How Can I Tell If I Have Swine Flu?

Are you completely worried that you might have the Swine Flu?

Click on the link below (courtesy of colleague Matt Matyas) for some easy instructions and information on how to deal with this pandemic.


LINKS

DoIHaveSwineFlu.org

The King Really Is Dead

While Rafael Nadal was out-Tigering Tiger Woods and out-Rogering Roger Federer (the dude just won two major clay-court tournaments for the fifth straight year, the Monte Carlo Masters and the Barcelona Open), Federer was not-so-quietly imploding.

Nadal's match record for 2009 is 33-3, with four titles including the Australian Open, and two Masters Series tournaments (including the big one at Indian Wells).

He has a 25-match clay-court winning streak. He already has 35 ATP titles (going an astonishing 35-9 in finals). He has 14 Masters Series titles. Since 2005 he is, wait for it, a ridiculous 142-4 on clay.

Roger is 18-5 this year. If you take last year's US Open out of the mix (which is looking more and more like a fluky win), then he hasn't won a tournament of note for about two years now.

Two years!

It just breaks my heart!

I will ruminate about this in great length later, but for now check out two excellent articles looking at what happened to him.

So sad, so very sad!


LINKS

Newsweek: The Federer Fade
BleacherReport: Roger Federer Struggles in His New Tennis World

Old Guys Getting It Done!

Yup, oldies-but-still-goodies Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya put on a clinic in the Mumbai Indians thrashing of my beloved Kolkata Knight Riders yesterday in their IPL match.

Sachin scored 68 from only 45 balls and Jayasuriya kept pace with a blitzkrieg 52 from 32. Between the two of them they had eight 4s and eight 6s!

In reply, the erstwhile Prince of Calcutta Sourav Ganguly tried his best with a 30-ball 34, but Calcutta had no shot.

As Cricinfo said, Sachin and Jayasuriya "with a combined age of nearly 76, treated Port Elizabeth to the cleanest, purest exhibition of batting that this season of the IPL has seen."

Talk about old guys getting it done!


LINKS

CI: Tendulkar And Jayasuriya Overwhelm Kolkata

Be Still My Beating Heart

Okay, so Sylvester Stallone has put together the best cast, ever! for his upcoming The Expendables (memorably nicknamed Inglorious Old Basterds by SlashFilm).



I am talking about Randy Couture, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, and the great Jason Statham.

Then came word that the fantastic Danny Trejo was joining the cast.



And then came word that Robert Rodriguez has finally decided to make that fake Machete trailer from Grindhouse into a real movie!

Oh my God!



In the meantime, mark your calendars for 23 April 2010 - that's when The Expendables explodes on to screens!



LINKS

Variety: Robert Rodriguez Wields Machete
SlashFilm: Danny Trejo Joins The Expendables

I'm Not Sayin'...

...but I'm sayin' that The New Yorker usually knows what it's talkin' 'bout:

Top 5 Worst Tweets Ever

Great little article on Silicon Alley Insider (or is it The Business Insider) on the Top 5 Worst Tweets Ever.

My favorite was the one about the recently-hired girl who slammed her future employers, who found her not-so-flattering tweet and fired her. The company, oh, a little outfit called...Cisco.

Wait, shouldn't I be talking about this on Twitter? Or should it be "Tweeting on Tweeter"?

Kids these days...


LINKS

SAI: Top 5 Worst Tweets

More Disco Dancer

More Disco Dancer



Here is a summary of the plot from IMDB and Wikipedia:

An aspiring disco dancer (Jimmy) vows revenge on an underworld boss (Oberoi) after the boss beats his mother (Ma) after the dancer defeats the boss's son (Oberoi Jr.) in a disco dancing competition leading to the son's nervous breakdown. To make matters worse, the boss then mistakenly kills the mother after rigging the dancer's electric guitar to 5,000 volts of pure electricity.

Now, the disco dancer must fight the boss's goons, his new manager's (Mr. Brown) skepticism, his own guitar phobia, and (perhaps most importantly) strong competition from Team Africa and Team Paris at the International Disco Dancing Competition to exact his revenge and win the heart of the boss's beautiful daughter (Rita).

Here are some choice quotes from the classic movie (courtesy of Wikipedia):

"Don't you know the difference between green room and bedroom?" - Mr. Brown

"He's got guitar phobia. A guitar killed his mother." - Oberoi

"The bastard's killed seven people in London. And there was a very famous singer... I don't know his name, but he murdered him too. The bastard's a top class criminal." - Goon to Oberoi

"These are the tears of a popular famous artist." - Jimmy

"Come, sing, and conquer!" - Mr. Brown

"Mother, I have my music. I will sharpen this music like a sword and stab the city's heart with it." - Jimmy

M.I.A. And Disco Dancer

Disco Dancer

You know that really catchy M.I.A. song, "Jimmy"?




Well, the entire backbone of that ditty is comes from a song in the classic Bollywood film Disco Dancer.

Disco Dancer was released in 1983, at the height of Bollywood's Brown-sploitation phase, and featured the talents of two of the greatest Bengalis ever to work in mainstream Indian cinema: the music maestro Bappi Lahiri and the great actor Mithun Chakraborty.

Here is a video of "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja"...somewhere my friend Andre Koutouza is smiling.




Why? Apparently this was a huge hit in the former Soviet Republic when he was growing up.

Vodka and Mithunda...now that is the way to make it through a Russian winter!

Don't Let This Dog Near My Bags

My colleague Mark "_mC" Contreras's little Daschund Peanut is apparently missing out his true calling: Security Dog.

Click on the link below to check out the awesome video!

LINKS

Peanut The Security Dog

It's True...I Own A Cat

Some interesting animal psychology insight per The New Yorker:

Hey There Bo

Great shot of President Obama jogging with his new puppy Bo on an "trial" visit to the White House on 15 March 2009.



Apparently, there is some controversy about whether Bo truly is a rescue dog or not. I think FOX News is going to have a field day with that.




LINKS

AP: Is Obama dog a rescue or not?

This Is The Way I Like To See Tiger...

...In the woods, so to speak.

After losing out to "The Duck" (a.k.a. Angel Cabrera), this is what the erstwhile Greatest Human Being Alive (Tiger Woods) said:

"I fought my swing all day and was just kind of band-aiding it around. And [I] almost won the tournament with a band-aid swing today."


And that's it, that's all he said. This is exactly the kind of curt, post-loss interviews that has made Serena Williams such a gracious loser.

Stay classy Tiger, stay classy...