Barry Bonds & Babe Ruth

There will come a day when Barry Bonds leaves baseball, and everything about the game will be the better for it.

In the meantime, the more the man reveals himself, the more we know him to be the absolute fraud for which his name has become synonymous.

Only the latest example of the deceit that is Bonds occurred after he hit home run No. 714 to tie Babe Ruth for No. 2 on the all-time list. The same man who in an interview with reporters before the 2003 All-Star Game gleefully looked forward to wiping Ruth from the record books suddenly -- because it fit the purpose of trying to gain a shred of public respect -- paid homage to Ruth and his legacy.

When a reporter reminded Bonds of his 2003 comments, he claimed not to remember and, as The New York Times reported, called the words "somebody's fabrication."

The only fabrication is Bonds himself. I have a recording of that interview that day in Chicago, where there were as many as 40 reporters around him at a table in a hotel ballroom, no more than six feet away from him. Bonds spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City -- the same museum he stiffed in 2002 when, according to the Associated Press, "museum officials said they were unable, despite months of trying, to even get an acknowledgment from home run king Barry Bonds, who was voted the Oscar Charleston Award.''

Subsequent talk of Hank Aaron then turned into a question about Aaron's home run record.
Said Bonds, "The one I care about is Babe Ruth and 715.''

Asked why, Bonds replied, "As a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out. That's it. And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth is everything, right? I got his slugging percentage, his on-base percentage, his walks and I'll take his home runs. That's it. Don't talk about him no more.... I'm the next generation of the Negro leagues. Hank Aaron can have those 755 home runs.''

It is yet another window into the shallow soul of Bonds that he thinks he could disrespect Ruth in front of the national media at a showcase baseball event, have it be widely and repeatedly reported, and then only three years later claim it was a "fabrication." Just like he never knew those were steroids he put into his body. He and his records are truly unbelievable.

X Men 3

WOO HOO!!!!

My office just handed out free passes to an advanced screening of X Men 3 for this Thursday night at the brand new AMC Northpark!! Can you say "SCORE!!!!!!"

I guess I'll be seeing it twice now since I was already planning on seeing it with my buddy Jeff on Friday anyway.

Another (yes another) new cell phone

A couple weeks ago I had picked up a new phone and blogged about it. After having the Samsung T-509 for a week, there were too many quirks that I just could not get over (like not being able to hear it ring...that's pretty important).

Soooo... I took it back and exchanged it for a Nokia 6103. A week after having this phone, the screen started acting up and would blank out on me, plus the camera would not launch properly.

So... my Nokia was acting up while I was at the mall in Grapevine, and the T-Mobile store was inside. I decided to see what they could do. I ended up walking out with this baby, the Samsung T-809, which is their top of the line phone currently. I am amazed at this thing. The "wow" factor of it's design and screen is staggering. I feel like I'm looking at a flat screen TV instead of a cell phone.

So far, everything about it has been top notch. I'll be using this one for a long while. It'll take a some getting used to the slider form. I'm loving the MP3 player and 65 MB of internal memory, not to mention the 1GB memory card that comes with it.

Ben & Jerry's

So I went to Wal-Mart on Monday night...something I do not usually do! (I love the variety at Wal-Mart...but it seems there is only one or two lines that are open every time I go...maybe that's God working on my patience!). BUT--this trip turned out to be an amazing blessing because...For the first time in my life I bought some Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

I am a self confessed ice cream snob...and have said on this blog that I am usually a Bluebell man...BUT as I walked down the ice cream aisle in Wally World, the Ben & Jerry's got my attention. So I looked at it & decided to buy it...it's called "Half Baked."

So I've got this pint of ice cream and on Tuesday afternoon I decided to eat it--BUT before I did I snuck a glance at the nutritional information. BAD IDEA! Obviously Ben and Jerry have no regards for health--but after tasting the ice cream I feel that I am ok with that!!!

This was a new experience for me--and I LOVED IT! I got out of my ice cream rut & pushed the edge!!! That's the way we need to live life--push the edge, try something new!!! And let it go beyond ice cream--take it into your walk with God, your marriage, your workplace--ANYTHING! One of the things that is a shame when it comes to us human beings is that we allow ourselves to fall into boring and predictable lifestyles--we are creatures of habit and we resist change...but God wants us to be creative!!!

If I only had a brain

Looks as if this guy could use a brain too...

The Best Advice I Ever Got

A friend of mine asked me this afternoon, "what's the best advice you've ever received?"

I have to admit it was really hard to narrow it down to one. I thought about one of my professors in college who said something I'll never forget: catch people doing things right. I thought about Clark Griswold's advice in Christmas Vacation: do it right and do it big. I thought about my favorite philosopher, Jack Handy (from Saturday Night Live), who said: if you drop your keys in a river of molten lava let 'em go man 'cause they're gone. And I thought about quoting Qui Gon Jinn (from Star Wars) who said, "Your focus determines your reality."

I've gotten lots of great advice over the years, but the most unique was a life-changing bottle cap. I was drinking a Nantucket Nectar one day and the saying on the bottle cap became a personal mantra: if everyday was a good day there would be no good days.

Not bad for a bottle cap! All of us want every day to be a good day, but if every day was a good day there would be no good days because there wouldn't be any bad days with which to compare the good days to. It's the bad days that help us appreciate the good days! Sickness helps us appreciate health. Failure helps us appreciate success. Debt helps us appreciate wealth. And the tough times help us appreciate the good times.

God can even turn our worst day into our best day.

Here is what I know for sure: God is in the recycling business. He takes our pain and uses it for someone else's gain. That is precisely what Christ did on the cross.

So whether you're having a good day or a bad day, remind yourself that God is God and God is good.

New phone

I just picked this up yesterday. The new Samsung T509. It has got to be the sleekest looking phone I have ever seen. It is currently the thinnest phone on the market (according to all of the reviews I've read).

The display screen is what really impresses me. I've never seen anything this crisp and clear on a phone before.