Wanna Be Your Lover... Lover... Loverboy (And Other Weekend Thoughts)

- After the exciting morning round, the afternoon at The Masters was kind of disappointing. It never felt like Phil Mickelson wasn't going to win (I wrote a text to my cousin at 10:45 a.m. saying "Phil's not going to lose this.") Whether it was his eerily calm attitude or the possibility that those ridiculously-long tresses had a Samson-like effect on Lefty, Mickelson was in control the entire afternoon. If Fred Couples had hit a few putts, it might have been a different story, though.
With Mickelson winning three of the last nine majors the inevitable question will become "at the moment, is Phil better than Tiger" (in fact, I'm predicting that exact question on PTI this afternoon), but let's not forget that Tiger is nine for his last 26. It's still his world, but Phil is at least getting in the conversation.

- Between my sister and newborn niece being in town, work and a post-Tournament malaise, I was a little behind on the blog-writing last week. That should change this week, as I'm on Spring Break until next Monday. Even so, I'm feeling like I'm never going to get to my planned baseball preview and with the Nationals' Opening Day tomorrow, it would be until Wednesday, at least, that I'd get to it. So I'm just going to cut the crap and post my predictions and later this week will add some thoughts. These were made before the season started:

AL East
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Toronto Blue Jays
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Baltimore Orioles

AL Central
Cleveland Indians
Chicago White Sox
Minnesota Twins
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals

AL West
Oakland A’s
Los Angeles Angels
Texas Rangers
Seattle Mariners

NL East
Atlanta Braves
Philadelphia Phillies
New York Mets
Washington Nationals
Florida Marlins

NL Central
St. Louis Cardinals
Milwaukee Brewers
Houston Astros
Chicago Cubs
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds

NL West
San Francisco Giants
San Diego Padres
Los Angeles Dodgers
Arizona Diamonbacks
Colorado Rockies

Divisional Series
Cleveland over New York
Oakland over Boston

St. Louis over San Francisco
Atlanta over Milwaukee

Championship Series
Cleveland over Oakland
St. Louis over Atlanta

World Series
St. Louis over Cleveland

- Back before Thanksgiving I made a list of things I was thankful for. There were 15 different things for which I was thankful, including Bill Raftery, the Panthers cheerleaders, Allen Iverson's "practice?" press conference, etc. And while I was, and am thankful for each of the items that made my list, in reality they were just filler. There's only one thing I'm thankful for. And that is Billy Ocean's "Loverboy" video.
It's indescribable, really, but in November I tried during an e-mail to my buddy Falkow:

holy s---. I’m watching this billy ocean video on vh1 classic where he’s dancing in some sort of inter-galactic bar that looks like it belongs in star wars, and there are these cheesy special effects and ridiculous looking dinosaur-looking creatures with weird hair and expressionless faces getting mad at each other and one of them is supposed to be a hot chick-dinosaur and they’re all vying for her, and then there’s one with a tv for a head and now they’re getting in a laser fight.. and billy ocean is dancing in a leather vest in the middle of it all... I’m not even doing it justice. now the lead dinosaur looking thing is taking the chick away and these little dudes are praying on the beach to a vision of billy ocean singing in a box hanging overhead... oh f---, this was amazing.

I tried my best to find the video that afternoon but, alas, it was nowhere to be found. I haven't looked for the clip since that day, but last night I was holding my four-week-old niece and playing her some songs when Ocean's "Loverboy" came on. I remembered the awesomeness over the video and went searching for it. Thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, this quest was successful. Enjoy. And watch the whole thing.


- And while we're on videos, this might be one of the best internet videos I've ever seen. A guy out in San Diego synced up Curt Gowdy's call of the end of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series (The Buckner Game) with an RBI Baseball replay of the proceedings. With geniuses like this guy out there, it's amazing we still don't have a cure for cancer. (Via Deadspin)