Introducing Mr. Gomi

I'm pretty excited for UFC Fight Night tonight. I actually haven't been keeping up with MMA much lately, but I should be able to catch this one.

One of the main reasons I'm looking forward to tonight's card on Spike is because the main event features the debut of The Fireball Kid, Takanori Gomi. I'll wait while you watch some highlights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJzKhhT8ww0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9OX2IUdDTI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a51VjFdm2uw

A veteran of the sport, Gomi was considered one of the best, if not the #1, lightweight fighters in the world in his days fighting with PRIDE, especially since the UFC didn't have a lightweight division for many years. He ran that division for years, and it was even rumored that their lightweight cutoff was 160 lb just so that he could make it (which isn't entirely true since he made the cut to 155 for his UFC debut). Eventually, he won PRIDE's first lightweight tournament to become their first (and only) lightweight champion, defeating a tough slate of fighters to get there.

Strangely, since his victory over Mach Sakurai for the belt, he's been inconsistent with a couple poor showings against Marcus Aurelio and other losses to fighters who really shouldn't be on his level. Maybe he was bored or uninterested or perhaps his skills just fell off. He chalked it up to laziness, so hopefully that was all it was.

He's going to need to be motivated and ready to bring it tonight against Kenny Florian however. Florian is a solid all-around mixed martial artist who is good in all phases. The Gomi of old, the one with dynamic wrestling and explosive striking skills, should be a slight favorite over Florian. But it's hard to know if that guy is going to show up. One thing I know about Kenny Florian, he always, always shows up to fight and is ready to go to war. I don't know if Gomi will be equally prepared, but if he is, this fight should be a fast-paced, exciting bout.

I've got a bad feeling about this

I might have actually talked about this in a blog post in a past lifetime because it is one of the grammatical things that bothers me the most. When I hear/see this error, it makes me cringe a little on the inside.

Anyway, I thought about this mistake because I heard it several times over the past week, notably in class and from the Georgetown coach after their first round loss to Ohio.

Let's set the stage by talking about your friend and mine, the adverb. Adverbs are used to modify verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Often, they end in -ly (e.g. gladly, powerfully, loudly) but don't always have to (e.g. well, quite, always). Related is the adjective which modifies nouns and pronouns. I'm sure you all are familiar with many, many adjectives (e.g. big, red, many, inglorious). You also probably know that you can't modify verbs with adjectives. For example, you wouldn't say that you slept quiet or quick ran, you'd say you slept quietly and quickly ran.

So we come to this mistake that's somewhat common, especially among people who are really trying to use proper grammar but can't quite get there. We come to the mistake of "feeling badly." People "feel badly" often, such as when they do something wrong, hurt someone, hear of someone else's plight, and other such situations.

Unfortunately, unless their sensory abilities have been damaged somehow, they'd be wrong. For simplicity, we'll just talk about two kinds of verbs. First is the action verb which we're most familiar with. To hit, to play, to steal. Basically when a subject is doing something, an action verb is used. These are modified with adverbs. To hit continually, to play tirelessly, to steal quietly.

Next are linking verbs. These are basically forms of "to be" and "seem." Am, became, and, of course, feel. As state of being verbs, these don't take adverbs, but instead predicate nouns or predicate adjectives. I am a Sun Devil. He became an alien. You feel bad.

Really it's not that difficult. I think some people just try to sound too sophisticated. Perhaps they think if it sounds like it's wrong, it must be right. Hey, it's got an -ly so it's got to work right? Sadly, this just isn't the case. For people who don't know the rule, it just sounds weird. For those of us who do, it just lets us know that they are trying too hard to sound smart.

Is this post boring? Snobby, useless, uninformative? Probably, yes, yes, and I hope not. Still, I felt like I had to say something. I don't think perfect grammar is all that important as communication is clear. But one of the things that annoys me the most is when people try to sound smart when it's clear that they don't know what they're talking about. This is a pretty mild example, but still.

Don't be that guy.

Dumbness at the Airport

The guy I ended up sitting next to on the flight back to Orange County from Phoenix was pretty amusing. He just seemed so...dumb, I guess. I don't really know how else to put it.

- The dude was complaining about how hot it was in the plane and in Phoenix. Sure it was a little warm in there, but I'm sure his long-sleeve flannel shirt wasn't helping any.
- He struck up a conversation with the guy on his other side, apparently some basketball coach from St. Louis looking to recruit. This was my favorite part. In the midst of the conversation, he mentions that he's only been out of state a few times (he's from Vegas) and California was one of the places he's been. In fact, he mentions that he's going to California right now, which was shocking given that we were on a airplane headed to Santa Ana. He then asked the coach if he was headed back to St. Louis. As we were on an airplane headed to Santa Ana. Needless to say, the coach was also headed to California. Shocker.
- Not something dumb, just something annoying. This guy dominated the armrests. As in his elbow was jabbing into my side the entire flight until I decided to lean against the window because I don't like elbows in the ribs.
- The guy talked about how stupid his friends were for doing drugs. He also said that he was into philosophy. And he also said he loved smoking and drinking. He also mentioned he was 19.
- He kept talking about how much he liked girls. Coach was maybe late 20s early 30s, you think this guy would know that the coach probably wasn't too interested. When he mentioned how hot the women in Orange County were, the coach simply said he probably wasn't going to get any because he was engaged. This guy's response, verbatim: "Engaged? S#!t, that sucks man!" ...really?
- He then tried to explain how much he loved black girls to the dark-skinned basketball coach, of course first clarifying that he wasn't trying to suck up or anything. He kept talking about how bad he was at relationships. Again, shocker.

At some point is it a choice to act and talk like this? To drop f-bombs and talk about drugs and women in a conversation with someone you just met? Is it stupidity or a lack of tact or just not having developed social discussion skills? I have no idea.

Transplanted

So I can't keep up with one a day. My memory is too stupid to figure that out. Anyway.

So Saturday was Senior Day for the ASU basketball team. We had three seniors which were honored but I only want to talk about one of them.

That would be point guard Derek Glasser. I've never really liked him. He seems cocky and whiny on the court and just has a really annoying aura about him.

So basically what I'm trying to say is I feel like he would have been perfect at Duke. He's an alright college player who will never make it in the pros. He seems really annoying and he's easy to root against. And most importantly, he's white. It's a perfect fit as far s I'm concerned.

The Mediocrlympics

Anyone else thinks the Olympics celebrates mediocrity a little too much?

Don't get me wrong. It's an incredible honor just to compete in the Olympic games and represent your country in that way.

But on the other hand, it's also an honor to compete in the NBA, the NHL, the Premiere League and other such professional organizations. But it's only in the Olympics that coming in second or even third is such a huge deal.

Think about this. The American media has been making a big deal of how the US won a record 37 medals in Vancouver. But most neglect to mention that Vancouver also handed out the most total medals, not to mention that out of those 37, only 9 were gold. Germany and Canada both outdid the USA with 10 and 14 gold medals respectively.

I'm sure some competitors are just happy to be there. But ultimately, isn't the Olympics a sporting competition? And don't all real competitors compete to win, to finish in first so you can say that you are in fact the best?

Apollo Ohno's won seven medals. That's great...until you consider that only two of them were golds.

I guess what it comes down to is what you value more: being good or being great.

The Wack-10

With the Pac-10 men's basketball season coming to a close, it's sort of depressing how far the conference has fallen. We were so good last year, yet so incredibly lackluster this year.

I admit I haven't really been following it much, and I won't pretend it's not because of the subpar play overall.

But I guess it's to be expected with so many guys going to the NBA and it's nice to see most of them getting playing time and making contributions throughout the year. As hyped as rookies like Tyreke Evans and Stephen Curry are (for good reason of course), let's not forget the Pac-10 pumped out James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, Taj Gibson, Jrue Holliday, Darren Collison, Jeff Pendergraph and probably a couple guys I'm forgetting.

But as nice as it is to see those guys succeed, their loss has nearly crippled the conference. Oh well, there's always next year...

A nice treat

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Report: Tiger at home, getting into golf shape

Story

That was a headline I saw on ESPN.com's frontpage recently.

I know I've said what I thought about the whole Tiger thing but this blurb was amusing to me for a couple reasons.

The first is that it talks about Tiger coming out of therapy like it's some big deal and he's going to have to make a significant adjustment back to his normal routine or whatever. That may be the case, but I'm guessing it would have more to do with the fact that he cheated on his wife than his return from therapy.

Let's not forget he didn't go get counseling for substance abuse or mental problems. The guy went to get help because he likes to have sex. A lot. Supposedly to an extent that is more than what would be normal or expected. In any case, it's very different than someone coming home after receiving therapy for chronic alcoholism or suicidal thoughts or something. So there was that.

The second thing I found amusing was the part in the headline that mentioned him getting back into "golf shape." Of course pro golfers in general are very skilled and work very hard to hone their game, so I'm not trying to rag on them at all. But it was just funny to me because not too long ago, this is what one version of "golf shape" looked like:

My new vice

http://www.dreyersinc.com/partnering/f/flavor.asp?b=104&f=2655

Dreyer's Grand Nestle Toll House Cookie Swirl.

It's just so amazingly smooth and tasty. And it all goes to the hips. Or something.