The thing is...

5 Ways my iPad has changed my life...in one week

Having spent the last several months working out of my home office---and driving my family crazy--I needed to buy a computer. I was using my iMac, which I love, but it's pretty stationary.  

 

So I was faced with a choice:  Laptop or iPad?

I did some research, spoke to a bunch of friends and boiled the choice down to the following premise:  

"A laptop does laptop things but no iPad things.  An iPad does iPad things and a whole mess of laptop things."  

 No contest.  The iPad wins.  

 Less than a week ago, my iPad2 (32GB, refurb, WiFi, from the Apple Store) arrived from China.  Then I rigged it up with a wireless keyboard and a great case from Targus.

The thing is...Since then, this device has changed my life.  Read how.

The perils of fantasy football

I am a NY Giants fan and loathe the other teams in the NFC East.  On my fantasy team, however, I have Romo and this kid DeSean Jackson, rookie wide receiver and punt returner for the Eagles.  I lost a head-to-head match up last night because Jackson forgot to take the pigskin in the end zone.

Here's the clip.

The thing is...that's what happens with the Eagles.  Strange shit happens during the game. 

Like this. 

And this.

My brother, Howard Levy, is the new basketball coach at Mercer County Community College

Mercer just hired the best coach in the country.  This was announced yesterday, here, and here.  I am very proud. 

We're also proud of another coach, Craig Robinson, who is a friend and played at Princeton, too.

Boy, the Los Angeles Lakers hate each other.

Did you WATCH that game?  I knew, and said to my wife with about 3 minutes left in the first quarter when the Lakers were up by 18, "The Lakers are gong to lose this game."  LA is one of the mentally weakest teams I've ever seen.  They are too satisfied with mini-victories:  We came back in game two!!  We won game three!  We built a big lead in game 4!!  Odom was done after he hit that jumper from inside the circle.  Tongue hanging out; a smirk on his face.  No recognition that the toughest player in the NBA this side of Tim Duncan, Paul Pierce was about to take over and go medieval on the boys in yellow..

Kobe...boy the Lakers must really HATE his guts to not care as little as they care.   

Doc Rivers is a GREAT coach by the way, and his lineup changes in the third quarter are what NBA coaches are supposed to get paid for. Powe?  House?  Posey?  Unbelievable.  Gasol is making Garnett look tough.

And you gotta love Ray Allen.

Stamp out wuss golfers

Check it out and pass it on to your wuss friends. 

Content wants to be seen

So below you'll see a post called "Don't Watch This," which had been a link to the YouTube video of the LA Clippers' Shaun Livington blowing out his knee...seriously, DON'T WATCH.  The NBA took the video down from YouTube.  So I simply did a search and found another source at AOL, and then updated my post.

The thing is, it's almost as though content like this wants to be seen.  It's compelling.  It's viral.  It's a car wreck, is what it is.  When content wants to be seen, no copyright regime can hold it back.  Sometime content behaves like an organism searching for food and oxygen to survive.  Hmmm?  There's a thought.

But seriously, do NOT watch it.

Don't watch this

You have been warned.

"But Ted Turner did it..."

An irate Bears fan took issue with my saying that Rex Grossman "stinks."  Sorry, I meant to say he's "overrated" and "sucks." 

The other point he brought up was that no business would ever invest in a quarterback just to make sure the Super Bowl was a better show.  OK, OK, I get it.  It was a hyperbole to make a point that advertising on the big game makes even less sense if you don't know the quality of the content your product will be next to.

...Ted Turner did exactly that.  He built an empire around two assets:  CNN and the Atlanta Braves.  Think about it.    A TV station (the so-called "superstation"), a stadium and a whole bunch of other properties were designed to showcase the Braves.  And you can be damned sure that one of the reasons the Braves won so many NL East titles was because Turner invested in the content, namely the coaches and players on the team.

So what if they didn't win as many World Series titles as they should have.  They gave the Bombers a nice run in 1996 and 1999, though.

Content is Rex

It's not just that you can TIVO past the ads, or that a lot of the ads, according to UCLA brain scans (on NPR), created feelings of fear or anxiety in viewers, that makes Super Bowl advertising a rather large waste of time and effort.  More than that, these ads are a waste because you can't control the content.  At least with "Desperate Housewives" or something you know that there is a style of writing and acting that you know you're going to be associated with.  With sports, you never know.

Of course, that's the exciting thing about sports: The games are unscripted.  Upsets do happen...but c'mon!  After the excitement of that opening kick off, that was a lame football game last night.  Did you really want to see Peyton Manning hand the ball off in the pouring rain, like a hundred times?  And Rex Grossman?  The jury is IN my man.  You stink.

if you're an advertiser and plan to pour millions into the Super Bowl, you might take a couple of mil and invest in the two or three teams you think will make it to the big game to make sure they have a quality team.  Somewhat of a facetious suggestion but how much would it have cost Coke or Ford or Anheuser Busch to fund a personal quarterback coach for Rex Grossman?