The Wire Goes March Madness [UPDATE]

It's times like these make me wish that I was more creative. I always think "I could have thought of that" but I am always better at enjoying talent instead of being talented. No matter. At least I get to enjoy it.

The talented folks over at Bill Simmon's Grantland.com combined the greatest T.V. show of all time - HBO's The Wire - with the greatest sport event ever - March Madness, aka, the NCAA Tournament.

The image above is the bracket after the First Day of "play," with winners advancing based on Facebook voting.

No real surprises, with only one of the top-4 seeds not advancing as Chris Partlow, the top muscle for Marlo Stanfield (and the top muscle period in the history of the show) got edged out 7,913-to-5,217 by Dennis 'Cutty' Wise in the lowest scoring/voting game of the first eight match-ups. I like Cutty and wish he could advance farther, but his second round match-up is against Omar Little.....

And Omar Little is the undisputed No. 1 overall seed (the UCLA Bruins of the 60s-70s or UNLV of '90-'91). Omar absolutely demoralized the No. 8 seed Ziggy Sobotka with his shottie, 18,215-to-193. That was not a typo. It will be the greatest upset of March Madness if Omar doesn't win it all. But just like UCLA and UNLV, it can happen.

Check back to the Facebook page if you want to vote, and visit Grantland to check out the rest of the field. The scheduled day for the match-ups is listed on the large image above.

I went ahead and finished my predictions for the rest of the bracket (I'm confident I would have picked all eight winners from Day One) and those picks can be found on my customized bracket below.

UPDATE (3/13/12): Omar won the bracket as everyone predicted. I missed just two of the Sweet 16 and two of the Elite 8. I had the Final 4 correct, but I had McNulty taking out Stringer to get to the finals which isn't what "happened." Below is the final bracket.

Twitter Spammers Are Wacky

NC State's Lorenzo Brown was trending on Twitter in the Raleigh area after his dunk/performance against Duke in a game that we will not be talking about after right... NOW.

When you trend on Twitter, the spammer weird people come out of their dark holes and start putting that trending name in everything so you show up in Twitter search. Below are some examples of this sludge (BTW, don't click on any links):

Omg!! Can this be real? http://ow.ly/97IXx?=m8 Fat Albert Music is FREEDOM Lorenzo Brown #HonestyNight

Drama City: Lorenzo Brown loves his work. As an officer for the Humane Society, it is his job to cruise the city...
 
Wow..wow..wow http://tiny.cc/64lar?=v4 may contain traces of nuts! Music is FREEDOM #HonestyNight Lorenzo Brown Dice AMLO

is this for real? http://tiny.cc/0un3z?=m9 Matt Carlino LorenzoBrown Amanda Knox #ThingsThatBotherMe
Simply f'n Amazing http://ow.ly/97IXx?=s5 Lorenzo Brown Gary Carter

Box wrist watch "Lorenzo" brown.: Irresistible charm of masculine elegance in leather, these boxes wrist watch "...

Wow..wow..wow http://tiny.cc/64lar?=w3 is couldn't get any cooler! Mark Gottfried Lorenzo Brown #LasCosasIbanBienHasta Elvis Crespo

Wow..wow..wow http://tiny.cc/64lar?=t6 is couldn't get any cooler! #ReplaceFilmTitlesWithVagina Lorenzo Brown Rip City

Awesomenesssauce Video

This video is filled with humans being awesome.

Highlights include Soccer Volleyball (yes, combined) and lots of people risking their lives in "extreme" sports just for the chance to get some free Red Bull.

Hiking & Camping

So I haven't been able to finish this post yet... and this was originally written back in October. I was about to delete it but the photos are epic. So this is a very short post with just a few bullets to get this out of the "draft" list and live.

(These bullets are actually what I originally saved as a draft, so this is really unedited, unless noted in red.)

• Pisqah National Forest
• Wilson Creek Wilderness Area
• Mortimer

Foccacia (Ate this too soon before hiking, then almost did the next bullet below.)
Puke
Blisters (Stupid shoes didn't fit and within an hour I was full blistered.)

Camp

Moonlight (It was dark, the light you see is from the moon... slow exposure of course.)

Multiple Stream crossing
Waterfall accidental sighting (We didn't know we had arrived, we just decided to get off the trail to eat and BAM, there we were.)

We lost the trail. Lost for 2 hours (photo below)

RUM HAM

My lists of top-5 favorite things in any category are constantly changing and expanding (if you ask The Wife she would tell you my top-5 lists contain anywhere from 50-500 items).

What I can tell you for certain is that I recently discovered the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I am madly and deeply in love with it.

One of my favorite episodes involved Frank (Danny DeVito) and his creation of the epic "Rum Ham," a 90 proof chunk of ham soaked in - you guessed it - rum.

Time to get rips#!t on rum ham.

FULL VERSION

BEST PART 1

BEST PART 2

CAPTCHA THIS!

CAPTCHA, I am so fed up with you.

Each time I need to securely log-in to a website, CAPTCHA decides to test me.

While I appreciate your attempts to keep the internet(s) safe from spammers, you also make me furious because you are sometimes/most of the time impossible to decipher.

Just look at the image above. Seriously, how many attempts do you think it will take for you to understand this random gobblygook? You could just click on "get another one" 30 times.

Or you could just punch your screen.

Cedar Point Trip

Back in October (Yes, I had this draft sitting here for months and have done a terrible job of updating the blog) the crew headed to Cedar Point for some amazing roller coaster adventures. This was the second time I had been there (with brother and Dirty the previous trip) and this time we brought our spouses along. Everyone had a great time, despite Jeanette being afraid of Halloween stuff (they had scary stuff at night in the park) and the Wife not liking Roller Coasters (she did great and rode most of them).

Maverick was the newest one in the park and we got to ride it for the first time (ended up doing it three times, and I wish I could have done it many, many more times. It was amazing. Watch this POV  video below of Maverick (and not this Maverick).

This second video shows Dirty and me at the end of our last Maverick ride.

This final video is one Joe/Wife took of Top Thrill Dragster XL which will make you squirm just watching it on video or in person. Riding it is amazing, and beyond intense.

An annual trip would be nice, but I'm not sure the Wife will be down for that.