Tony Rizzo explains the LeBron situation during the intro of The Really Big show, the Friday morning after Lebron’s primetime national spotlight.

Breaks it down perfectly (turns epic towards the end):  LISTEN HERE.

“Stay hungry, stay humble.”

A pretty good remake:

I made it to the Tribe game Friday night and was fortunate enough to have club seats (thanks, Dave Katie).  3 friends and I enjoyed some quick food and drinks at Forti’s before heading to Progressive Field.  I will briefly say that the Tribe’s current slump is the perfect time to make it to a game for cheap (or free) and witness something Cleveland is known for; supporting a team and enjoying the feeling of always being the underdog.  Pick up some cheap tickets and go enjoy yourselves – the fans, ballpark, food and fireworks are worth the price (probably cheaper than a movie).  The rain held off for the most part so we stayed for the full fireworks show.

Full gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/shawnmariani

What follows is an account of what was my third visit to Sin City in my adult life.  I’m not sure why I decide to write these long posts about my travels, but someday they might be worth reading once I’ve forgotten the many details.

TUESDAY

Monday was Memorial Day and I decided to go into work Tuesday (verses 9 straight days off) until about 3pm to finish up some work before heading to Hopkins for our 5pm flight.  At check-in, Continental charged a $15 fee to check one bag – this was rather annoying since 1 checked bag per passenger used to be free (pre-recession).  It was a 4 hour flight, putting us in a cab from Las Vegas McCarren Airport at around 6pm, Vegas time.  My fellow traveler, Steve, forgot his cell phone in the cab but was luckily able to get it back a day or so later by paying a $40 cab fare off the strip.  The cab fare from the Airport to the North end of The Strip; about $35.  It should be noted that this wasn’t my first time in Vegas and for nostalgia purposes, we decided to stay in the “older”, what we thought may have been the Scorsese Casino-esque Vegas, at the North end of the strip.  Yes, we stayed at the fabulous Circus Circus Casino at just under $400/person for 5 nights + airfare.

“The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. . .” – Hunter S. Thompson, 1971

Our entrance into the lobby brought fear and loathing as I realized what we had done.  We were stuck in a hotel that was stuck in the 1960s, what with yellow CRT monitors, poor cable television, and unhappy employees.  They even charged a $5 required fee for potential phone calls that we swore not to make in our modern day of cell phones.  This was no MGM or Bellagio, but a hotel struggling to hold on to anything in a day of  constant Vegas sprawl Southwards down The Strip.  The sports book at the Circus Circus gave use two full beers with each one ordered, in typical casino fashion, “…but I only ordered one” – “Sorry, here’s two anyway” was a hilarious conversation had by 3 people in our group with different bartenders.  We made our way to a bar to catch the Cavs’ overtime loss in the game 4 to the Magic, cheering next to both Cleveland and Orlando fans and gamblers.

From a typical Cleveland loss, we then made our way down The Strip to meet up at The Mirage with our friend, Pete, who happened to be in town.  Had a few drinks there before leaving and going to have a few daiquiris at Treasure Island’s Kahunaville.  Caught the end of the Pirate show which is really a poorly choreographed dance show featuring babes in hot pants lip syncing (but, for some reason wearing headset mics, anyway) catered for the whole family.  Our Tuesday night ended late with a few drunken stops at the neighboring casinos before calling it a night, jet lagged and tired.  Picked up a 18pk of cold beer for a strip price of $19 and only two people on the walk to our room offered to sell us drugs.

WEDNESDAY

Our afternoon started with some gambling at Planet Hollywood before hitting The Miracle Mile for some walking around to kill time.  We rode the Monorail around for $5 one way and met a guy on the empty car who was from N. Olmsted, Ohio.  Generic talk included the Cavs’ road to The NBA Finals (which they ultimately failed on, the Browns, and Savannah’s Bar in Westlake, Ohio.  While on the Monorail, I was thumbing through one of the hundred free guides available to Vegas tourists and happened to see that a band I currently listen to a lot, Animal Collective, had a show slotted for Saturday at The House of Blues in Mandalay Bay.  I ordered tickets via Courtney via Ticketmaster via E-mail since no employee in our hotel had access to the Internet.  $20 face value tickets, ran for $34 a piece, thanks Ticketmaster.

Did some more sightseeing and was very impressed at the level of construction going on during our current economic climate.  A guy on the bus and two ladies on the flight home informed me that all construction on the work-in-process world class resorts, the City Center, Echelon and Fontainebleau , had been temporarily halted.  Vegas for decades has seen an insane amount of growth, but the City Center will be completely different – check it out.  It’ll be comprised of 8 high rises, once complete, and is designed so visitors and residents never have to leave.  This may hurt surrounding hotels like no other sprawl The Strip has seen in the past.

For dinner, we headed to the Top of the World 5-star restaurant atop the Stratosphere.  The prices were comical, the menu featuring a $170 per plate date night special.  That’s PER PLATE.  Food was delicious, I had the blackened tuna with some sides and a couple Fat Tires.  Top of the World offers a view of the strip like no other @ nearly twice the height of the Seattle Space Needle.  Dan, Emily, Pete, Steve and myself then headed to the real “old Vegas” for the Fremont Street Experience.  This was very cool, and we had a great time here with bright lights, short walks, and cheap drinks.  The street is covered an LED canopy that stretches 5 blocks, literally covering all the casinos from the 50s and 60s era.  Grabbed a cab on the way back avoiding a cabbie verse cabbie altercation in front of our eyes over “gypsy-cabs”; drivers who try to steal passengers from waiting cabs.

THURSDAY

We decided to relax and take it on Thursday, we hit the buffet for lunch and Stripburger for dinner (and to watch the first half of the Cavs game.)  Headed to the Venetian to watch them pull off the victory.  The Venetian is great and I would truly consider it for a future stay.  What was planned to be an easy day turned into a pseudo-bar-crawl of casinos from Harrahs to Caesars to some rooftop bar to the Extra Lounge in Planet Hollywood to a Subway for a 3am dinner at the Casino Royale.  I walked much of the strip with Pete before heading back to the room.  Hilarious.

FRIDAY

Friday was the true, and much needed, lazy day of the trip.  I was tired and a bit worn out from the fabulous Strip already.  We ate a late breakfast at some Casino Cafe, lost big in roulette, saw an Area 51 bound plane, before heading to a movie at the Showcase Theater (near MGM) to kill some time.  Did a full walk of The Strip back to our hotel, amazed at all the new construction, before dinner at the Garden Grille.

SATURDAY

Had a quick lunch before taking the doubledecker bus (best deal at $3 a ride) to Mandalay Bay.  Dan and Emily checked out the Shark Reef where I enjoyed some coffee and more time killing sprinkled with some gambling losses (unlucky trip, for sure).  The Mandalay Bar is another amazing hotel and with The Venetian is up for grabs for my next stay.  Saturday here brought hundreds of people to the casino floor and lobbies for multiple weddings – Vegas weddings can be surprisingly classy. We made our way to the sports book for what would be the Cavs’ end to their season (that’s all I’ll say about that) and then headed to the House of Blues inside the huge casino for Animal Collective’s show.  I won’t talk to much about this, but they played an amazing show.  Had row 2 balcony seats and was able to relax and listen to some great music while nursing a few $7 New Castles.  The HOB was pretty lame with a shit-ton of security guards, a camera ban (in a city of tourists!), and literally – an audible disclaimer played before the band went on stating if you were underage and were caught drinking, that yours parents would be notified.  I think a handful in the crowd didn’t know who Animal Collective were and just decided to check out a “blues” show while vacationing in Vegas.  A bus ride back to our hotel was packed with a few odd occurrences that will go unsaid.

We made it back to the hotel eagerly awaiting our flight home and departure from a worn out Las Vegas.

SUNDAY

Keep in mind that 6 days in Las Vegas is roughly about 3.5 too many.  We couldn’t wait to get back – we checked out of our hotel, sold whatever beer we could to folks checking in and got a $40 cab back to the Airport.  Here was our Sunday:

Flight was slotted to take off at 4:45pm, 4 hours flight + 3 time change = land in Cleveland @ ~Midnight.

Our plane docked at the gate on time, and let it’s passengers off.  What normally includes an inspection, refuel, clean, board, take off again was replaced with a 2 hour delay and test flight to test a cabin pressure problem.  Our plane returned 2 hours later, and the counter woman said the plane would not being flying us.  Options included either a free hotel stay, and flight home Monday afternoon or a total 6 hour delay and arrival back in Cleveland at 6am.  We chose the later and killed time for what seemed like forever waiting out the delay.

We watched the desert Sunset from an Airport window Sunday night, flew over the alive and bright Las Vegas Strip, and landed into a brisk Northeast Ohio sunrise.  I had  a few hours for sleep and relaxation before heading back to work on Tuesday.

Full Gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/shawnmariani

Stoker & motorcycle from New York – These guys still exist and I’m glad they do.

My third time to The Big Easy, left work early last Wednesday around 3:30, rendezvoused with Courtney and hit the road by about 4:45.  Drove half the full distance of 1,050+ miles and stayed the night in Bowling Green, KY.  Finished the drive down Thursday morning and made a dinner stop at the Abita Brewpub in Abita Springs, LA (the 17th largest craft brewer in the states).  Enjoyed an average brewery dinner; burgers and a few beers exclusive to an on-site visit.  After finishing the 23 mile drive on the longest over-water bridge in the world we checked into Hotel New Orleans (Convention Center Blvd.) by about 8PM Central time and were walking the French Quarter by about 8:30.  Had some cafe au lait and beignets at the historic Cafe Du Monde before heading to Frenchman Street.  We then circled back around stopping at Coco’s on Bourbon Street after hearing the blaring sound of Bryan Lee and the Blues Power Band‘s lead and slide guitars.  The completely blind Bryan Lee can really jam and is fun to watch rip up some blues.  We stayed here for about an hour before walking back and calling it a night.  The next day we split a muffaletta from Central Grocery on the banks of the Mississippi, enjoyed an afternoon cigar from The Cigar Factory and then hopped on the St. Charles Streetcar and took  a ride through the historic Garden District.  Enjoyed a Ferdie Po’ Boy at Mothers on Canal for dinner before heading back out.  It is here my recollection of events becomes cloudy as we walked Bourbon.  Saturday morning hit the new Audubon Zoo’s Insectarium (which sucked) and then drove to the Jazz Fest.

Admission was $50 at the gate.  Next time we’ll take the shuttle since parking was a fiasco – there were private residents parking cars for $25+  near the race track where the fest is held.  We paid a young kid $30 to park.  The parking spot was on a public street; he moved his car which acted as a placeholder and we pulled in behind him.  Part of me thinks I could have gotten away with telling him to screw off and parked on the street for free.  The Jazz Fest was great – similar to Bonnaroo, but more family-friendly, with better food, less drugs, equal alcohol consumption, less shade and placed in a venue about 100x smaller.  The crowd easily filled up the interior and exterior of the horse track and by about 3 in the afternoon – there was even grid locked foot traffic while trying to walk about.  The food was absolutely amazing, I had a crawfish puff and later some crawfish bread, both for $5.  Caught a few acts before we left rather early in the day, walking past the hundreds in line just then showing up to see Bon Jovi.  Perhaps next time we’ll hit the fest the first day opposed to walking the hot streets of NOLA for hours the days before.  We were physically spent by the 3rd day to say the least.  We headed back to the room, watched the Bulls suck against the Celtics and then headed back out for a quiet dinner at Gordon Biersch (a chain brewery similar to Cleveland’s Rock Bottom).  Woke up early Sunday morning, and drove the complete distance back before falling asleep at home in Cleveland.  That and fell in love with XM’s Grateful Dead & CNN stations.  Oddly enough, while driving through central Alabama – CNN had a news break about tornadic activity near Birmingham.  Kind of cool we were in the middle of a storm that received national coverage and coincidentally heard the report.  The rain made whiteout conditions at times and we tuned to local radio & our atlas to find the storm was a few miles away.

Hitting Waffle Houses and truck stops along the way, I was taken back to the road trips I used to take years ago and found much serenity and adventure in burning up the road.  Nothing beats a good road trip, and The Crescent City is always a tremendous destination.

Barkley’s remarks should infuriate Clevelanders: Plain Dealer Article

Dear Mr. Barkley,

Instead of bashing a city you know nothing about during an epic winning season, why not stick to commentating the game?

That’s not to say you’re even good at commentary, your real knack is drunk driving and skipping out on Vegas debts.  Everybody hates you.

2007 was a good year for this 22 year old guy from Ohio. Below is a quick and poorly written recap of what I think it worth mentioning in regards to the common year starting on a Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century.

THE GOOD ~

• Sports.
  • I’ll get this out of the way first, it was a terrific year for Cleveland Sports. How funny does that sound? The Cavs made it to The NBA Finals, the Tribe beat the Yankees only to loose to Boston in the ALCS (of which I attended Game 3), and the Browns had a double-digit winning record for the first time since 1994. Of course, the Cavs got swept, the Tribe couldn’t capitalize on a 3-1 game series lead, and the Browns saw no post-season action, but I see good things in the future.

• Film.
  • In my opinion it was a mediocre year in film, but I enjoyed American Gangster, Superbad, 300, Ratatouille, Stardust, and ofcourse, The Simpsons Movie. Seriously, Stardust was incredible. I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men, Accross the Universe, or There Will Be Blood, but something tells me that if I had they would be on this list as well. There won’t be a television section in this post, but there were two lengthy multi-episode documentaries worth mentioning: The BBC’s Planet Earth was beautifully filmed and extremely interesting, and I also enjoyed PBS’ The War, a great WWII series by Ken Burns with an outstanding soundtrack.

• Print.
  • I didn’t read as much as I wanted to, and some of the following are by no means 2007 releases, they are simply what I was into this past year: I enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk’s “Rant”, both Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” and “Big Sur“, and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”. I also enjoyed countless hours of “MySQL/PHP Database Applications, 2nd Edition” by Brad Bulger, et al., among other readings.

• Video Games.
  • The Wii is a ton of fun, but I haven’t yet found a game that has won my complete attention over the classic Super Mario Bros. game that can be downloaded and played for hours or days. Super Mario Galaxy was enjoyed for the short time I had with it. Other than that, I didn’t play too much console stuff this time around. Valve’s The Orange Box was an awesome deal for a classic Half-Life 2 with both expansions, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, an extremely fun and addicting play that takes steps like no other game. I thought Bioshock ripped it up in all ways possible, the story was awesome and the graphics and design were probably of the best I have ever seen. Say what you will about this next one, but Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion absolutely consumes me in every way. I love it throughly and 9 million other subscribers obviously agree. EA’s SimCity Societies also tore it up, even though its a step down from 1999’s SimCity 3000. I also spent a lot of time in 2007 with Age of Empires III, another excellent play. I have yet to play the expansions, and probably shouldn’t if I want to stay un-addicted and graduate college.

• The Web.
  • Waffles.fm saved the world. Last.fm was cool for a little while. Gmail finally went public (though still Beta, how?) in February. Gary Vaynerchuk does a great job with his daily Wine Library TV video podcast. I know the show’s subject matter is snobby wine, but just watch an episode or two and you’ll see what I’m talking about, the man has talent and screen presence. VBS.TV by NYC’s own Vice Magazine is an awesome replacement for your normal television programming, with shows like El Dorado and Thumbs Up!. I love Thumbs Up! and can’t get enough of it, eagerly awaiting Monday’s weekly update. Zeitgeistmovie.com gave me a few nightmares and was also a good experience, check it out.

• Technology.
  • The Blackberry Curve released mid-2007, and I picked one up late. It’s a very impressive product capable of doing much of the famed iPhone, for about $500 cheaper. It’s not the iPhone but I dig everything about it, and have no complaints. The open-source community saw much attention in 2007 with the success of Ubuntu, a user-friendly novice version of Linux. I purchased two cameras in 2007, a low-end DV handheld Panasonic PV-GS80 video cam and a Olympus FE-280 point-and-shoot still cam. Video quality is good, battery life is great, and the widescreens cool on the PV-GS80. The FE-280 takes decent pics, not much more to say other than it has good battery life and is super compact. The good thing about both of these cameras is the price, I picked up the still cam for under $180, and the DV cam was around $270 (early 2007), both are great products for the money. I also built a budget gaming PC, capable of running the latest games decently. The price was just under $600 from newegg.com and includes the following: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2.2GHz, ASUS M2N-E AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Mobo, Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, WD 120GB SATA HDD, 256MB GeForce 8500GT 128-bit by Leadtek, and a DVD-RW drive by Asus. Again, far from top of the line, but an excellent machine for the price. Also, I discovered Netflix in early 2007, use it often, and think its incredible.

• Music.
  • A good year for music in my opinion, heres what I was into: Beirut – The Flying Club Cup, Daft Punk – Alive 2007, Arcade Fire – Neon Bible, Radiohead – In Rainbows, Amon Tobin – Foley Room, Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, The White Stripes – Icky Thumb, Black Lips – Good Bad Not Evil, LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver. I also witnessed the live entertainment sensation that is Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band live in Cleveland, which was life changing. Also Beirut in Chicago at the Portage Theater was a blast, and !!! at the Grog Shop was an excellent show. I also went to my forth consecutive Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee, but you can read more about that below.

• Travel.
  • I went to my fair share to some of America’s finest destinations in 2007. NYC with Jamie was a lot of fun, can’t wait to go back. Philadelphia is a beautiful place, with a heavy dose of history, I enjoyed that stop a lot. The trip out west to a town named Las Vegas was a good time, could have been better in certain spots I think, but still a great time with about 8 great friends. This also included my first ever plane experience, which was lovely. A few other stops include Chicago (3 times!) (read: Wrigley Field) and a great overnight trip to the Ohio Island of Put-in-Bay. I love traveling, and did a decent share of it in 2007, kinda.

• People.
  • Barack Obama, Christopher Hitchens, Thom Yorke, Al Gore, and Romeo Crennel are a few people who caught my eye in 2007. I don’t really know what else to say, who am I to write a Best of People 2007 section anyway? And seriously Obama is the man.

THE BAD~

• Windows Vista sucked so hard it’s not even funny. It seems we’ve had XP for over a decade, and where the shiny sleek graphics were a decent effort, the overall performance of the entire OS was dogshit. Sure there are plenty of good things to come from it, but at this point, I’m going back to XP until a service pack or two changes a lot of things that need attention.

• This whole lame-ass Apple Movement is really getting to me. Never before has a trademark in the technology field actually equated to a fashion statement or status symbol. Apple makes some fantastic products, but lets get over this whole life style thing. Take off your black-framed glasses, put down your latte and realize that in 10 years people will be on VH1’s “Remember the 2000s” with washed up celebs saying things like, “what was up with Apple, you had to have an iPod to be cool back then, I had one”. They’re just products, good ones at that, just stop being pretentious about a computer. Oh and their marketing campaigns are bullshit and annoying, stop it Apple.

• I’m just gonna go ahead and lump the next things within one bullet point for the fact that I am getting tired or writing this list. What was up with tasers in 2007? I watched a handful of videos that made me rather angry. Of course people have been getting tased for a long time, and the abundance of cellphone cameras and flash-based video websites could simply make it seem more horrific. I’m also sick of web-based Social Networks, and it seemed 2007 was a big year for them as well. I like keeping up with friends, but theres so many of them it seems to be loosing its point. Facebook went to shit becoming overloaded with stupid cartoon pirate games and buy-me-a-drink crap that was cool for 3 minutes. To me, too many sites have the ability to have friend lists, comments, “about me” sections, and everything else. Social Networks are becoming the New Jersey of the Web 2.0 era.Cleveland was rated the poorest city in America in 2007, thats pretty lame/depressing. Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween was hilariously retarded. I enjoyed it for a moment before realizing instead of remaking it he was actually changing the whole point of the movie, trying to show the audience who Micheal Meyers really was. I know it was his interpretation of the film, but he did a shitty job of it, so thanks for nothing. The TV show Lost completely lost my interest in 2007, so I stopped watching. You can only answer questions with more questions for so long before I’ll give up on it. From what I hear it supposed to wrap up in get better in 2008, so I plan on catching up by illegally downloading and watching via bit torrent. A few more bad things: The VT shootings were pretty messed up. What was up with a bridge on the Mississippi River just collapsing? The writer’s strike was lame, but well-deserved and probably necessary. And the Amazon Kindle sucks, and is stupid.

THE UGLY~

• Bonnaroo 2007 sucked. Seriously what the F was Clutch doing on the lineup? And how could Tool and The White Stripe’s have brought in such a large amount of shitty people? It wasn’t Bonnaroo. The Flaming Lips set was lame enough for me to fall asleep, even Tool’s set was mediocre. Why didn’t they book The White Stripes set on the main stage? What the F was Wolfmother doing on the lineup? The Police sucked horribly, and didn’t even play their full time slot. Don’t get me wrong I saw some great sets, but it’s gonna take a hell of a lineup to get me to go back to what seems to be declining into a mainstream muscle-Tee tribal tattoo pop-rock fest. The Decemberists, Franz Ferdinand, Bob Weir (sigh), Kings of Leon, Regina Spektor, The Black Keys, North Mississippi Allstars, HOT CHIP, David Cross, and Galactic were a few good sets I caught.

• OINK.cd gets shut down. Seriously, this was such an ugly and sad day. Screw the RIAA, I won’t go into why I hate them, and it wasn’t even the RIAA that brought Oink down, but rather a UK equivalent. You cannot and will not stop online illegal filesharing of music. It will go on forever. Stop holding onto album sales to keep the industry afloat, the music world is going to have to change. New means of providing good content through innovative ways is a start. Criminalizing college kids and anyone else who uses the internet to expand their musical interest is a bad idea. More bands have made money off ME through means of illegally downloading music (thats how I find new artists) then had I not got into a band in the first place. I go to shows, I buy merchandise, I use word of mouth to create more fans for the band, they buy more, etc, hell I even buy a CD or a DVD here and there. Stop being such a jerk recording industry, people are starting to hate you, and you will fail.

• Gas Prices. 3 Dollars a gallon is fucking disgusting. What the hell is going on? I know I know its this persons fault and this parties fault and this countries fault. The bottom line is were paying 3 dollars a gallon for gas, and fucking accepting it. New affordable technology will emerge. Fuck big oil.

• I believe the Ohio Smoking Ban is crap, and don’t agree with it. I don’t smoke, and hate inhaling second hand smoke, but something about the fact that the state can tell a business owner what they can or can’t do with their business regarding a legal activity is something to think about.

• The war in Iraq is getting even uglier, and I’m happy to see the majority of the country turn against it. 2007 was a big year for people changing how they felt about the war, but its kind of too late. I hate to say the liberals told you so, but the GOP fucked this one up big time, and it won’t be soon forgotten.

I kind of ran out of steam towards the end of this list, and I’m sure theres loads im forgetting.

Till next time, Happy New Year.