The Credible Hulk

Saw this on Facebook last weekend.

Bad Art Good Walls

Portlandia on the nose, as always.

Paul Rudd talks Royals

This must have been recorded last year.  Fun to hear him talking about how people look at him with sympathy for his love of the Royals.

Tron: Uprising

This looks awesome to me.  Looks like Aeon Flux but with more action, maybe as much as a Samurai Jack cartoon.  I'll be checking it out.

Super Best Friends

Fun stuff!

Inflatable Superman suit

I want one of these for Halloween!

Evil Dead 2 trailer cartooned

Somebody went through the Evil Dead 2 trailer and drew over top of it (rotoscoped) and it's pretty awesome.

Titanic Super 3D

I saw this the other day and forgot to put it up. Ashley's been all over this 100-year anniversary thing, I might as well put this up for her!

KU to the National Championship game!

Man. I never, ever thought this was going to happen this year. After the past two years, when KU had loaded teams full of NBA draft picks and got knocked off by no-name small schools? And then this year, when KU has a weak bench and only one returning starter? Never thought this would happen. And I'm having a blast!

KU's now won 100 games over the last 3 years and have won more games than any other school over the last 6 years. This is KU's second final four during that time and their 4th in the last ten years. I consider myself blessed to have graduated from a school that quite possibly fields the best team in college basketball year in and year out.

So Monday for the national championship it's the battle of the bluebloods, Kansas vs. Kentucky. Kentucky has the most wins in the 100+ years of college basketball, and KU has the second-most. KU coach Bill Self and Kentucky coach John Calipari will face off in the title game for the second time, and that would be so sweet to deny Calipari again, since the coach is generally perceived as dirty (two vacated Final Four runs at UMass and Memphis). That would be beyond sweet to knock off UK in a year when every talking head pretty much proclaimed them National Champs from the first week of the season. That would just be icing on the cake!

Here's KU fans celebrating in Allen Fieldhouse last night after watching the game on the scoreboard jumbotron:



And here's this week's Sports Illustrated with KU on the cover. Let's hope that we're on the cover of next week's too, and for a victorious reason!

FINAL FOUR

Oops, looks like I missed putting up a post for the Elite Eight! Oh well--we're off to the Final Four! So many great things about this NCAA run, where to start? Is it that our team of zero McDonald's All-Americans beat North Carolina's team featuring six McDonald's All-Americans? Is it going 2-0 against Roy Williams since he left KU for North Carolina? Is it going to KU's 14th Final Four (9th in my lifetime)? Is it that Missouri had supposedly their best year ever and they lost to a 15-seed and KU's in the Final Four yet again? Is it watching Thomas Robinson so happy a year after losing two grandparents and his mother over the course of a few weeks? Yes to all of that.

But even better, I get to keep cheering for the Jayhawks for another week and we're two games away from a national championship. Go Jayhawks!!!! Woohoo!

Sweet 16

This game put me through the wringer. Purdue finished in 6th place in the Big 10 and yet last night they turned into one of those teams that cannot miss from three-point range and KU was behind the entire game. Purdue senior Robbie Hummel was unconscious in the first half, going 7-of-8 with 5 three-pointers for 22 points. I wanted to kill him.

But our guys grinded it out and stayed close despite Hummel hitting every ridiculous shot he threw up. Finally we got some threes of our own and some breakaway dunks and won the game. I still can't believe we pulled that off. Purdue came out for keeps and it was all we could do to get past them.

So now we're past the first weekend. I feel a lot better about KU now that there really aren't favorites once you get to the Sweet 16. Anything can happen, only 4 possible games to go, take one at a time!

Grantland article on Kansas

This is one of those great pieces that comes out every few years about the history of Kansas basketball. It manages to talk extensively about Dr. James Naismith (creator of the game of basketball and KU's first coach) and about current coach Bill Self, and about how a KU donor bought Naismith's original piece of paper for $4.3 million detailing the rules of basketball.

KU has a history and mythology with the game of basketball that no other college or pro team has. Great reading. LINK

Norfolk State

RUIN

RUIN from OddBall Animation on Vimeo.

This is awesome--a computer-animated action scene set in a post-apocalyptic future. Absolutely worth 8 minutes of your time!

Hogwart's model from the movies

This is going to be on display for London's Leavesden Studios Harry Potter tour. Amazing. Link

8 Straight

Forgot to put this up last week after we clinched sole possession of first place in the Big 12 and it was KU's eighth straight Big 12 championship. I'm thinking about actually buying this one.

Final KU/MU regular season game

Yesterday afternoon was the final regular season matchup between Kansas and Missouri. Missouri is leaving the Big 12 and 105 years of tradition for the SEC. Missouri threatened to leave a few years ago for the Big 10 and basically created the current environment of instability in college sports, where longstanding rivalries have been broken up and everybody's fighting for the most dollars they can get. So like most Kansas fans, I don't ever want to play Missouri again for nearly destroying our league and I'm tired of the toxic rivalry. And really, if MU's not in the league any more, why play them? It's lose/lose for Kansas. We're the blueblood program that draws television eyeballs, and if we want a good out-of-conference draw, we'd be better to play Duke again than MU. We're generally expected to beat MU, so if we win, we're supposed to, and if we lose, it's a huge upset. So let Missouri go. They won't be able to market the KU game to their fans any more, and it's hilarious to me that they think they'll be able to rebuild this rivalry with the likes of Kentucky. Nope, this is the end of the road for Kansas/Missouri.

A couple of weeks ago KU lost to MU in Columbia. Yesterday KU was ranked #5 and MU #3, and so beating them on our home court was not going to be easy in any way. Missouri got 19 points up on KU in the second half and I was so angry. Who does MU think they are to come in our house and do that to us? But KU finally woke up and started chipping away at the lead. Finally, KU tied the game and in the final seconds, this amazing Thomas Robinson block happened:



and it prevented MU from winning the game and sent it to overtime. Thank God.

KU ended up squeaking by with a one-point win, and Missouri almost pulled out the win for themselves. I'll give MU credit, they weren't fazed by the insane KU atmosphere, which registered a 127 decibel reading, a record for a college basketball game (louder than an airplane taking off from 100 yards away).

But honestly, I didn't enjoy the game at all. There was so much pressure on KU to win since MU already won the first one, and since it was on KU's home court, KU was generally expected to win as well. But MU didn't care, they had the gall to think they could beat us on our home court (where we've gone 90-1 in our last 92 games) and if Missouri would have won, they'd have tied us for first in the league. So ultimately winning was more of a relief than it was jubilation. It would have been awful if MU would have swept us in their final season in the Big 12 and won the crown, because it wouldn't matter to Missouri fans that KU has nearly doubled its all-time wins against MU (172-95 in KU's favor); all we would have ever heard was that they swept us their final year and they'd just plug their ears if we brought up doubling them up over 105 years in a nearly 2-1 margin.

Instead, thankfully we did win. And we won the Big 12 for the 8th straight year by doing so. It was one of the greatest college basketball games I ever watched, and I was miserable the entire time.

One cool thing I noticed during the game was the debut of our new mascot that they're calling "C. Jay," short for Centennial Jayhawk. It's the blue mascot that's modeled after the KU logo from 1912. Really cool--I hope it's a permanent sidekick to Big Jay. Looks so good.





Give Missouri credit, they did everything they possibly could to beat us. They've got a great team and could do really well in the tournament this year. But since they're leaving the conference next year, I'm glad we won't be playing them any more. Good riddance, S-E-C ya. We'll continue being a blueblood basketball school that wins national championships without you, hope you can find a new school to validate your Final Four-less seasons.

P.S. Patrick Murphy--nothing but love for you buddy, I like to pretend you didn't go there :)

Van Halen interviews

VH Interviews from Van Halen on Vimeo.

Van Halen Interviews 2 from Van Halen on Vimeo.

These are so fun to watch. I love watching the guys reminisce on their early days, learning to play their instruments, getting their first record deal, but really what I like is seeing Ed, Dave and Al get along. The camaraderie of this band has always made the music even more fun, because it seemed like they were all buddies living their dreams on stage. Of course, the many breakups of the band contradict this idea, but regardless it's always been part of the fun of loving this band. And now that these guys are all almost 60 years old, their memories really have the weight of time and it's awesome they're getting them recorded for us to listen to. If only Michael Anthony could have been included on this too, even if he's not a part of the band any more!

I need to get my review of the new album up soon (love it). Maybe this weekend.

"Dream Giver"

DreamGiver from Tyler Carter on Vimeo.

Nice mix of 3D and 2D.

What People Think I Do-MU edition

Saturday's game is gonna be awesome.