New York Giants: Super Bowl XLII Champions

Mentally and emotionally exhausted right now. Whether that is due to the two long days of riding so far, or the exceptional win by the Giants in Super Bowl 42, I can't decide. Jasko and I rocked our Giants jerseys all day on the slopes. Between the two of us, we had the defensive ends fully represented, Umenyiora for him, and Strahan for me. At one point, some Patriots fan rode by screaming at us. Can't believe he had the gall to root for a team he wasn't even representing. Didn't see him rocking any Patriots gear on the slopes.

The majority of our group called it quits on the slopes at noon to secure seating at one of the bars in Whistler Village. The Pei brothers and I decided to lap the small terrain park as many times as we could before heading down to our slope side house to change for the game. Ended up at Dubhlinn Gate seated right in front of a large table of Patriots fans. One of the females was rocking a 'Perfect' t-shirt. Looks like she's a liar, better burn that shirt woman. At halftime we ran into the rest of the people staying at our house and hiked it up to the house to watch the second half there.

If you for some crazy reason didn't watch the game, you can read about it on ESPN. Steve Spagnuolo is a defensive genius, though the talent he has to work with isn't bad at all (except the secondary at times). I hope the Redskins don't take him, but if they do, no hard feelings, he deserves a head coach position. I just wish he'd stick around until Coughlin retires. Lord knows I don't want Gilbride anywhere near the head coach position. Caused me enough heartache as the offensive coordinator. After Plaxico's TD, we were celebrating so hard, Jasko lost his beer (fell under the fireplace) and I almost crushed my glasses when Jonlin or Beeker knocked them off my face. Damn, that drive was insane!

Most of the guys chilled outside, smoking celebratory cigars while I watched the trophy and MVP presentation. Almost teared up when Plax started crying during the postgame interview. Afterward, Jasko and I decided to conduct a victory lap on the slopes and in Whistler village. We climbed back onto the pitch black trail and rode down to the village, it was freaking surreal not being able to see or feel the speed, but knowing that you were definitely moving. Too bad we didn't see any of the Patriots fans walking around. Guess they went home to burn their Perfect / 19-0 t-shirts.

Congratulations New York Giants! And to all the fans!

Killington MLKjr Weekend. Good times.

I'm completely brain dead at work right now, barely functional. I'm assuming Retardo is much the same way, except he got even less sleep than I did and he's working with sharp objects. As for everyone else? I believe soreness is beginning to set in if it hasn't yet. It's a good pain though. Enjoy it.

Got home at 4am this morning after a surprisingly easy drive back from Killington thanks to Elmo, Splinter and Terry keeping me awake. The lack of power steering also kept me alert, especially during low speed - high angle turns. We left late (at around 11pm) along with Retardo's car because of the Giants game. A pound goes to Splinter for getting me to stay rather than listening to the game on the drive back. I'll save the Giants love fest for another post.

For a holiday weekend, I was expecting terrible lines which fortunately wasn't the case. The only time we experienced a semi-long line was the one time we tried to hit Ramshead on Saturday. It was pretty much dead on Sunday when we lapped the Timberline terrain park. Guess all the noobs that go riding on the holidays decided to stay in after a bruising first day on the slopes. Or maybe it was the Patriots game keeping them off the slopes? Retardo also found a nice tree run off the Timberline run for those of you who enjoy the glades, just watch out for that small creek towards the end of it.

On day two Chewy and some of the other guys came up with some narrative on the slopes. At one point he had Elmo and Michelle waltzing in the snow on a snowboard, interested in seeing how that turns out. There were a few other funny clips, especially the one with Elmo screaming before he went off the trail towards the trees. Update: Chewy posted up his Sundance film entry, Snow Waltz. Check it out!

All in all, it was a productive weekend. Everyone came away with some aspect of their riding improved, even the rookies caught the bug. I finally got the butters down, turns out I pretty much have to initiate from the nose of the board with a decent amount of speed to get the revolutions in. Inching ever closer to the 3's thanks to the excellent Park Crew at Ramshead.

Off the slopes, the company was great. 18 riders in one house with two bathrooms. No issues at all which was amazing. Going to take this opportunity to thank Tomo, Janey and whoever else did the cooking. Hope you all enjoyed the submarinos even if they were a little burnt. Also got my first massage in a long time in the massage circle, that ended up turning into a back-cracking-fest where I applied the back-cracking-technique I learned from the Devlins to most of the riders in the house. Most memorable quote of the weekend? Courtesy of Shorti after I cracked her back. "It felt so good, I almost farted." Not sure if I laughed harder then or when we picked up Chewy for some crowd surfing which ended with Retardo violating him. Please see the photos from Tomo for a frame by frame documentation.

Props to Elmo for organizing and Chewy for hooking us up! Looking forward to President's Day Weekend.

Photos: Tomo, Elaine (or FB), Chewy, Splinter, Christine, Ranie

Giants Hit List: Coughlin, Gilbride, Manning. And who trade away Ryan Grant?

2-10-NYG 38 (14:49) 27-B.Jacobs right tackle pushed ob at WAS 45 for 17 yards

1-10-WAS 48 (12:16) 27-B.Jacobs left end to WAS 48 for no gain
2-10-WAS 48 (12:00) 27-B.Jacobs left end to WAS 47 for 1 yard

1-10-NYG 33 (9:44) 27-B.Jacobs left guard to NYG 37 for 4 yards
2-6-NYG 37 (9:05) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to NYG 41 for 4 yards

1-10-NYG 46 (7:56) 27-B.Jacobs up the middle to NYG 47 for 1 yard

1-10-NYG 12 (6:00) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to NYG 21 for 9 yards

3-1-NYG 21 (5:21) (No Huddle) 27-B.Jacobs left guard to NYG 21 for no gain

1-10-WAS 49 (2:15) 27-B.Jacobs left guard to WAS 47 for 2 yards
2-8-WAS 47 (1:41) 27-B.Jacobs left end to WAS 46 for 1 yard

1-10-NYG 37 (13:57) 27-B.Jacobs left end to NYG 37 for no gain

2-10-NYG 4 (6:39) 27-B.Jacobs left guard to NYG 5 for 1 yard

1-10-NYG 43 (2:31) (No Huddle, Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs right guard to WAS 48 for 9 yards

1-10-WAS 21 (1:46) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs right tackle to WAS 17 for 4 yards

1-10-NYG 40 (12:08) 27-B.Jacobs right tackle to WAS 42 for 18 yards
1-10-WAS 42 (11:31) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to WAS 39 for 3 yards

1-10-WAS 37 (6:14) 27-B.Jacobs right tackle to WAS 37 for no gain

2-10-NYG 28 (1:47) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs right guard to NYG 41 for 13 yards
1-10-NYG 41 (1:15) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs right guard to NYG 47 for 6 yards

1-10-NYG 27 (9:53) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs right tackle to NYG 35 for 8 yards

3-2-NYG 35 (9:17) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to NYG 38 for 3 yards

4-2-WAS 32 (6:41) (No Huddle) 27-B.Jacobs up the middle to WAS 25 for 7 yards

2-10-WAS 25 (6:06) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to WAS 20 for 5 yards

1-10-NYG 49 (4:32) (No Huddle, Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to WAS 42 for 9 yards

3-1-WAS 42 (4:01) (Shotgun) 27-B.Jacobs left tackle to WAS 37 for 5 yards

Glauber's recent Newsday article inspired me to put down some of the thoughts that went through my mind as I suffered through another loss. I've attended three regular season games and each of them have been losses though I left the first one, Pittsburgh at Giants back in 2004, feeling good.

I'm still in the process of defrosting from the miserable Sunday night at the Meadowlands. Let's add Gilbride's name to the list of people that should be let go from the Giants organization. Coughlin promoted him from QB coach to offensive coordinator this season. Are you kidding me? Why would you promote a guy who's done such a poor job of coaching your 'star' quarterback, someone the Giants paid dearly for? Coughlin is senile.

In all fairness to Eli just this once, considering the conditions, many of the passes from Eli found their mark, but the receivers just couldn't hold on. He did have many missed opportunities where he just didn't see the field well (as always). Again, why Gilbride? Why bother calling all those passes? His first stint as an offensive coordinator last year was against the Redskins, and in that game they put 261 yards on the ground! Seems like he was getting too cute this time around.

On the few times he called on the running game, Gilbride kept going left. I don't think he was watching the same game we were. Just looked through the play by play above and tallied up the runs by Jacobs. 15 attempts to the left netting 47 yards, 2 attempts up the middle netting 8 yards and 8 attempts to the right netting 75 yards. Hello, McFly? 9.375 average to the right, 4 up the middle and 3.13 to the left. I don't care what defensive looks the Redskins were giving the Giants, what field position they had, and obviously the game plan should have been burned halfway through the first quarter; they should have kept going right.

In three instances he ran two back to back running plays to the left side. What did that net Giants? 1 yard, 8 yards, 3 yards. They ran back to back running plays to the right once and that netted them 19 yards. That healthily beats all three back to back runs to the left side! On the left, most runs were 5 yards and under, there were two occasions where Jacobs ran for 9 yards on the left. On the right, most of the runs went for 8 yards or more. Three of them went for 17 yards, 18 yards and 13 yards. COME ON this isn't fucking NASCAR, you can go right. Someone should have stepped in and taken away the play calling duties from Gilbride.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as Manning, Coughlin and Gilbride are around, we'll never get close to a Super Bowl. Kick them to the curb. I wish Eli threw some snowballs that night, maybe security could have ejected him from the game like they did with many of the fans around us.

Release the hound! 'See what all the barking's about!'

I was pleasantly surprised early in the day when Cathy sent over this article announcing Carnegie Mellon's official mascot. Late last year, a committee co-headed by Jen Church (great House Fellow, now Dean of Student Affairs) was created to help settle the mascot debate once and for all. In the 107 years Carnegie Mellon University has been around, we've been operating without an official mascot.

Some of you may think it's trivial but coming from a high school with an insane amount of school spirit I was dumbfounded when I arrived at Carnegie Mellon. There was nothing but a pattern to rally (and there wasn't much rallying) around (I guess it's a bit better than the NYU Violets, but they do have Violet D. Bobcat) and attendance at the football games were overshadowed by the crowds that gathered for the local high school games played on our field. It's a step in the right direction, now if we could only revive the gridiron glory days of Carnegie Tech, heck, if Northwestern and Berkeley can do it why shouldn't we?

Back to the mascot, a Scottish Terrier developed with SME Branding - I wonder if the students, especially those majoring in the various design fields were given a crack at it. I think the illustrator really captured the following traits:

...known for its keen, alert and intelligent expression. Its temperament is described as determined and thoughtful while its physical aspects exemplify strength, power and agility in a small package — many traits that are attributable to the university itself.

But what of the name? Will he be called Scotty? Andy? If someone names him Tarty I'm going to go ape-shit.

Winning the Darpa Urban Challenge is great (let's not make too much fuss about getting our butts kicked by Stanford in the previous Darpa Challenges, even though we were the best funded team). And as for the Solar Decathlon... maybe we'll come close to winning next year. But what would really get me excited would be again, a Top 25 football team. The mascot is a start...

Somebody give me a high-five for not titling this post, "Who let the dog out!".

SPACE ROCKS @ Harvard's GSD

Whilce Portacio's wallpaper on his tablet pc.

Friday morning I came across a post pitching SPACE ROCKS, a design conference hosted by AsiaGSD, a student group at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. I proceeded to spam Sooran throughout the day until she agreed to host me, got on the 10:30pm bus and was in Cambridge by 3am.

The main draw for me was Dana Cho of IDEO, a company which "helps organizations innovate through design", without getting too inquisitive about their statement, how awesome does their job sound? Pretty damn awesome. Her lecture covered IDEO's practices / methods followed by a sampling of some of their projects.

Other speakers of note included Raine Noe who has his hands in almost everything deemed cool in my book (of note is his gig as a writer at Core77, one of my favorite design blogs). Elmo reminded me that he spoke previously at Carnegie Mellon (apparently Chewy's flyer was awful). His lecture consisted mostly of photos and coverage gleaned from the magazine he edits, Theme, caught my attention enough that I'm considering a subscription. Need to scrutinize the current issue before I add another magazine to my overfilled mailbox.

When you have a process that works, a service that speaks for itself, you don't have to manufacture anything in a talk like this. Just walk the audience through what is done in the offices and it makes for a great presentation. That's where Cho and Noe shined. Irene Hwang of Actar wasn't bad, for a second I thought the 'boogazine', Verb, she was pitching was UOVO a similar magazine I saw at a shop nearby work. Unfortunately the others didn't really catch my attention though a good portion of the audience really appreciated work from Groovisions, MK12 and Brooklyn Foundry (which used to be located in my neighborhood before moving to Crown Heights).

As for Nurri Kim, she came after Cho and Noe and immediately killed the conference. Her blue tarp lecture was pretty awful, something akin to a first year student's work. Not much of a concept behind it and the interesting blue tarp images already came before in Noe's lecture. Remember people, if you guys are giving a presentation, please don't describe what is on the screen. For god sakes you are presenting at Harvard not to Bush and his cronies. Whilce Portacio and David Imber both tried too hard and didn't have much to contribute.

I did speak with Whilce on the side and really wanted to ask him what were the family issues that kept him out of work when Image Comics launched in the early 90s. An interesting note, during the 90s, comics regularly sold more than 100,000 copies per issue. In fact, any title hovering at around 125,000 would be at risk of getting the axe. Compare that to today when titles are only selling around 30,000 copies an issue, for a title to be considered for the chopping block, they would have to drop down to 12,000 issues today.

Outside of the lecture, Gund Hall where the architecture studios are is sweet. Sooran naturally sits in the back of one of the floor plates surrounded by fellow Asians. During the lunch break, I quickly strolled through the campus seeing what I could. After the lecture we walked over to Porter Square where I got reacquainted with the burritos from Anna's Taqueria. Definitely prefer them over the Chipotle burritos. Cheaper, tastes slightly better and packaged in a much more friendly form factor (way easier to eat than a Chipotle burrito).

On the bus back to NYC I checked the scores and was shocked to see that the Buckeyes lost. That really jolted me out of Boston and back into reality. Saw the highlights when I got home and Illinois played a great game... blown coverages, the OSU defense just didn't get it done. Giants lost to the Cowboys... what a crappy second half. Out of principle I sat Romo and Crayton, kept Folk active, I was hoping for defensive stops in the red zone. Guess I'll be paying for it with my second fantasy loss.

A few more hours and it's back to the grind.

Comedy and Tragedy

Rugby: “On Saturday, France meet England at Stade de France. On Sunday, South Africa meet Argentina at Stade de France. On Monday, New Zealand meet Australia at the airport.”

Custody Battle: Huntington, WV (AP) - A seven-year old boy was at the center of a Cabell County courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulation requiring that family unity be maintained to the highest degree possible. The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried and said that they also beat him. After considering the remainder of the immediaty family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. After two recesses to check legal references and confer with the Child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Notre Dame Football Team whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

Tragedy: I'm an idiot. Had an entire month to compare the specifications of the new frame to my existing one and I didn't. So with the MS Bike Tour coming up tomorrow morning, I have two frames sitting at the LBS stripped with components laying around. Turns out the new bike needed a 30mm seatpost collar (rare, searched 8 stores in NYC), a 34.9mm front dérailleur clamp (paid $100 for it to be overnighted to me, but now I can't get the other two parts so I just wasted my money) and my existing headset which I believe is a Cane Creek IS-2 won't fit into the head tube even though many others have used the same headset with no issues. Damnit, I might just ride my LeMond Poprad, though I'll need to dig up some allen keys to adjust the seat post. %*@)$*%

NFL logo gets an update and how about them Cowboys?

An updated shield is in store for those who will be watching the 2008 NFL Draft. The new logo employs less fussy straight-serifed font, less stars (now each star represents a division, there was no reason for the original 25 stars), a streamlined badge and the football is modeled after the one on top of the Lombardi trophy. While the current logo isn't too old, a refresh has been overdue. Like people have stated, less is more and it is true in this case (anyone read the Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda yet?). The logo is still flat and easy to produce across all media unlike the other 'shield' update (the UPS logo) which I also like, excellent! Now I wonder, what does it take to be the NFL's Senior Vice President of Marketing? Lisa, since you are leaving your position at year end, may I take over?

Last Night: If a non-football fan was watching the Cowboys vs. Bills game last night, they would have been instant converts. Heck I bet my Grandmother would've gone ape shit over the game, feigning field goals in her apartment or high stepping it into the kitchen and back.

Though I don't particularly care for either team, Romo has been good to me in terms of fantasy points and I also started Folk this past week. Collectively I needed 10 points from them to keep my perfect record alive. Easy, Romo tore through the previous games and if Folk was average at best I would still only need a quarter of Romo's regular production to take the match-up. Of course the trap game theory came true and I was left to agonize for the entire game not knowing whether or not Romo would pull down all the points Folk was stacking up (I'm too cheap to pay for Stat Tracker and lazy to do the math).

Anyway back to the game, how about it? Pasquarelli has a great recount up on ESPN if you for some reason had something better to do on a Monday night (like watching the Yankees lose, sorry bro; or going to bed early so you can wake up for your daily run before work, T. Kong you missed out).

The final minutes saw a flurry of activity which stuttered when Owens couldn't hold onto the 2-point conversion. At that point, with 20 seconds left I thought it was over, turned off the TV and sulked as I stumbled into my bedroom. Plopping into my chair, Rommel was kind enough to IM me telling me the Cowboys recovered the onside kick at which point I sprinted back out to the living room (note to self, get that damn monitor out of the hallway; and a pat on the back for having that IR automatic hall light installed). So on a night where Romo followed his hero Favre into the dog house (hell his performance would've made Grossman look good), Nick Folk bailed him out with his steely nerves. Seriously that guy is ICE COLD. His first 53 yard game winning field goal was negated by a time-out call by the Bills and what did he do? He got up there and did it again. To the Bills, it was a valiant effort and I feel sorry for your team and your fans.

This Sunday is going to be interesting. Patriots at Dallas. Romo, Folk, and Moss. I need the game to be an offensive showcase! Wish it was the night game, hopefully I'll finish the MS Bike Tour and get home before the game starts.

The Gridiron storms back into our lives...

Nike Leave Nothing, for a high quality version of the video above (this is why I hate all-Flash sites) click on It's Time for Football on the bottom right, next on the lower left, click on Ads, finally, on the top right click on the thumbnail beneath videos. Michael Mann directed the commercial which was produced by Nike in cooperation with advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy.

I'm not a big fan of Nike, but they are winning me over with their homegrown snowboarding team (part of Nike 6.0) and with marketing campaigns like the one above. Love the slogan too! Curious as to how they made the commercial, there's an interesting thread at mograph that may lend some insight. Have some more time to kill? Check out additional Nike and adidas commercials here.

September brings another season of the gridiron into our living rooms. First week wasn't bad, Reggie Wayne put up some big numbers for my fantasy team on Thursday. Actually it was the best fantasy week I ever had. Not sure how you get on Yahoo's leader board, but I thought my 181.40 points would surely put me up there.

The first touchdown throw between Eli and Plaxico was auspicious. Eli has improved a lot since last year but he still looks like a girl on the field and just like prior seasons, he'll probably start out strong and disintegrate by December. What really ticked me off was the end of the game after he hurt his shoulder. He was able to throw 4 for 4 and then sat out the last 5 minutes of the game. WTF? The stage was set for him to really show the world what type of player he is and he pulls that shit? Sure he might have been hurt enough to be detrimental to the team, but he did have a successful drive already with the injured shoulder. Him sitting out probably wiped out his own team mentally. I would bet 90% of the quarterbacks in the league would have stuck it out. Look at what Pennington did... I knew we should have drafted Quinn. By the end of the season, Eli and Coughlin should be given their walking papers.

Onto the game gridiron football was based on, rugby. The World Cup is going on right now, the American team has had a poor showing so far losing to England and Tonga. The All Blacks absolutely demolished Italy. Fortunately for us Americans, selected Rugby World Cup games are being broadcasted by Versus.