Joe Mills - Favorites

Fantasy Baseball

November 11, 2007 By joemills Leave a Comment

I guess it is not unusual for a 31-year-old male to like fantasy baseball, but let me explain. First, I think most people who play fantasy sports probably enjoy football the best, but I think there is just too much luck involved. What happens week to week is, in some ways, completely uncontrollable. I’ve been playing for 7 years now, and it is always the same.

Now, fantasy baseball, specifically rotisserie, requires much more skill. You need to be more adept at picking the best players because you will have their statistics for the entire year…none of this week to wins and losses. If you pick the best group of players, you are more likely to be at the top at the end of the season. I firmly believe this. Yes, injuries and down years can be a killer, but more often than not, your wise player selection will shine through.

The other reason fantasy baseball rules is the statistics. Baseball is a statistical sport much more than fantasy football. If I ask you to list off the statistics needed to make a baseball player “good”, I think you can do it. While football does have some yearly milestones, I think “good” is such a week to week thing that it is hard to pin that down. Plus, football players are judged a lot by their intangibles than their overall statistics. Baseball is made for fantasy sports…I only wish April was closer.

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In-N-Out Burger

October 31, 2007 By joemills 1 Comment

On this day when kids are getting their favorite junk food put in a bag for them, I’m thinking about one of my favorite junk foods. On Friday, I’m going to Los Angeles for the weekend, and I can’t wait to get an In-N-Out Burger. I was introduced to In-N-Out burgers while in Las Vegas a couple years ago, and they are one of the best things about the West Coast. I mean…you can get a great burger in Chicago as well, but there is something special about an In-N-Out burger. I think one of the cool things about going there is that they have a limited menu and they stick to it. The fries are hand cut and fried which is the best way to do it in my opinion. Plus, they have all of those secret codes you can ask for at the register. I don’t forget to say “Well Done” when ordering my fries. My mouth is watering already…

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The Wire

October 24, 2007 By joemills 1 Comment

So, I got into this show VERY late, but I might not have gotten into it at all. Above is the promo for the fifth season of The Wire. It is slowly growing into one of my favorite television shows ever. Let me break it down:

It is a true serial series. As enjoyable as it can be to sit down and watch an episode of CSI, SVU, or CI, there is something about a serial series. I can’t speak about 24, but even though Lost has this over arching theme for the whole series/season, it still packages each episode which you could technically watch individually. The Wire doesn’t have any of that. There is a theme for each season, but you really need to watch from beginning to the end. No show-to-show stories…watch the season or you won’t get it. I like that.
Crazy amounts of characters that have personalities immediately. I kid you not…in just the first 5 episodes, there must be at least 30 to 40 regulars. Plus, they all aren’t just caricatures of some cliched character…they seem whole right away like you can relate to them. The actors really nail everything.
In relation to the above, even though nothing earth shattering happens every episode, it is interesting as hell. The dialog is on point. It adds interest through its mutliple characters and scene changes. You really have to keep up. It is almost like you take a really good, dialog heavy movie and just chop it up.
It’s really like no other show I’ve watched. Even though it seems on the outside to be a cop show, it bares no resemblance to any other show on television…ever. The fact this thing got greenlit…even on HBO or any other cable channel….is amazing.

I have actually found it difficult to watch other television shows because The Wire does things so differently, everything else just seems to pale in comparison. I hate to call it “the thinking man’s show” but in this day and age of easily consumable entertainment, The Wire is anti-TV.