Χαμός στου Καράμπελα

(όπως λέμε Χαμός στο Μπρόνξ)

Alex walked in last in the unofficial reunion gathering of about ~15 people at Costa's new place. It has been 3 years since we finished college. Some people are working, others are still in graduate school, a few are doing their military service. Alex walked in last, wearing shorts and sandals. He saw several other wearing nice sleek outfits. He thought: "hmm, we are getting old here, people are dressing nice, having quiet conversations, ...". Did I mention that the house was new?

At some point Costas showed us in his brand new LCD screen some photos from their trip to Las Palmas of Canaria Islands. Apart from the astonishing last picture of "the fight of the titans", there are a lot of incidents were they just threw stuff at eachother, especially shaving foam.

Now keep in mind that one of the gifts they brought to Costas was an exact same brand of shaving foam...


Also keep in mind that some people (mostly well dressed) just left the party...



Also consider that Mihalis wanted to spice up the party...



He goes and grabs the gift shaving foam...



And starts shooting around...



The rest is history.

And now the US

The current greek baskeball team is probably the best team we ever had. Now qualified into the final 4 of the world championship, we will have to face the US. About 12 people came by my place to watch the quarterfinal game versus France, which was too easy.

And now what? None of the final 4 teams have lost in this tournament. It is a battle between the 4 group leaders. The quarterfinals showed no interest in terms of competition, as all 4 qualified teams won easily.

This is it though. We have to beat the americans, now or never.

Περί ταλέντου

(Όχι, δε θα μιλήσω για το ότι έχουμε κατεβάσει στο μουντομπάσκετ την καλύτερη ομάδα ever).

Μερικά άτομα έχουν ταλέντο στο γράψιμο. Ο Γιώργος είναι ένας από αυτούς. Ίσως το πιο απολαυστικό μπλογκ που διαβάζω. Όποτε έχω χρόνο, διαβάζω μερικά από τα ποστ του (Πηγαίνοντας προς τα πίσω χρονολογικά - τώρα είμαι Ιανουάριος 2006). Άσε που φαίνεται να είναι γαμώ τα άτομα.

Basketball is sometimes weird (aka Βάλτο αγόρι μου!)

Greece VS France, Semifinals of the 2005 european championship. Greece was down by 8 points 45 seconds before the end. Here's what happened in the last 10.




Greece VS Australia, game 3 of the first round for the 2006 world championship. Greece was down by 5 points 35 seconds before the end. Here are the last 20.



Weird Coincidence?

The Illusionist

Magic goes to Hollywood this year. There are 3 movies that deal with magicians: Woody Allen's Scoop (out already), The Prestige (out Oct 11) and The Illusionist (below).


Everything you have seen is an illusion...


The movie was excellent. It is set in 19th century Vienna, with Edward Norton giving a great performance as Eisenheim the magician, along with Paul Giamatti (who should win an oscar soon enough for his performances). I don't want to reveal information about the plot, but it mostly makes sense until the very end. I loved the photography where it looks like a worn off film from that time.

Although most of the tricks are CG, I am still wondering on whether there is some truth to them. Is this how the tricks at the time were performed? Or was did he truly possesed supernatural powers? The movie doesn't answer that clearly, but my answer would be yes.

The Prestige deals with with matter directly: 2 competing magicians, one of which seems to be using real magic rather than tricks to perform, and the other trying to figure out what happens.

The Illusionist is not an action film. It has good story, great environment, excellent characters. We don't see movies like that very often lately.

Soccer VS Basketball

The americans don't care much about soccer. There are very few dedicated soccer fields here in LA for example, and each time we want to play soccer we find it very hard to find a place and the people. More women play soccer here than men.

Despite that, all 64 games of the world cup were broadcasted live and in High Definition here by big networks: ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. ABC is completely free. It was a beauty to watch.

Americans care much more about basketball. The NBA is big, the stadiums are (still) mostly full, and franchise is huge. Then what about the FIBA World Championship that starts today in Japan? You would expect the matches to be everywhere so that all people that care can watch.

Nope! Not only they broadcast only 24 out of the 80 games, but none of them is on free tv. None of them is in high def. Why?

Is FIFA so much stronger than FIBA that they paid enough to have the networks broadcast soccer? Do they want to promote it better? If that's the case, they succeeded. This is how you show that you care about your sport. You make sure everything is broadcasted live, in high def, in free networks.

We watched the soccer world cup in 92" crystal clear picture. We will have to PAY to watch the basketball world championship in a 320x240 mpeg stream in a 17" computer monitor.

And then people ask why soccer is so much bigger than any other sport.

Airport Blog, 2

Am I lucky that I didn't book my return flights on thursday, the day the terrorist attacks were uncovered, or am I unlucky that I booked them right the next day?

I am in terminal 1 of Heathrow, the first day that the terminal opened for european and US flights of British Airways after the shutdown yesterday. It is mostly empty. Security was increased, it took us about 1 hour after we landed to get past them. A poor guy could not get the very expensive Loui Vitton purse that bought as an anivversary gift for his wife through them, so he went back to check it as luggage! Not many people though, and very few lines. I guess that people just decided not to travel after all the media coverage yesterday.

Our initial flight was cancelled, but we managed to get to the next one (thank god that Dimitri told me early enough so that we found seats)!

See you back in LA.