The Friday 5

Welcome to the second edition of the Friday 5. I hope you all have had a nice week and are looking forward to a nicer weekend. Happy father's day to all the dads out there. This has been a rough couple of weeks in terms of the first things my dad has missed. His birthday was tough. Father's day will be tough. All I can say is that I'm glad I have a support system around me to help me out. Things may be hard and not remotely fun to deal with, but having people help you through to the other side is one of the best parts of life. I hope you all have people like that in yours. If you don't, I'll do that for you. Bearcats Blog, the blog that cares. 

I've had some more time to think on the news that the Crosstown Shootout is now the Crosstown Classic, and I have to say, still not a fan. I don't hate it as much as I did yesterday night, but at the same time, I'm not a fan. Mainly because this is such a stupid political move that is meant to pander to the media. I think that the Cincinnati and Xavier presidents should have taken this very seriously. It was a very serious situation. I think that they have moved too far the other way though. There is a difference between trying to rectify a terrible situation and spin it in a positive way, but there is also a difference in killing a bunny with a tank. Nothing happened 2 years ago. Nothing really happened 3 years ago, despite Ibrahima Thomas losing his head in this photo. 

  
I know the brawl last year was terrible. But it also wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to sports. Know how they could have fixed the whole situation next season? Make the players shake hands before the game at center court. It's that easy. Make them stand united as 1 for the national anthem. Something purely symbolic. Changing the name of the game from the Shootout makes no sense to me. The game wasn't called the Crosstown Punchout. If it was, a name change was surely understandable. Shootout is a basketball term. Know what the Thunder and the Heat did last night? They got in a shootout in the 4th quarter. I'm sorry, they got into a classic in the 4th quarter. Ok, that kind of made sense. I've exhausted this point.

Let's keep it on the Finals for a minute. This stuff with LeBron James is beyond ridiculous. I am not one of those people who have turned into a Heat fan because of the Heat backlash. Nor am I a pure Heat hater. I never liked the Heat and I rooted for Dallas to beat them twice for the record. I rooted for them to beat Boston for the most part. I really don't get how every single thing LeBron does it analyzed to the point that I can't stand reading anything related to the NBA after a game like that. I said this to someone on twitter last night, but I'll say it again here. He's the only player in the world you can't just watch play and not be forced to have a clear cut opinion on. You can't watch Miami and say "LBJ had a pretty nice game." No, no, no, no, no. You have to say "LEBRON JAMES is the best player of all time." Use your Jay Pharoah Stephen A Smith voice there. Actually, you have to say "LEBRON JAMES IS/ISN'T CLUTCH." You have to say it in all caps too. It's really annoying. Am I a fan of this? No. 

I'd be remiss if I talked about 5 things in this piece and Lizard Lick Towing was not one of them. I have no idea how real or fake the show is. I think it's 65% real, 25% fake, 10% just amazing. I can't even say what's so watchable about the show. I just know when TruTV plays 4 episodes in a row on Monday night, I'm watching all 4 no matter if I've seen them before. I tried looking to see what was staged about the show once. The article said there were staged parts, which is true with every reality show. It also said that to get permission to get the people on tv that they don't call the cops. This is something that I believe. The amount of damage done to their store is quite high. Although I don't know what happened to the people that stabbed Ronnie. Their faces were blurred, I think. I hope justice was brought to them. The 3rd season of the cultural masterpiece started this week. It was a return to form after the meandering second season. The New Orleans storyline didn't float my boat. The car blowing up at the end of the one episode made me laugh out loud. If you are looking for a fun show to watch on Mondays, get licked. 

I feel like I should endorse a good show that I like in this space, but I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to talk about Punk'd. I don't watch the show anymore. I don't know how many people do. Probably not a lot. It is Punk'd after all. I liked the first couple seasons of Punk'd. It was a fun little program. Once the series went on, people were expecting things and the total surprise and baffled looks on faces faded away some. Then it ended. We all celebrated the end of the era by not doing anything because hey, it was just Punk'd. We aren't weird people. For some reason, MTV brought the show back this year. They used celebrities to prank other celebrities in a total circle jerk type of move. So I'm reading Warming Glow or tv tattle and they said that Neil Patrick Harris was on Punk'd but didn't fall for it. I watched the prank on youtube and it was quite horrible. But that wasn't the only failure. The first one on the episode failed too! How does this happen? How lazy have the people behind Punk'd gotten? It's not that hard to create a prank and get people to fall for it. It seems like a case of the producers thinking they are so clever, but they are not. People can see through the facade. Especially when all the actors on the show are horrible. Dax Sheppard, a real actor, was on Punk'd. He is Sidney Poitier compared to these bums. Lesson, don't watch Punk'd, not even clips on youtube. 

I mentioned last week that I was going to see the Shins that weekend. Not only did I see them, but they were awesome. If you ever have a chance to check them out, it's worth it. I thought people would love Saint Simon the most, but it turned out that the crowd loves Sleeping Lessons. That was the closer. In fact, the posted video is from the day after the show I saw them. It's not the whole song though. I love the Shins. Have a great weekend, everyone.