I hope that you're enjoying the start to your Memorial Day weekend. Now, let's get this show started. Once again, here are my picks for some of the week's best and/or most memorable people and moments, better known in this blog simply as "End of the Week":
Commencement Speech of the Week: Amy Poehler at Harvard University
With the end of the year comes a new slate of famous celebrities being offered honorary degrees at certain colleges for the whole purpose of showing up and making a speech so the graduates can brag that [insert celebrity name here] was standing 30 feet away and talking directly to them about stuff like carpe diem, shaping the world, and whatever other bullsh*t. This year, these celebrities ranged from politicians like Bill Clinton at NYU to writers like Tony Morrison at Rutgers to Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks at Yale or Denzel Washington at Penn. To me, the one commencement speech that stood out the most came from this year's Harvard College Class Day, where "Parks and Recreations" star and Boston College graduate Amy Poehler to the class of 2011. It was funny, it was clever, and it made up for the large dose of arrogant douchebags present at the ceremony. Also, because "Parks and Recreations" isn't coming back on TV until around September 20th or so, which makes any sighting of the cast members or Michael Shur great at this point.
Stories of the Week:
- The Actual Story of the Week: Tornado Rampages Over the City of Joplin, Missouri; At Least 142 People Are Dead
With this tornado, 2011 now marks the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1953 with 523 people tragically passing away from this natural disaster. Another sad, somber reminder of just how deadly Mother Nature can be. May they all R.I.P.
- The Tiger Woods Saga of '09 Memorial Story of the Week: North Virginia Woman Claims To Regularly Get in Bed With the Ghost of Jim Morrison
There's a very good chance that the woman wasn't "lying in bed" with Morrison. However, at least she was lying about something, which was this story.
Chokers of the Week: The Chicago Bulls (in a slight edge over the Oklahoma City Thunder)
The team's Thursday night meltdown in game five of the Eastern Conference Finals, one which cost them the series, was simply a disaster of Homeric proportions, one the showed all of the inexperience, all of the inadequacies and their ineffectiveness closing out games all in one single little space. With 3:30 remaining in the game, the Bulls had a 12 point lead over the Heat, and from that period in time it looked as if a win was inevitable, that the team had done enough in the game's first 44:30 to stay alive and take this series to Miami for a game six. But, then, this happened (game log courtesy of Deadspin):
02:40 Rose Turnover : Bad Pass (3 TO) Steal:Wade (2 ST) [CHI 77-67]
02:36 Wade Layup Shot: Made (17 PTS); Rose Foul : Shooting (4 PF) [CHI 77-69]
01:30 Wade 3pt Shot: Made (20 PTS) Assist: James (6 AST); Rose Foul : Shooting (5 PF) [CHI 79-75]
01:08 Rose Floating Jump shot: Missed [CHI 79-76]
00:52.9 Rose Turnover : Bad Pass (4 TO) Steal:James (3 ST) [79-79]
00:26.7 Rose Free Throw 2 of 2 Missed [MIA 81-80]
00:00.7 Rose 3pt Shot: Missed Block: James (2 BLK) [MIA 83-80]
And just like that, the game ended in a complete 180 reverse of how it was supposed to go down. Miami won by 3, defeating Chicago in five games and earning a spot in the NBA finals against the Dallas Mavericks, while Chicago (both its players and its fan) ended the game in a state of chock, trying to comprehend how this team (who won 62 games in the regular season) could possibly play as bad as they did: poorly guarding James and Wade, making dumb fouls when they shouldn't have, missing important free throws, and overall closing out the game like the Oklahoma City Thunder in game 4 of the Western Conference Finals. I suppose if there's anything that I must do in this situation, it would be to give the credit to where credit is mostly due: Miami's Big Three, particularly Lebron James who made two of the game's biggest shots at the end (including the one that gave Miami the lead) while also once again brilliantly guarding MVP Derrick Rose (his final FG percentage while being guarded by James? 6.3 %).
Also, the Bulls (like the Thunder) are an inexperienced team, one whose best player is 22 years old and who haven't made this far into a season since Michael Jordan, so the fact that they were schooled at the final moments of this game (along with games 3 and 4) by a more mature and more experienced Heat team is not at all surprising. Now, I guess there's nothing left to do but to wait out and see how the team responds to this crushing defeat next season. They're still a fairly young team that is one big trade or signing (Dwight Howard, anyone?) away from being the best team in the league, so I will predict that there future will turn out to be like the ones for the late '80s Bulls in the NBA, or the 2008-2009 Chicago Blackhawks (to use another Chicago sports team comparison) in the NHL. Stilll...considering how they had the MVP and the Coach of the Year on their side, this loss was still pretty messed up in retrospect.
Video of the Week: "The Grand Rapids LipDub"
This video from the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan came as a response to an article posted on Newsweek claiming it to be one of the nation's top dying cities in order to show that it was not, in fact, doing so. This, my friends, is the epitome of a well-choreographed f-you.
Person of the Week: Comedian Eugene Mirman
for being one of the few celebrities out here in the U.S. to actually do something that I've always wanted to do, which in this case was spending money that he made working on a TV show for a large ad on a few major New York publications ranting against some company that you really hate (don't you question my fantasies!). On Thursday, the very funny comedian decided to spend some of the extra money he made while voice acting on "Bob's Burgers" on something both peculiar and epic: an angry and sarcastic full-age letter on both the New York Press and the Greenpoint Gazette ranting against the much maligned cable giant Time-Warner, a company that is not new to criticism already. According to his own website, Mirman's decision to pay to run this ad came after Time-Warner failed to show up twice to move his cable. Mirman is a comedian pretty well known for making some very humorous letters in the past, like his one to Delta Airlines or his one to some random rock music group on MySpace from his appearance on the "Comedians of Comedy" stand-up special, but this one will most certainly will surpass them as the most memorable.
The open-letter was fairly brief (only four paragraphs, with two P.S.'s at the end) but right down to the point, which was to say that Time-Warner sucks. It such so much, in fact, that it has less stars on Yelp (1.5) than serial killer Jefferey Dahmer (if he was actually on Yelp, of course) and that he wishes for them the following plagues by God:
"1. Awkward. Every board member’s cell phone ring loudly announces their weight and also the day they’ll die.
2. Bathroom. The constant feeling that you have to go number two, but completely forgetting how.
3. Improv. Your first-born will want to be a short form improviser.
4. Popcorn. Your second born will smell like hot buttered popcorn. It’s not that bad at first, but eventually I bet it will be maddening."
Now, while I don't necessarily share Mirman's pain with Time-Warner, there have been certain cases where I have hated a certain company, a certain store, a certain restaurant, etc.so much that I just wanted to do something exactly like this (namely my former cable company Comcast, better known as the Time-Warner of the Chicagoland area and K-Mart, to name a few). For this, I congratulate Mirman. Also, because this rant came as an advertisement and not as, say, a blog post, it was able to have such an impact that the Jeff Simmermon, the Director of Digital Communications at Time-Warner, personally wrote a response of his own at the company's website to address this issue and say how the company is working hard to improve itself everyday with a five-step plan. Whether this five-step plan will work, or if Time-Warner will actually go ahead and continue on with this plan beyond Memorial Day, remains to be seen, but at least it was a sign of how awesome this letter was.
And that's the way it was! Enjoy the rest of your extended weekend, everyone!
Sincerely,
Your pal: mj15
If you have any opinions on today's post, or if you just have any suggestions or
tips for my next blog entry, e-mail me at: mj1599@aol.com. Your e-mails are greatly appreciated.
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