Holy crap, do I love the NBA Draft. 

There's nothing about it that's not great.  I enjoy the NBA Draft so much that I once took a day off from the evening shift job I had at the time to watch the draft.  The only downside to this plan was that I didn't take a day off for my wedding anniversary at the end of the month, which I am still slightly paying for to this day.  But it was a good idea at the time, because the NBA Draft is wall to wall entertainment.

First of all, It's the final culmination of the college basketball season.  After spending 4 months watching the rise and fall of various teams, we get to see which NCAA players have done the most work to build the best possible profile to play basketball on the biggest stage at the next level. 

Second, it's 18-22 year old guys, usually well over 6 feet in height, wearing absolutely ridiculous outfits.  Don't believe me?  Check out Minnesota Timberwolves and former Syracuse forward Wesley Johnson at last year's NBA Draft in the picture at the top of Bill Simmons' 2010 NBA Draft Diary.  And he's not even the craziest looking guy in the last 5 years.  Anyone else remember how Joakim Noah dressed on draft night in 2007?  As a Chicago Bulls fan, it's burned into my brain, so now I deliver that pain to you:

The last thing that happens during the telecast that I enjoy is the interactions between the fans live in attendance, NBA Commissioner David Stern, and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver.  Stern knows that the fans are going to heckle him at the start of the night and is always fully ready to engage them.  The fans' always positive reaction to Silver taking over emcee duties from Stern is consistently fantastic.  And of course, it's always great when draftees come out of the stands to shake either man's hand up on stage.  Andy Katz is already reporting that Morehead State's Kenneth Faried will be in the Prudential Center tonight, but will not be in the green room, so he's our logical candidate for "First Guy Out Of The Crowd."

I'd be remiss in my discussion of my enjoyment of the NBA Draft if I didn't mention how I always enjoy Bill Simmons' Draft Diaries.  This year will be the 15th annual Diary, and while I know that some of them are lost to time forever since they were before his ESPN days, for some reason, I can't track down any of the diaries previous to 2004.  But 2004's Diary is a heck of a piece of writing to look back on now.  For example:

7:37 --The Magic are on the clock with the first pick. If they're smart, they take Emeka Okafor. If they're dumb, they take [Dwight] Howard. It's that simple.

Yep.  The only thing that's actually better than that in retrospect is the 2007 Draft Diary where Simmons spends the entire time freaking out about the Celtics trading for Ray Allen.  I'd pay $5 to watch a webcam of Simmons going back and reading that column now that the Allen trade was the first step to acquiring Kevin Garnett and winning an NBA title.

As of this posting, we're about 4 hours from the intersection of sports, intentional comedy, and unintentional comedy.  I'm going to enjoy every minute of it, and I hope you do too.  Be sure to come back to Anonymous Eagle tonight for a NBA Draft Live Thread!

Welcome back to the Feedbag, everyone!  Today, on the occasion of my daughter's 7th birthday, I'm going to feature something that I enjoy doing with her: playing the Lego video games that are based on existing fictional series.

Now, when the first one in the series, Lego Star Wars, was released six years ago in 2005, obviously she was too young to play.  But as she's grown up, I've been able to introduce her to video games and various fiction series that I enjoy through the Lego interpretations of Star Wars (with the collection Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and the game based on the Clone Wars animated series), Batman, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and most recently, Pirates of the Caribbean.  As the games have progressed, they've added different layers of complexity, so as my daughter's been growing up, she's been able to take on new and different challenges in each game.

I'd have to say that her favorite of the Lego series has been Lego Rock Band.  It takes the same game play as regular Rock Band, but adds new songs and a new "Very Easy" difficulty level so all she has to do is strum in rhythm and not worry about pressing the right chord buttons on the neck of her guitar controller.

The Lego games do an excellent job of taking the classic stories and characters that you're familiar with and mixing in their own brand of kid-friendly humor to make them enjoyable for everyone.

Previous Feedbags:

Week 1: Sarcastic Voyage

Week 2: Kissing Suzy Kolber

Week 3: The NHL Playoffs

Week 4: Planetary

Week 5: Sobelman's

Week 6: Justified

Week 7: LA Noire

Hello Friends and Known Associates!  The Feedbag comes back from last week's work inservice induced hiatus to use the Wayback Machine and travel to 1947 Los Angeles with LA Noire.

via media.rockstargames.com

In this latest Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 offering from Rockstar Games (the creators of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption), Aaron (Mad Men) Staton stars (and yes, I do mean stars, more on this later) as Cole Phelps, a WWII Marine veteran who joins the Los Angeles Police Department upon his return from the war in an effort to continue to serve his country.  When you first begin the game, Phelps is a regular beat cop, but eventually rises through the ranks to become a detective on the Traffic, Arson, Vice and Homicide desks.  Throughout his time with the LAPD, Phelps gets to see the sunny future of a booming post-WWII LA as well as the seamy underside that exists underneath the surface.  Drawing from sources like James Ellroy's LA Confidential, Rockstar Games and Team Bondi create a fully formed universe for these characters to live and breathe in.

In previous Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Bully, the player character was an outlaw, going and doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.  With an LAPD detective as the player character, the options are much more limited.  There is no free roam mode while working through the main story, with the focus on investigating crime scenes for clues and interrogating witnesses and various people of interest in the cases that Phelps is working.  The interrogations work on a system where the player has to determine whether the subject is telling the truth or lying, but you can only successfully make an accusation of lying if you have the right piece of evidence marked in Phelps' casebook to prove it.

As I mentioned, Aaron Staton stars as Cole Phelps.  This is possible through a new motion capture technology called MotionScan, using 32 high definition cameras to capture the actor's facial performance and provide a more natural performance from the characters in the game in addition to the always outstanding voice work that Rockstar provides.  Video game website Eurogamer was kind enough to track down screenshots of the characters in the game and provide side by side pictures of the real life actors that provided the performance.

LA Noire provides a new step forward in both technology and gameplay for video gaming.  The technology allows for more realism in the performance, while the gameplay gets the player to critically think through the case that they are handling to make the right interrogation choices.  If you're a fan of Rockstar's previous games or 1940s pulp stories, I can't possibly recommend this game enough.

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Remember Deadwood?  You should.  Based on the true 1870s story of the South Dakota frontier town, it starred Timothy Olyphant as Sheriff Seth Bullock.  Due to differences of opinion between series creator David Milch and HBO, Deadwood ended before its time after three seasons.  Luckily, Graham Yost took notice of Olyphant's performance as a lawman and thought he'd fit in well as Elmore Leonard's character US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.  He was right, and now we have Justified.

Just finished with its second season on FX, Justified is the story of US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.  Givens gets himself into trouble once too often with the Miami Marshal's Office and finds himself transferred to the Lexington, Kentucky office.  For most Deputy Marshals, this would keep them out of trouble, but for Givens, this was a trip home, having been raised in nearby Harlan, KY.  Givens quickly finds himself embroiled in old feuds with backwoods criminals like Boyd Crowder (played by former The Shield standout Walton Goggins), Raylan's own father, Arlo, and the Bennett clan, led by matriarch Mags Bennett.

The reason I brought up Deadwood to open this Feedbag is because the only real difference in Olyphant's potrayals of the two lawmen is that Raylan Givens is much more outgoing and friendly than Seth Bullock.  Other than that, both men have a no nonsense/always get your man attitude towards law enforcement, almost to the point where Givens starts to feel slightly behind the times in comparison to his fellow Marshals.  If you liked Deadwood and wished you could get more stories of Sheriff Bullock, then Justified is for you.

Previous Feedbags:

Week 1: Sarcastic Voyage

Week 2: Kissing Suzy Kolber

Week 3: The NHL Playoffs

Week 4: Planetary

Week 5: Sobelman's

Today in the Feedbag, we focus on things that would actually go in a real feedbag.  In this case, Sobelman's Pub & Grill.

via www.milwaukeesbestburgers.com

But even that one slight downside has a brand new upside to it: Marquette University and Sobelman's have struck a partnership for Sobelman's to take over the location formerly occupied by Angelo's, right on the corner of 16th and Wells.  For those of you out of towners who don't get a regular chance to visit campus, it's now going to be extra easy for you to add a Sobleman's burger to your itinerary. 

In closing, Sobelman's is awesome, an on campus Sobelman's is even more awesome, and I'm going to need to intensify my workout regimen.  After the jump, you can watch the Sobelman's Food Wars segment.

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Planetary is a 27 issue limited series written by Warren Ellis, illustrated by John Cassaday (art) and Laura Martin (colors) and published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics.  It is also my favorite comic book ever.

Planetary is the story of an organization by the same name who employs three superhumans (super strong & fast team leader Jakita Wagner, a man who can talk to machines known only as The Drummer, and enigmatic new recruit Elijah Snow, whose powers are hinted at in his name) as "archaeologists of the impossible."  Their job, as directed by their mysterious benefactor, "The Fourth Man," is to investigate all the weirdness in their world.  Each issue is self contained as a new investigation by the team.

Ellis uses this structure as a chance to poke at the familiar archetypes of popular fiction. The first issue dives into pulp heroes of the 1930s and 40s, and from there we get to see Japanese atomic monsters, Hong Kong action movies, DC's own Vertigo line of comics, nuclear movies of the 50s, the back stories of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Superman, spy comics of the 1960s, and that's just in the first 12 issues.  Eventually, it becomes clear that Ellis and Cassaday are working a larger story through these individual stories, particularly in issue 6, when we meet the villains for the series and are asked a question: What if the Fantastic Four were a bunch of selfish jackasses?, and in issue 12, where Elijah Snow figures out who The Fourth Man is.

I hesitate to provide more information, because the series becomes a bigger and bigger mystery as it continues.  But it is a rewarding mystery to continue digging into deeper and deeper.  If you're a fan of Lost, with its underlying meanings and always expanding mysteries, you'll enjoy Planetary.

As Jakita Wagner says at the end of the first issue: It's a strange world.  Let's keep it that way.

Previous Feedbags:

Week 1: Sarcastic Voyage

Week 2: Kissing Suzy Kolber

Week 3: The NHL Playoffs

We're obviously all big fans of NCAA basketball here, and as such, big fans of the NCAA Tournament.  Here at Anonymous Eagle, we even referred to the opening weekend of the tournament as Basketball Christmas.  So I'll openly admit that it takes a lot to be more awesome than Basketball Christmas.  I submit to you that the NHL Playoffs are capable of that much awesome.

1) Sudden Death Overtime.  With 2 games yet to be played in the first round of the 2011 NHL Playoffs, we've already seen 16 periods of overtime hockey.  The NHL always plays by sudden death overtime rules, but it changes from 5 minutes of 4 on 4 to try to decide a winner before a shootout in the regular season to full 20 minute periods of 5 on 5 hockey until a winner is decided on the ice.  This gives us the most dramatic scenario in sports, where every shot can end the game, where every reflex reaction can cause either jubilation or demoralization. The stakes are raised even further when that overtime takes place in an elimination game, as we just saw in consecutive games between the Blackhawks and the Canucks.  The only thing that can raise the drama of an overtime NHL playoff game is when it's overtime for....

2) Game 7.  Other sports have series that create Game 7 scenarios.  None compare to the NHL.  The physical demands required to play hockey are significantly greater than other championship series sports.  When you combine that with familiarity with your opponent over the last 6 games, building bad blood between opponents across 6 games, and the finality of removing the safety net of the next game, you truly see the sports cliche of players giving everything they have.  Already this playoffs we've had 2 game 7s, both last night.  Tonight we get two more, between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins, and between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Two matchups rich with history with 33 Stanley Cups won between the 4 teams, with at least 1 win by each team.  Which brings us to our next point....

3) History and tradition.  No sport truly embraces its past quite like the NHL, and rightly so.  They are the only major North American sport that hands out LITERALLY the exact same trophy to the champion every year.  Each player who was on the roster of each champion has his name permanently engraved into the Stanley Cup for future generations to see.  I mean, they're actually having a "Best historical moment" tournament on their website, and honestly, I'm glad I wasn't part of the committee to decide which 64 actually made the list.  On top of that, the NHL has made "History Will Be Made" their marketing campaign for the second straight season, which has led to another pile of fantastic videos, after last year's pile of fantastic videos. 

All in all, the NHL playoffs are the best championship tournament in sports.  At the end, we will see the captain of the winning team raise the Stanley Cup as we have so many times before, and grown men will be unable to put into words what winning this championship means to them.  There is nothing like it.

Previous Feedbags:

Week 1: Sarcastic Voyage

Week 2: Kissing Suzy Kolber

Kissing Suzy Kolber is one of my favorite websites going these days.  Named for The Namath Incident, the boys at KSK take a subject overflowing with comedy like the NFL and crush it out of the park every single time.  No NFL topic or person is out of bounds for jokes at their expense. 

My favorite feature on KSK is Drew "Big Daddy Drew" Magary's weekly series titled "Fun With Peter King."  Each week, King's Monday Morning Quarterback column is subjected to The Fire Joe Morgan Treatment.  Since King insists on running regular features in his column like "Things I Think I Think This Week," and going on and on with his complaints about coffee in the various cities and hotels in America that SI pays him to travel to, the opportunities to make fun of King are plentiful.

What KSK does best is the use of slightly fictionalized versions of NFL personalities. These fictionalized conversations, usually based on actual events, are what started my interest in KSK.  One of the first things I remember reading on the site is "F--k It, I'm Throwing It Downfield," an incredibly R-rated inner monologue from at the time Chicago Bears QB Rex Grossman explaining why he refuses to check down to a wide open running back or tight end.  The regular cast of KSK characters has expanded over time to include Jerry Jones, Rex Ryan, Eli Manning, and the most foul mouthed of them all, Tommy From Quincy, a fan of the team Tommy refers to as the "Football Red Sox."

I know what you're thinking right now.  "But Brewtown, the NFL locked the players out!  How can you recommend a football blog when there's no football content?!?"  With what I've seen from the boys at KSK in the past, being entertaining throughout the lockout will be no Tribble at all.

Previous Feedbags:

Week 1: Sarcastic Voyage