Streaks: Phil Jackson coached teams that win game 1 in a playoff series still have never lost the series. The team that won game 3 in a NBA Finals tied 1-1 still have never lost the series. But the Celtics now, thankfully, have lost to the Lakers in a NBA Finals game 7. 1-for-5 isn’t a great percentage, but you take what you can get.

Game 7 was an ugly ugly game, with terrible shooting by both teams early, in no small part by amazing energy and intensity on defense by both teams. But the Lakers kept crashing the boards, and that paid off down the road (making some free throws also helped). Kobe did not play well offensively, but Pau Gasol played quite well outside of poor free throw shooting, and really should’ve been the Finals MVP. And Ron Artest had a tremendous game (best player in Game 7) and made the biggest 3 of his career in the waning seconds. Then thanked his psychiatrist during the post-game celebration interview. :D

So we’re now at 11 championships for Phil Jackson, and it’s frankly astounding to realize that every single team has been repeat champions. In fact, he has a chance to make it all three-peats next year. Most of the vital players are coming back, so the question mark is Derek Fisher (who I’m happier for than anyone else on the team – he’s definitely my favorite current Laker) and age/injuries.

Let’s go for #17 to tie the Celtics!

This has turned from a personal blog to a personal review page… which is fine, but not quite what I was intending. So I guess I need to try updating this more frequently. It’s not the first time I’ve said this, but maybe this time it’ll actually happen!

For now, some random musings:

The new iPhone got announced at WWDC today. Nothing all that interesting or overwhelming, though the new ultra-high DPI screen is nice. I think I would still rather have an HTC EVO plus an iPod Touch for music though. But it’s nice that iPod Touch owners will get to upgrade to iOS for free this time. Speaking of which, that’s now the 3rd OS with that name, after Cisco’s router/switch OS and Nintendo’s Wii quasi-OS. But hey, the i is lower-case and that makes all the difference, right?

The NBA Finals are under way, and tied 1-1 after the 2 games in Los Angeles. Pau Gasol has played very well so far, and Andrew Bynum put in a terrific performance in game 2 as well. Kobe hasn’t been amazing in the series so far though, and Ray Allen’s lights-out 3PT shooting in game 2 (an NBA-record 8 threes) combined with Rondo’s triple-double to get them the win. Officiating has been pretty universally terrible, unfortunately. But Paul Pierce hasn’t played too well either, and KG just looks absolutely brutal on the court (which is unfortunate, as I still like KG a lot despite hating Boston). Lakers will have to win at least 1 in Boston (hopefully game 3), and hope they can hold court at home in games 6/7. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, but this definitely is shaping up to be a good series.

There’s been so much buzz about conference re-alignment and expansion in college sports, much of it centered on the Big 12, that at this point it’s almost impossible to dismiss. Now, as a Longhorns fan I’m pretty content in knowing that however it shakes out, Texas will almost certainly be in a good position – being the biggest revenue generating athletic program in the country makes it the most desirable school for any conference. But the idea of being in a Pac-16, or even more outlandishly, in the Big 10/11/14/16 (or whatever it’ll end up being called) still takes some getting used to. And I can’t imagine what fans of the “lesser” schools are feeling. But the fact that something like this, which seemed so ridiculous back when it was written in February, is now very possible or even possibly likely, is amazing.

Most new anime coming out seem to be uninteresting. I put Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on hold since it’s coming to an end and I figure I’ll just marathon through the 25 or so episodes from where I left off, so the only shows of this season that I care about are Kaichou wa Maid-sama, a decent silly romantic-comedy, and Angel Beats!, which has a few interesting characters. Also watching Arakawa Under The Bridge, but it’s actually gotten progressively less interesting as I watch more of it. The Maaya Sakamoto-voiced Nino-san is great, but doesn’t play as large a role in the story as I initially believed, and the rest of the cast are more just eccentric than interesting. Watched 1.11 and 2.22 of the Rebuild of Evangelion, and it’s great, but I’ll save that for a review post later.

Beat Super Mario Galaxy and one of the goals I set for myself in WipEout HD (will also talk about those in review post), and finding myself somewhat lacking in interest in playing anything else, despite a game of 3D Dot Game Heroes that I started and Super Mario Galaxy 2 waiting for me. Started playing Infinite Undiscovery, started regretting it almost immediately (even the intro FMV looks terrible – does anyone at Square know how to encode/compress video?), and lasted about 15 minutes before I quit – and will almost certainly never play again. Good use of $10! Then started Blue Dragon, and while it’s definitely a better game… Akira Toriyama character designs in 3D really doesn’t do it for me. Having a Japanese voice track is definitely nice, but the main character’s voice sounds anywhere between age 12 and 40, while the character looks about… 8. It’s just a weird experience. I might go back to it at some point later on, but I’m not counting on it. All this makes me wonder if the JRPG genre really is just dead to me. FFXIII is the first one I finished in ages, and none of the other current-generation JRPGs I’ve played (IU, BD, Eternal Sonata, etc.) I’ve gotten further than 5 hours in.

And finally, the lackluster support for ID3v2.4 is terribly annoying. Doesn’t get read properly by PS3 (boo), doesn’t get recognized by Windows Explorer (meh), and seems to often get corrupted when updated by iTunes (ugh). Mp3tag is a pretty nice piece of software that I’m using to clean up some tags, but it’s a very tedious process to use it to add lyrics. And all this because ID3v2.3 doesn’t support forward slashes in the artist field.

Hasn’t actually been that long since I last posted something, but feels like it’s been forever since last real post of substance. So here it is.

Games! First and foremost, there’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Got it at midnight release, played the hell out of it, unlocked all the characters and stages (I think), then haven’t played it too much since because of time spent on other stuff, like…

Fate/stay night. mirror moon has released version 2.0 of their English translation patch, this one encompassing the second story arc, Unlimited Blade Works, and lets you add the voices from RN to boot. And the game itself is, of course, awesome. A lot of the characters with minor roles in the Fate story arc really come into their own in UBW – Rin, Archer, and very surprisingly Lancer, who is incredibly cool. Can’t wait for Heaven’s Fate – I have no doubt that the remaining characters will get fleshed out as well, but that’s probably just me being a Type-Moon fanboy. ^_~

Moving onto anime, which I finally started again (or went on a binge of, depending on how you look at it…). Watched all of Monster. It really is a wonderful series, but I think it got drawn out too long, and I really dislike the majority of the character designs – though it really does show the contrast between Johan/Nina and everyone else. Still, as far as psychological thriller type anime goes, it’s the best I’ve seen (not that I’ve seen many…).

And then Elfen Lied. Seems to be very well received judging by the rankings on sites like MyAnimeList and ANN, but I don’t know, it really didn’t do too much for me. The concept is somewhat interesting, and the characters are very cute if not anything special… but the gratuitous use of nudity and blood is just unnecessary. And 13 episodes isn’t enough to really take develop the story properly.

In between, watched Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, one of a few anime that has managed to impress me with the animation quality (I’m usually not one to really pay attention or even notice). And the rest of the movie is pretty damn good too.

Oh yeah, also finally watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. After all that’s been said about it, I don’t think it was possible for it to really live up to the expectations. It’s definitely an interesting series, but… just not enough actually happens in it. And I really don’t get the nigh-fanatical following that the namesake character has.

What else? Started work again, probably less playing of WoW in future (FOR REALZ THIS TIME! …maybe…), and March Madness started. Hopefully Texas can take advantage of the home field advantage (Houston, San Antonio) and get to the Final Four and beyond.

…and everyone knew it, but it’s still a sad moment. The incomparable Brett Favre, my favorite player since I started being into football, has finally retired after an illustrious career spanning 16 years and encompassing more achievements and records than I can possibly name.

Thanks, Brett.