Gino Bona Wins!

On Sunday, I encouraged everyone to vote for Ithaca College graduate Gino Bona in the Super Bowl ad contest. My plea was so effective that I made the Blog Log page of the Express. Oh yeah, it turns out that Gino Bona won too. Bona's story made the USA Today and the Buffalo News wrote an in-depth article about his love of the Buffalo Bills. It's always nice to see an IC graduate do well!

You can see his commercial pitch at the NFL's website.

Tony Gwynn

As a baseball fan growing up in Pittsburgh and then attending college in New York, I never really appreciated Tony Gwynn. He was a guy who won batting title after batting title, but since he played on the West Coast, I rarely if ever saw him and the Padres play. When I started participating in fantasy baseball, people drafted Gwynn knowing that he would help you with batting average and give you solid, yet not spectacular, home run, RBI and stolen base numbers. (He was never on my team, which may be why I have never won.) However, players like Barry Bonds, Fred McGriff, Jeff Bagwell, David Justice, Matt Williams, Moises Alou, Reggie Sanders and Andres Galarraga were all more coveted in the auction draft than Gwynn.

It wasn’t until I moved to San Diego in 1997 that I realized the greatness of Tony Gwynn. In his career, Gwynn won eight batting titles, made 15 All-Star teams, won five Gold Gloves and had over 3,00 hits. Gwynn was a professional hitter. He studied tape of himself and opposing pitchers before anyone else did, and near the end of his career, often discussed hitting with Ted Williams. (How great would it be to overhear those conversations?) Sorry to get all baseball geeky here, but look how Gwynn did against the best pitchers of his time:

Gwynn vs. John Smoltz: 30 for 65 (.462 average)
Gwynn vs. Nolan Ryan: 19 for 63 (.302)
Gwynn vs. Greg Maddux: 39 for 91 (.429)
Gwynn vs. Tom Glavine: 29 for 93 (.312)
Gwynn vs. Doug Drabek: 23 for 49 (.469)
Gwynn vs. Orel Hershiser: 25 for 78 (.321)
Gwynn vs. Pedro Martinez: 11 for 35 (.314)
Gwynn vs. Mike Scott: 27 for 85 (.318)

Off the field, Gwynn received the Roberto Clemente Man of the Year Award in 1999 for combining sportsmanship and community service with excellence on the field and created the Tony & Alicia Gwynn Foundation which has funded numerous worthy organizations and endeavors.

I’m writing about Tony Gwynn for several reasons. First (as you can tell), I really like him as a player and person, even though I’ve never personally met him. Second, even though he was just elected into the Hall of Fame, I still don’t think he gets the credit that he deserves. Some of this may be due to living in the Washington DC area where all of the baseball coverage has been about Cal Ripken’s election into the Hall of Fame. The other part involves the national coverage of his election. Mark McGwire not getting voted into the Hall of Fame is just as big if not bigger than Gwynn’s election. At least I know the people of San Diego realize the greatness of Tony Gwynn.

My Cholesterol

I learned a few years ago from my doctor that I have high cholesterol. Much of this was directly related to my eating habits as I regularly ate cheese sandwiches, cream cheese (with bagels not out of the container), eggs and Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. I had my annual physical last week and received my latest cholesterol numbers. While my good cholesterol (HDL) is low and my bad cholesterol (LDL) is high, my overall cholesterol is OK. I have no idea how this is possible.

Anyway, to help improve my good cholesterol my doctor directed me to take Omega-3 Fatty Acids. This sounds innocent enough since you can buy Omega-3 over the counter. However, do you know what this stuff is? It is fish oil in pill form! The Omega-3 pills contain herring, anchovy, mackerel, sardine, sprat and salmon ingredients. Tasty! I also didn’t mention that these pills are bigger than your average marble. These monster pills are difficult to swallow, although to be fair, I don’t take pills very well, so this may just be me.

I’m supposed to take these pills twice a day, and I’ll go back to my doctor in two months to see how my good cholesterol is doing. Wish me luck!

Fame

My life-long dream was fulfilled today when I was featured in the Express's Blog Log! I'm famous! This ranks just below my national TV appearances in The Price Is Right audience and in the background of ESPN's Sportscenter when Darius Kasparaitis was being interviewed after scoring the game-winning goal in Game 7 of the Pittsburgh Penguins-Buffalo Sabres 2001 playoff series.

If you want to see Sean's Ramblings in print, go to page 36 of the January 8, 2007 Express.

Just a Hunch

Before I went to sleep, I wrote that I thought the next Steelers head coach will come from outside the organization, meaning that it would not be offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt or assistant head coach Russ Grimm. I wrote that I had no inside information; I just had a feeling that Bill Cowher’s replacement would not be Whisenhunt or Grimm, even though everyone thinks that it will be. My prediction: Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera (even though he runs a 4-3 defense), University of Iowa coach (and Upper St. Clair native) Kirk Ferentz or someone who has not been identified as a potential candidate as of now, which I guess could be anyone (that’s my way of hedging my prediction). My plan was to post this paragraph this morning. Well, I am posting this now, but I just read in the Post-Gazette that Louisville coach Bobby Petrino agreed to become the coach of the Atlanta Falcons. I figured that Whisenhunt would get either this job or the Arizona Cardinals head coaching position. I now have some doubts with my hunch.

Could Bill Cowher be the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2008? I think so and apparently the Post-Gazette also thinks it could happen. First, does anyone see Cleveland contending for a playoff spot in 2007? Exactly. This means that Romeo Crennel could be out of job at the end of next season. Not only does Cowher have experience working for the Browns but Cleveland really wants a winning football team and would do anything for this to happen. Therefore, I can definitely see the Lerner family paying millions and millions of dollars to get Cowher.

Vote Early and Vote Often

If you have watched any NFL games over the last few weeks, you have probably seen the commercial to vote for the "Pitch Us Your Idea For The Best Super Bowl Commercial Ever. Seriously" contest. It turns out that one of the 12 finalists from the over 10,000 entrants is an Ithaca College graduate. Gino Bona, class of 1995, is choice #5 and is currently in second place. I don't personally know him, but as a fellow IC grad, he's got my vote and hopefully you'll vote for him too. Click on this link and vote for Gino. You can vote once per day from now through Tuesday. The winning pitch may be made into a Super Bowl commercial.

I do personally know Hershey and the voting for the Dog Show USA contest has been extended. As of Friday, Hershey is in the top 10 for her group. Please click on this link and click on the 5th out of 5 stars for Hershey Sans Almonds in Herndon, Virginia. Thank you!

Mistaken Lyrics

I have had Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got" song in my head the last few days. Even though I don't know most of the lyrics, there is one line in particular that has been playing over and over in my mind. The line is "H.O.V.A. Gold bottles of that ace of spade." I'm glad I just looked this up since I have been singing, "H.O.V.A. Coke bottles of the ace of spades."

I have no idea what either of these mean, but I like my version better.

Breaking News

While certainly not a surprise, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting that Bill Cowher will announce his retirement Friday. According to the article, "Cowher called Steelers chairman Dan Rooney this afternoon and said he did not want to wait any longer to announce his decision. Cowher was going to wait until Monday, but he did not want to delay the Steelers' search for his successor." I will definitely write more about this over the next few weeks.

Now back to watching the Pitt-Syracuse game. Go Pitt!

Surprise Reader

Al Jazeera International recently contacted me. How's that for a first line? When I wrote about Saddam Hussein's execution, I received the following e-mail:

"I am a reporter at Al Jazeera International in Washington and I am working on a piece today about Saddam’s trial and the way it has been covered by the U.S. media and bloggers here. Would you be available to talk to me in a short interview? I would ask about your blog and the way you’re using it to express your personal views of the coverage and why you were compelled to write about it on your blog."

I replied to the e-mail saying that I may be interested but I wanted to know how much information about myself was needed. I like the fact that I'm somewhat anonymous. So what happened? It turns out that my e-mail went to the Al Jazeera reporter's spam folder and was not read until after the piece was finished.

In the two years I have written this, I have never been contacted by any reporter let alone one from Al Jazeera. Why would anyone, let alone Al Jazeera, want to contact me? Seriously, look at what I wrote about the past few days. Ryan Seacrest, Christina Aguilera and a contest to vote for my friends' dog.

The Al Jazeera reporter may be the second most famous person ever to acknowledge reading this site after Kevin Pittsnogle's mother.

Year In Review

Welcome to my 2nd annual year in review, where I take the first line of the first entry of each month in order to produce a random and (hopefully) interesting review of 2006. Here goes:

January: Sarah already touched on some of this, but it was really sad watching Dick Clark last night on New Year's Rockin' Eve.

February: I really, really thought about taking the five hour drive from the DC area to Punxsutawney tonight so I can make it in time for Groundhog's Day.

March: By now, I'm sure that you've seen the AP story and video about the briefing President Bush received by FEMA and Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center prior to Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

April: Go green, go gold, fight, fight, fight!! GO MASON!!

May: I just have a few quick notes from this weekend's NFL draft related to the Steelers and more.

June: Tomorrow (Friday, June 2nd) the Steelers are being honored at the White House for their Super Bowl victory.

July: We made the trip to the Burgh this weekend and attended our first Pirate game of the season.

August: 25 years ago today, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles aired on MTV.

September: Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor died last night from his battle with brain cancer.

October: With the Steelers on a bye this week, I figured now would be a good time for this monthly feature.

November: Flavor Flav is expecting his seventh kid and I am shocked that the mother is not Deelishis, the winner of Flavor of Love 2.

December: I'm on the mailing list for The Kennedy Center and recently received information about the musical "The Light in the Piazza," which won six 2005 Tony Awards.

This seems like a good representation of 2006. A nice mixture of sports, pop culture and current events. Have a Happy New Year!

Vote for Hershey

Our friends have a terrific and loveable dog named Hershey, pictured here. Hershey has been entered in the Dog Show USA contest, and she needs your vote! Therefore, go to the following site and click on the picture for Hershey Sans Almonds in Herndon, Virginia. When her bio comes up, click on the 5th out of 5 stars. The screen is VERY sensitive so please make sure your mouse is on the 5th star before you click. The 10 dogs with the highest ratings in each of the 11 categories (Hershey is in the Mixed Breed/Other category) will be turned over to the judges after voting closes on January 3rd at 3PM EST. Thank you!

New Year’s Messages for Ryan Seacrest and Christina Aguilera

According to this story, Ryan Seacrest wants to celebrate the New Year by kissing Christina Aguilera. Apparently, he kissed Mariah Carey last year, and wants to continue his New Year’s tradition of kissing beautiful female pop artists. Although they may be too busy today to read this post, I would like to send a message to both Seacrest and Aguilera.

Dear Ryan: While I can understand why you would like to kiss Christina Aguilera to begin the New Year, don’t do it. She’s a married woman and probably does not want to kiss you. Her song "Ain't No Other Man" is not about you! It's about her husband. You have a great gig by taking over New Year's Rockin' Eve for Dick Clark; don’t embarrass yourself more than usual.

Dear Christina: When you see it is 11:58, run and hide!

Saddam

As everyone knows by now, Saddam Hussein has been executed. The news of his execution broke just before 11:00pm Eastern time yesterday. As I was clicking through numerous television stations, I was shocked that the four major networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, did not have any coverage of this. The local DC stations all started their newscasts with the story, but then went to the usual local news and weather. Repeats of Letterman and Leno were both aired without interruption. The cable news stations such as CNN and MSNBC provided all-Saddam coverage, but that's what the cable news stations do.

Here's my question: why were the four major networks not covering the execution story? Where were Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams and Katie Couric? Even if they're all on vacation, shouldn't someone else have been available? This is a huge national and international story. The United States has gone to war with Iraq twice in the past two decades. After weapons of mass destruction were not found, the spin provided by the Bush administration was that the U.S. got Saddam out of power. It seems to me that the news of Saddam's death should have been covered by the major networks. At least Anderson Cooper was on CNN.

I Feel Bad for John Edwards

Trying to get attention away from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, John Edwards picked this week (specifically yesterday) to declare that he is running for President. Edwards picked this week to announce his candidacy because his campaign believed that the week between Christmas and New Years would be a slow news week. So what happened? Gerald Ford died, James Brown died and Saddam Hussein may be executed any day now. Plus, there's always news regarding the war in Iraq. So much for a slow news week.

The Next Level

Sean’s Ramblings is coming up on its 2-year anniversary and I feel like I’m at a crossroads of what to do next. I’ve recently discovered DC Blogs and an entire DC blogger community. There is a DC Blogger Summit hosted by washingtonpost.com and I’ve seen information about blogger happy hours. I’m debating whether or not I truly want to be part of this community. On one hand, it would be cool to branch out and meet new people. Conversely, I’m comfortable being somewhat anonymous and as I’ve recently discovered (confirmed?), I’m a sloth. I could be way off base, but it seems like many of DC blogger "cool crowd" can post information during the day. I refuse to even check my blog at work since I’ve heard stories of people being fired for posting work or personal information at the office. Therefore, I limit my writing to evenings, weekends, and sometimes early in the morning.

I am also trying to decide what to do next with this site. Should I focus more on sports, TV, music or things going on in the DC area? Should I add more (or less) about my personal life? Can I take this site to the next level? I’m really not sure.

In reality, I probably won’t do anything new and just stay with the status quo. That seems to have worked for me the past 2 years.

Leftovers

Did you ever want to know how to say Sean’s Ramblings in other languages?
French: Ramblings de Sean
German: Ramblings Seans
Italian: Ramblings del Sean
Portuguese: Ramblings de Sean
Spanish: Ramblings de Sean

OK, Sean’s Ramblings doesn’t translate very well, but the Google Language Tool is pretty cool.

Thanks to everyone for providing names of songs with state titles. I actually found the following link with names of songs for all 50 states. It is typical that the list does not include a song with D.C. in the title.

This is a few days late, but Mondesi’s House has a fantastic list that ranks the best Pittsburgh athletes by uniform number. For example, Dave Parker narrowly edges out Willie Parker for the best Pittsburgh athlete who wore the number 39.

After driving 1345 miles on the hockey roadtrip, I have only put 35 miles on my car since I returned last Tuesday.

Yes, I’m still upset that I started Tim Rattay over Trent Green or David Garrard. I am also not very happy with Sammy Morris.

Fantasy Blues

I know that no one cares about hearing or reading about someone else’s fantasy football teams, but I need to vent. Thanks to LaDainian Tomlinson, I reached the championship game, which took place this weekend, in both leagues.

In my 16-team league, I have reached the championship game in three of the four years of the league’s existence. This year marks the third time in four years that I have LOST in the championship game! The worst part about this year is that I lost by two points.
Freakin’ Sammy Morris had a whopping 14 yards rushing and 23 yards receiving (3 total points) to give my opponent the victory. If I started Trent Green or David Garrard instead of Tim Rattay, I would have won. If I started the Cincinnati Bengals defense instead of the Jacksonville Jaguars defense, I would have won.

In my 10-team league, I lost in week #2 but have not lost since. Well, that was until I lost this week. I’m not that upset about this loss since I was soundly defeated. Congratulations to regular reader Messiah on his big win.

I think I may need to quit fantasy sports. I put so much time and energy into fantasy football and baseball and never win. Between various leagues, I have been in fantasy baseball and football leagues for the equivalent of about 30 seasons. That’s a long time without a championship. I feel like the Cleveland Browns! This is probably just frustration and the fact that I’m tired since I watched the end of the Dolphins-Jets game to see how Sammy Morris played. However, it may be more than frustration.

New Quiz

I'm a little depressed since the Ravens destroyed the Steelers earlier today and my fantasy football teams are not doing very well in both of my championship games. Therefore, I've been searching the web and found the Seven Deadly Sins quiz through Talking Budgie on DC Blogs.

Here are my results:

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Low
Pride:	Medium

A sloth? I'm a sloth? I even looked up sloth in the dictionary for a definition - habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness. I guess I need to be not so lazy. Am I alone in my slothiness? (Is that even a word?) Take the quiz and please let me know!

Big Day

Happy Sunday everyone! I plan on sitting on my couch for the next seven hours or so watching football. I have no interest in going to any stores, especially after picking up a few items at Giant yesterday, and being attacked by Cub Scouts and the Salvation Army.

The first item on today's agenda is the Steelers-Ravens game at 1:00 Eastern. According to my source in Baltimore (my brother), Ravens fans are already making plans to buy Super Bowl tickets. To quote ESPN's Lee Corso, not so fast my friend!
Although the Steelers are hanging on to slim playoff hopes, and while a win over Baltimore will not determine if they make the playoffs, it would still be a great to see it happen. The Ravens totally dominated the Steelers a few weeks ago, winning 27-0, but today should be a much better game.

I know no one cares, but I am in the championship of my two fantasy football leagues. I'll be watching the statistics of my players and my opponents' players very closely throughout the day. There's a certain running back on San Diego that I will especially be rooting for in a 4:15 game.

More later today...

Songs with States in the Title

During last week's road trip, we were trying to think of songs with states in the title. There are many songs with California and New York (even though many New York songs are about New York City), so we skipped these states. Here's what we came up with (please note that I looked up some of these when I returned):

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Pennsylvania Polka – Andrews Sisters (I had to look up the artist)
Carolina in My Mind – James Taylor (this could count for either North or South Carolina)
Mississippi Queen – Mountain (I had to look this up too)
Kentucky Woman – Neil Diamond
Tennessee – Arrested Development
Country Roads – John Denver (West Virginia isn't actually in the title, but I'll give "West Virginia, Mountain Momma" the benefit of the doubt.)
Stop in Nevada – Billy Joel
Ohio – Neil Young
Georgia on My Mind – Ray Charles
Blue Hawaii – Elvis
New Mexico – Johnny Cash
Deep in the Heart of Texas - many versions including Perry Como and Bing Crosby
Nebraska – Bruce Springsteen

Since many of you are probably taking your own road trips for the holidays, try to think of some others. The only rule is that you can't use an official state song. For example, Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma" is the actual state song for Kansas (just seeing if you're paying attention).

Please feel free to add other songs you can think of in the comments.