After a week of nearly full-time work, this is third day out of the last four that I have not gotten out of the house. It's odd because it doesn't feel at all like the way I was in the beginning of the summer, when I just didn't do anything at all. I felt like I earned the time off, though today I spent part of that applying to paying and (ideally) more permanent work. Though while I wait to hear about my next job, I've got concerts to look forward to next week The National with Beach House (I'm more excited about that having already seen the former) and The Black Keys, though I could also possibly see Modest Mouse if the price is right. One of my good friends from school is coming to see them so I may get to hangout with him, which will be awesome. I also won free open bar on Thursday, so I'm getting fucked up!

-Mikhail

I neglected to mention this in the last post, due to its off-handedness, but I did start to work some place. I mean it's another unpaid internship, but it's something to do at least and they're actually putting me to work. I find it odd that I have to try and rationalize my choice to work for free as opposed to working in something unrelated for money or just not doing anything because I should just enjoy the time off while I can. My first six weeks at home were mostly spent watching tv and going to the bar with little money to spend and tht just made me feel like a waste of space. Now though, I'm keeping my skills sharp and just adding to my resume, which never hurts though. On the other hand, I am still looking for something paid and I have two other jobs that one of which I was really interested in since before graduation and the other just somethings cool sounding. It'll be nice though this week to get to work for money and see a concert, score.

-Mikhail

This usually isn't my venue for venting on sports in general (unless it's one of my teams fucking up miserably), but I have to make this point available in text somewhere. It's fair to say that a period of two seasons of apparent meaningless basketball may have finally come to an end with that guy making his long awaited announcement. The details are not really important and don't particular affect my point so I'll leave them out there for others to revel or agonize about.

Sports coverage has changed a lot over the years, certainly a lot in my time as a spectator of sports. ESPN once had an interesting idea, a channel that covers sports all day...everyday. I remembered when you would pretty much only see highlights of the most recent sporting events, tantalizing statistics, standings and a top ten list. Not so much these days, sports coverage (especially for the Worldwide Leader) is about analysis, chatter and speculation. While no sport violates this as much as football does (do we really need to have daily episodes of NFL Live talking about the upcoming NFL Draft when one happened days earlier?), but with the NBA summer of free agents that we're witnessing is just sad. Did you know that the Lakers won back to back titles? That's fine, ESPN forgot about that once *ahem* experienced another early playoff exit. In that same light, what about CC Sabathia having to answer question about someone not even in the same sport as he, while he's on his way to another Cy Young and another ring (hopefully).

It is sad that the actual sporting events have taken a back seat to off-the-field business like free agency, contract negotiating, drafting and of course the personal lives of athletes. While every fan of a team or athlete will always share the desire to know about what is going on in their day, it really should be up to the individual fan to seek out that information and not for a national broadcaster to be saturating our lives with athletes that they think we should care about. If only we could get back to where sports coverage was limited to just scores, great plays and being blown away by statistical anomalies as opposed to which former quarterback (also a name never to be mentioned on this blog ever again) got busted for sippin on some sizzurp or how teams will clear up cap space to land free agents that have multiple years remaining on their contracts.

-Mikhail