted an absurd and paternalistic dress code (glossed nicely here); and stood idly by while Chicago Bulls coach Scott Skiles benched Ben Wallace, one of the hardest-working players in the game, for wearing a headband.

I don't know...I thought the dress code (as silly as it may be) was more about what was perceived to help sell the product that the NBA is, not necessarily some sort of legacy of Wooden's.

Tonight at the Taekwon Do Christmas party, Elliot was on the dance floor and started imitating another kid who was making a rather feeble attempt at break dancing. Since Elliot has never seen it before, I told him I'd find a few example videos on YouTube. Here are a few. Also, I told him that his uncle Matt used to break dance, so maybe we can get him to teach us a few moves during the holidays.

Via TechCrunch, this looks interesting: Streampad. From the description on TechCrunch:

...a Web-based media player that gives users access to their digital music library from any computer. Similar to Songbird, it streams your personal library from the Internet but it runs completely inside any browser. Streampad is a free service. Users download a Java desktop application that stores the metadata from all MP3 and AC3 files (protected and unprotected) it finds on your computer, including those that come from iTunes. Then, when that same user logs into Streampad from another computer, they can listen to music streamed directly from their home computer.