I must address this outrage

I know I said no more xbox stuff but I added that Larry Brown reference at the end of the post which basically lets me do whatever I want, ha ha. Anyway, this will be short, bronxdialect is pissed at me and her husband for wanting to spend 400 bucks on an Xbox (see comments section, its all in caps too so its safe to assume she might have been screaming at me if we were face to face). Calling us overgrown kids and what not. First off I'd like to say that I'm terrified of her and if for some reason nobody can find me after she reads this post, then you know where to start questioning. Second, what most women don't realize about video games is that our generation (lets say people born from '75 to '85 or so) grew up with video games but more importantly video games grew up with us too. In the late 70s to late 80s games were simple so they appealed more to kids and hence the stigma of them being for kids started. But as the generation kept getting older so did the games (who do you think games like Halo and GTA appeal more to? Males in their 20s and 30s, it’s a fact, never mind I have no proof). Your average adult gamer is not playing Mario unless he has an AK-47 and is yelling out *in Mario's voice* "It’s a me Mario...motherf#ck@r".

So, think of these games more as interactive movies with different genres like children, artsy type stuff (that doesn't make much sense but somehow you like), action (typical summer action blockbuster), horror (survive or die), sports movies, etc. I'd be willing to bet that out of all the stuff I have bought that is in the same price range, I get ten times more for my money from the xbox than any of the other stuff.

Now in my case, I have never bought a console at launch because I never had enough money to do it (actually my parents never had the money) so I always had to wait for the price break to get them. Now that I have a job, I can actually plan on saving $$ for the console and get it when it comes out like I've wanted to all my life. Note: since I started my current job 4 years ago, no new consoles have been released.


Moving ON…

The qualifier for the World Basketball Championships is taking place in the Dominican Republic this week (it started a week ago but it ends this week). Top 4 teams qualify yet there are at least 6 good teams still alive. Puerto Rico is sucking big time ass so far (losing to Venezuela, DR and Argentina), however they pulled off a victory against Brazil last night in double overtime which is a good sign. Other interesting facts:

- The US team is comprised of European, NBDL and And1 Mixtape Street ball stars (ok, I made the last one up), just a bunch of unknowns and they have lost a few games (Panama??? ), the big showdown is Friday, PR vs.US, if we had ESPN Deportes we could actually watch the game but apparently Michigan doesn’t have enough Latinos for Comcast to pickup the damn channel (but they just added a Chinese channel, an Arab channel, and some other crap I'll never watch, meanwhile Univision is the only Spanish station we get and it shares the channel with the public access station[meaning sometimes you want to watch something on Univision and the channel might have a high school basketball game or just random bulletin board style ads], can someone explain this to me please!). Question: If the US does not qualify, will the NBA have a fit thinking that they have the best players and therefore should be in the World Championships anyway? Would they file a grievance with FIBA saying they didn't realize you had to qualify? Is anyone actually going to care?

- PR team does not have Carlos Arroyo playing due to the birth of his first daughter, Danny Santiago (who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks) refused to play saying he had nothing to prove (obviously his 3.4 points per game, 2.1 rebounds per game and 0.39 blocks per game [did I say he is 7'1"?] are good enough for…being a poor man's Greg Ostertag [ at least Ostertag gave one of his kidneys to his sister…I'm delirious right now]). And Piculin (who my friend Felix "Mamamelo" Mendez says looks like a Colombian drug lord), the best player in PR history, is so old that his ankle snapped off (ok, I made that up too, but he has so many injuries that he is doing color commentary for the ESPN Deportes telecast although that might be a disguise for a big cocaine transaction).

- The Dominican Republic is not bad either although some say all referees seem to be Dominican. They are still alive.

More updates on this tomorrow...