So we all know Drake has released his debut album today, and if you don’t know this then… I don’t even know how you can­not. But more inter­est­ing is the fact that some­one for­get to send a memo to Juvenile’s cre­ative team for their splen­did work on HIS new CD cover. Coin­ci­dence?

I am back, reset and refreshed!@

So I was heav­ily incor­rect, as I did choose the The LeBron Cavs to go all the way this year.. boy did those Celtics sur­prise me!

I feel both series are in the bag, and would be even MORE sur­prised if Suns actu­ally pull a shocker and take the West­ern Con­fer­ence series, cause that’s the Lak­ers’ series to lose

And if this rematch from two (or was it three?!) sea­sons ago goes down, my pick is..

Lak­ers in 6

Lost : The Series Finale

The time has finally arrived, the answers to ALL our ques­tions, right?

Wrong. I com­pletely read­ied myself to be heav­ily dis­ap­pointed after watch­ing the series finale, due to the sim­ple fact that Sea­son 6 was giv­ing me noth­ing to really hang hope on.  From when they had that episode about Jacob and his brother as young bucks and their ‘mom’ show­ing Jacob that light tun­nel, things were get­ting wack.  And that being the rea­son why the Black Smoke Mon­ster came to be was even more disappointing.

So every­body was dead, no real sur­prise there.  Even as I watched the Jimmy Kim­mel spe­cial where they were fur­ther try­ing to fig­ure out exactly what the show meant, I just didn’t get a sense of con­crete con­fi­dence in the outcome.

Over­all, it was a great show and like the few other shows in which I hold at high regard in their pro­duc­tion qual­ity, def­i­nitely has raised the bar in how TV should be.  I just think this series could have got­ten their point across by Sea­son 3 or 4, because Sea­son 6 was a big waste of time.  And the end­ing didn’t pro­vide the kind of ‘con­clu­sion’ one needs

It was like a past rela­tion­ship with no clo­sure. And that’s how I’ll leave it

HBO Doc­u­men­tary: You Don’t Know Jack

I was very famil­iar with the name Dr. Kevorkian and heard the mur­murs of his patients dying, but never really knew the whole story.  So when I stum­bled across this, espe­cially with Al Pacino play­ing the part, I was more than intrigued to take it in.  HBO labels it a doc­u­men­tary, but I would be more com­fort­able call­ing it a movie given that they com­pletely re-enacted this man’s life and jour­ney with some A-list actors and actresses.

Of course Pacino gave a stel­lar per­for­mance as always, play­ing a very con­vinc­ing Kevorkian.  And after watch­ing the movie, I def­i­nitely asked myself about how I per­son­ally felt about the con­cept of Euthana­sia. I have per­son­ally dealt with the issue of deal­ing with a close fam­ily mem­ber deal­ing with a life-eating dis­ease such as can­cer (my dad), and had to wit­ness him wither away into noth­ing but a over-drugged state of help­less­ness until finally los­ing the bat­tle alto­gether.  I also knew that he wasn’t tak­ing the drugs that the doc­tors were giv­ing him to ‘stay alive’, flush­ing them down the toi­let every time they left it for him on his bed­side.  Yet, I didn’t do any­thing about it.. so does that make me guilty of assisted sui­cide? Hardly think so.  I would much rather see him peace­fully lay­ing in his cof­fin, than suf­fer­ing both men­tally and phys­i­cally while tubed up and drugged out in a hos­pi­tal bed sur­rounded by vic­tims of the same fate.

Meh.  Great movie though, highly recommended

It’s not secret that I could really care less about any­thing other than the Toronto Rap­tors, so after they didn’t make it to the play­offs.. I’ve been a bit com­pla­cent to watch­ing any post-season play, but have been keep­ing tabs on what’s going on.

In no way am I a LeBron hater, but I do know that his deci­sion this off-season will cre­ate a rip­ple effect through­out the league.  And let’s be real, some­times watch­ing heavy favorites (ie. Yan­kees) go down is mali­ciously satisfying.

In fact I chose the Cavs to go all the way this year, due to their strong reg­u­lar sea­son push just bull­doz­ing over teams.  I’m sure the NBA was just vying for a Kobe vs LeBron show­down, but now that dream is over and we just may see a rematch of last year’s finals.  Snooooooze fest

Above all else, how often do we over­look the fact that this freak of nature named LeBron James is still in his mid 20’s?  What kind of pres­sures were you deal­ing with at 26?  Bet it ain’t even a frac­tion of what guys like LeBron and Kobe are hav­ing to face

The year is 2010, and sur­pris­ingly enough Adobe is set to release Cre­ative Suite CS5. It wasn’t too long ago that I decided to make the jump from CS2 to CS3, pri­mar­ily using Pho­to­shop as my most-used tool with my pho­tog­ra­phy work (aside from my actual cam­era of course)

What’s even more sur­pris­ing is that I’ve been doing this all on my G4 iBook 14″ lap­top which I freshly acquired back in 2004! Yes, it’s lived a lengthy life of 6 years already and I feel it could stag­ger on a bit longer but I know that it’s almost that time to invest in a brand new Mac. Every­thing is demand­ing more power and space these days with the emer­gence of photo & video, that it almost makes more sense to just splurge and spend the 2–3 thou­sand on a new Mac instead of a few hun­dred dol­lars each time on a new exter­nal HD (I think I’m on #5 now).

I ask Adobe, give me ONE good rea­son why I should upgrade to CS5 when I’ve been doing quite alright with what I’ve got? The answer:

Content-Aware Filler *NEW*

that is one damn good rea­son, damn you Adobe!

Who really knows right?

You can’t say any­thing is for sure or guar­an­teed for next sea­son, because I don’t even think Bryan Col­lan­gelo knows him­self how he’s going to clean up this mess.  Yes­ter­day after­noon (Mon­day, April 19th / 2010) he addressed the media and gave us his reg­u­lar BC speech.. which means, you don’t really know any­more com­ing out of that press con­fer­ence than you did going in.

A cou­ple things bother me, and that’s the fact that he strongly stands behind this ‘core’ that he has assem­bled dur­ing his time here.  When TJ Ford was our beloved starter and Calderon was com­ing off the bench, I was pro-Calderon all the way and for that moment I felt he deserved to be the Raptor’s start­ing point guard no ques­tions asked.  But since he was handed the keys to drive and inserted into the start­ing line-up, #8 has digressed quite sig­nif­i­cantly.  His 09/10 sea­son was prob­a­bly his worst as a Rap­tor, and he just did not look that good out there.  Turkoglu was a huge let-down, but maybe we were expected way too much from some­one we knew very lit­tle about.  I mean, we really only saw Turk play when he was in Sacra­mento and they had their nice lit­tle run back in the early 2000’s, and his play in last year’s play­offs with Orlando. Then we have the golden child, Andrea Bargnani.. who I’ve stated many times over, has been a mis­take tak­ing him #1 over­all.  Good player, but not great enough to bring this team to where it needs to be, a 3rd tier player at best so far.. but is get­ting better.

That’s 3 out of the 5 starters, with the other two being Chris Bosh and DeMar DeRozan.  DD is a rookie, so he gets a pass until his 3rd sea­son in, and then we could really assess where his game is at.  But for Chris Bosh, Mr. Fran­chise.. he’s def­i­nitely look­ing for noth­ing short of the max money no mat­ter where he goes, but is he worth it?  Per­son­ally I don’t think he is, a 20/10 guy that prefers tak­ing that 18″ footer instead of putting his head down and dri­ving to the bas­ket is not a player I’d want to hang my team on.  Does he really make his team­mates bet­ter?  Or just him­self really?  I do admit that he seems to be a class-A type of guy, media friendly and just appears to be an over­all nice guy.  But I’m a lit­tle sick of all this nice guy crap, and I want some hard nosed-don’t f* around-menacing per­son­al­i­ties on this team.  Who was our last mon­ster?  Oak­ley? Wow.

BC does have some chips on the table, those being: Chris Bosh, Calderon, Turk, Bargnani, 10million dol­lars in expir­ing con­tracts (Evans & Banks) and the 13th pick.  Not to men­tion the team bud­gets rumored to be going up next sea­son as well, so throw that in the mix.

Once again it’s going to be an inter­est­ing off-season, and I’m pre­pared to hear that we’ve traded Chris Bosh to _________?  I just hope that A) it’s not to a team IN OUR DIVISION *ahem, Carter to Nets, ahem* and we actu­ally get some great assets back *ahem, Carter trade as a whole, ahem*

That is all… for now.

Which two out of the three are most impor­tant to you?  Tough one huh?

I was going to write this up a few days ago, but it’s more fit­ting to write it on the day that we are set to have one of our biggest games of the sea­son, against the Chicago Bulls.

Months ago, before the All-Star break, we were HOT and I mean RED RED hot!  We had one of the best records of the new year going into the all-star break and were hold­ing down the 5th spot in the East­ern Con­fer­ence. That was then, and then let’s fast for­ward to now.  Since the all-star break we took a nose-dive in the stand­ings and have seen that secured 5th spot turn into a bat­tle to even make the play­off pic­ture.  So what hap­pened between then and now?

There were numer­ous heart-breakers that we should have won but ended up los­ing in either over­time or last minute (or shall I say sec­ond) plays down the stretch in the fourth quar­ter.  Chris Bosh went down with an injury and was out for a num­ber of games which left the team to fight for itself with­out their main source of offense, and not to men­tion rebound­ing.  We did ‘okay’ at first, noth­ing stel­lar and noth­ing to panic at just yet.  And then Chris Bosh came back and things didn’t get bet­ter at all, they almost got worse as play­ers looked like they had their own per­sonal agen­das out there, and the con­cept of team, plus the things that were work­ing were both being abandoned.

More injuries plagued the Rap­tors as Calderon went down, forc­ing Jarred Jack to become the starter and man the team, with Mar­cus “barely play a game” Banks was now the first guard to come off the bench.  That exper­i­ment actu­ally fared well, to the point where Jack remained the starter even when Calderon returned from injury, because for that lit­tle stretch, things were look­ing good.  And then wham, Turkoglu got hit in the face and was out, forc­ing us to lose yet another starter from our rotation.

We began los­ing games that we should have won (Six­ers, Golden State, Mem­phis) just based on pure tal­ent alone, but wasn’t the case.  And then you had teams just com­ing in and blow­ing us out the water (Blaz­ers, Bob­cats, Hawks) on our home court, a place we had great pride in pro­tect­ing early in the sea­son, seemed no longer sacred.

And loss after loss, the word Toronto began get­ting lower and lower in the stand­ings, trad­ing places with the likes of the Mil­wau­kee Bucks, the Miami Heat and the Char­lotte Bob­cats.  All three teams hun­gry for a play­off spot, were play­ing like it, while Toronto just looked just as lost as they did under Sam Mitchell a sea­son or so ago.  And instead of an opti­mistic sit­u­a­tion, I really began to ques­tion the future of this team…

The num­ber one issue is Chris Bosh.  Will he decide to return to this team and believe that Bryan Col­lan­gelo has a rock solid plan to cre­ate a win­ning fran­chise?  Or does he already have his mind set on a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion south of the bor­der, where he may get more recog­ni­tion and be able to pick a team with whom he thinks has a solid chance at com­pet­ing for that crown.  I for one would NOT pay him the max money, because I’ve never looked at him as a #1 option, and do not want to watch another 4 or 5 sea­sons of our fran­chise player tak­ing 18-foot jumpers when the game is on the line.  So he’s amongst the top in the league with double-doubles, who cares.. he shares the same stats as play­ers like David Lee, Al Jef­fer­son, LaMar­cus Aldridge and count­less other PF’s in the game.  So why invest $130 mil­lion+ on him?

I under­stand that play­ers like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul and a hand­ful of other play­ers are a rar­ity.. but they deserve every penny they ask for, because when the game is on the line, you can count on them to get the job done.  And if they hap­pen to fail, atleast you know they gave it 100% and took it there.  I don’t get that sense of secu­rity at all from Chris Bosh, and I never did the whole time he’s been on this team.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great player, just not great enough in my mind to deserve the max.  And if we decide to give him that max, I feel that we’ll be in this same sit­u­a­tion for years to come, just mediocre.  Sick of being a mediocre .500 bas­ket­ball club.

But not all fin­gers point to Bosh, I do believe that Bryan Col­lan­gelo made a very vital mis­take in draft­ing Andrea Bargnani #1 over­all many sea­sons ago.  This ONE move has been the rea­son for many fol­low­ing moves that occurred, because of Collangelo’s inabil­ity to admit that he was wrong.  There are games where Bargnani shows flashes of great­ness, but noth­ing worth not­ing as a #1 pick.  His inabil­ity to rebound has deeply hurt this team, and forced us to give away assets to bring in Jer­maine O’Neil, who didn’t work out as well as we hoped.  So then off went O’Neil to Miami, in exchange for the Matrix, Shawn Mar­ion and Mar­cus Banks.. who came in near the end of last sea­son and played well, but for what it was worth, not enough.  We some­how flipped him to Dal­las for Devon George, who we later flipped for Belinelli, and landed the top free agent Hedu Turkoglu.  Com­ing off a strong post-season with the Orlando Magic, it cre­ated a great buzz going into the sea­son and Rap­tor fans couldn’t wait for that first tipoff.

Hor­ri­ble move though, he’s looked very slug­gish through­out the sea­son and has played just as bad as his body moves.  Mr. 4th Quar­ter has coffed up the ball in dire sit­u­a­tions and cost us games here and there, and his poor efforts were often ques­tion­able.  And to think we signed this guy for 5 years at $53 mil­lion+?  Aww man.

Through all the bad, there has been some good.  Amir John­son and Sonny Weems com­ing over from the Bucks in a trade that I feel we won hands down!  Amir has played every game with 200% effort and com­ing off of the bench, he has been that spark that Toronto has needed for a long time.  Sonny Weems didn’t see much floor time early in the sea­son, but due to numer­ous injuries was given the oppor­tu­nity to strut his stuff and boy did he impress… and con­tin­ues to mind you.  Jarred Jack has been worth every dol­lar he had been signed for as he has been hard-nosed and deter­mined to put the team on his back when it looked weak.  Some­times doing a bit too much though, he just needs to know when to put those breaks on and he’ll be fine.

Our beloved rookie, DeMar DeRozan has played like a rookie.  He shows flashes of great things to come, but often times set­tles for jumpers and fails to do what works best for him.  I tend not to judge his game yet, know­ing that A) he’s only 20 years old and B) I give him 3 sea­sons and he’ll be a very good player, maybe even a go-to player on this team (if he’s still here).

Now with Bosh out for the remain­der of the sea­son, and Turkoglu hurt but still play­ing, it’s hard to be opti­mistic about this sea­son any­more.  Do we put up the fight to make it to the play­offs only to get HAMMERED by Cleve­land in the first round?  Or do we just mail it in and get in that draft lot­tery and hope for some­thing good?  Per­son­ally, I would mail it in, and it’s hard for me to say this, but the way we’ve been play­ing it doesn’t leave much hope for any­thing good to come out of this year any­more.  I would also do a sign-and-trade with Chris Bosh and try to land a good player like J. Noah and some high draft picks (lot­tery pro­tected) and build for the future.  Lastly, I would do my best to get rid of Calderon, Bargnani and Turkoglu if that’s even pos­si­ble and get what­ever I can for all three of these players.

I look at teams like the Port­land Trail­blaz­ers, the Okla­homa City Thun­der and the Atlanta Hawks, who had it rough for years and years, and now have amaz­ing young teams with promis­ing futures ahead of them.  It’d be hard to sit here and still root for Toronto if they had numer­ous back-to-back los­ing sea­sons, but if I knew there was a big pic­ture and time will come, then I would try my best to stom­ach it.  But where we’re at now, it just seems like we’re mak­ing band-aid move after band-aid move, and you can only patch the prob­lems up for so long until all those patches get bro­ken through and shit hits the fan.  Literally!

Cause as a die-hard fan, this shit has hit me for too long now and this emo­tional roller­coaster ride that the Rap­tors have been putting me through has been hard to han­dle, but I’ve never left and I’ve always rooted for them the same.

Go Rap­tors Go!