This has been a weekend of games for me, and today being Kuhio Day, the holiday continues in Hawaii. I walked 18 holes at the Ala Wai Golf Course, completed drafting four ESPN and CBS Sports fantasy teams, and went to see Hunger Games.
There was a time a few years ago when I had as many as 15 teams (I won't try to explain how this works, but click on that link for a Wikipedia treatment), just for baseball. I took a sabbatical from this competition to write three books, more than a hundred articles for the Huffington Post and started a daily blog (what you are here reading). I am leaving aside the novels I have started and future HuffPo's, as participation in these fantasy games is all absorbing, requiring you to watch as many Major League Baseball (MLB) games as possible, catching Baseball Tonight on ESPN and spending a lot of time on the MLB TV channel.
Isn't this a horrible waste of time...and what could I possibly get out of it? Almost no money and a lot of frustration and grief, actually not much different from trying to save Planet Earth and Humanity. Am I giving up on the future? I don't seem to be getting anywhere with my efforts, so, for now, I will only continue this blog site. I might be back someday if circumstances change.
Continuing my White Rat experiment, I monitored my blood press and pulse rate just before the first draft, and was horrified by a reading of 180/103/73 (the third is my pulse). I was totally frustrated trying to understand how to proceed (nine others from who knows where participated) on my computer link. In all I took four readings, and as late as three hours after the ordeal was over (lasted two hours), the readings were still in the 160/90 range.
All in all, things went relatively well. First, I survived and the experience was exciting, but I ended up picking up a host of players who were on the dreaded day-to-day injury list. This is what happens when you jump in to something new without much planning, at least in that the last major league baseball I saw (including TV) over the past three years was a live one at AT&T Park in San Francisco.
All in all, things went relatively well. First, I survived and the experience was exciting, but I ended up picking up a host of players who were on the dreaded day-to-day injury list. This is what happens when you jump in to something new without much planning, at least in that the last major league baseball I saw (including TV) over the past three years was a live one at AT&T Park in San Francisco.
However, the next day, I drafted three teams, where the readings were in the 135/85 range, and, at the end of the third draft, dropped to 125/80, about normal. Frustration caused that scary jump yesterday, and it is gratifying to know that my body was able to adjust to the anxiety and stress.
Hunger Games got an audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 95%, and over this three-day weekend, will approach or exceed box office revenues of $150 million. It was made for $80 million. Two other movies I was considering, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Jeff, Who Lives at Home, will earn, maybe $1 million, combined.
The film is based on a teenage trilogy set written by Suzanne Collins of a dystopian future. Will this be the next Harry Potter? All the reviews are praiseworthy, but I found the film uneven, discordant and a mish-mash of The Truman Show, Republican Primary (and various TV) Survival series, The Bachelorette and America's Got Talent. The movie runs for 142 minutes, and I further found myself dosing off a couple of times. In many ways, the movie sort of reflected my life.
There was no real suspense, for the sequels have already been announced and you know that Katniss Everdeen will not get killed. The main character is played by 21 year old Jennifer Lawrence, who last year got nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Winter's Bone. She is already being compared to Meryl Streep, who won Best Actress this year, again.
Returning to Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, most don't realize that he worked with industrialists to overththrow the Hawaiian monarchy. He was elected ten times to the office of the territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress and is given credit for building up Pearl Harbor.
And speaking of pork barrel, do you think the $125 million to build a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Ewa is something the nation truly needs today? This comes courtesy of our Congress and Department of Veterans Affairs primarily because Senator Daniel Akaka (left) is the chairman of the Senate Committee over this office, and Senator Daniel Inouye is chairman of the Appropriations Committee. The game of politics rewarded Akaka, for he leaves office in December. One guess what this center will be called? Senator Inouye reaches 88 this year, so if you think the Hawaiian economy is now suffering, consider the prospects of his imminent passage.-
One of the intended cuts will be to this section of my blog. In the future, I will comment if there is something newsworthy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and WTI price of oil can be found on the right. For today, Ben Bernanke essentially said that the Fed will keep the prime rate at 0% into 2014, jerking up the Dow by 161 to 13,242. All my stocks were up, except for Sirius XM Radio, which dropped 0.02 to 2.25. However, I bought in May of 2009 for 19 cents/share, so I"m still ahead. A couple of months earlier it was at 10 cents.
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