More Like Blue Hot or Even Red

At the end of The Perfect Storm, facing certain death, Bobby, tries to convince Capt. Tyne to swim out of the fishing boat in hopes of surviving. Initially, it seems that Tyne agrees but when Bobby presumably takes his last breath in hopes and goes underwater, Tyne stays in the sinking vessel. The Captain always goes down with the ship. It’s the honorable and loyal thing to do.

Although the Heat players will play to the end, I’m not so sure about their fans. If the Heat is the Titanic, the fans are Leo and Kate, and that’s being generous. At least Kate went back for Leo. By now, Heat fans are denouncing their team as fast as Republicans denounce gay marriage.

This is drastically different than 10 days ago when after dispatching the Pistons, people were brimming with confidence saying the Heat would take out the Mavs. But why should anyone be surprised? I’ve attended 3 Pistons-Heat games down here in the last year and a half and my experience is a microcosm of the attitude here. During the course of the two and half hours it takes for an NBA contest to unfold, I was heckled when the Heat were up (it didn’t matter the score was 18-12), left alone when they were losing or when the Pistons made a run. If the Heat were losing with a couple minutes to go, the fans were heading home. If they were up with a couple minutes to go, they were heading home. I can’t really blame them…the traffic down here is intolerable.

My point is this: The hoops scene here is like any other scene down here. People gravitate to what’s hot, popular, or trendy. During the regular season when the Heat was struggling, fans would regularly dump on the team saying it would never beat Detroit. Games were never sold out. This town is full of front runners and bandwagon jumpers, the worst kind of fans there are. And what’s worse, they know it and don’t deny it. People who would regularly harass me about the Pistons losing now won’t even mention the NBA Finals. It’s quite amusing. In fact, I couldn’t be happier. Normally, after the Pistons are eliminated, I don’t really care who wins the Larry O’ Brien Trophy. This year, I do. I would rather see a team that had die hard fans and a passionate owner win over a team that is made up of players trolling for rings subject to a fan base that’s more fickle than a 12 year old girl.

Maybe Bill Simmons was right. Maybe Dallas is not going to win because they are deeper, younger, or even quicker. Maybe they are going to win because Miami has such bad hoops karma. So here are a few words of advice: Don’t tell me that the Triple A is hotter than Staples when LA won 3 straight. Don’t tell me your franchise is better than Detroit’s when you’ve won a grand total of ZERO championships. Don’t tell me that you were a Heat fan “back in the day.” But most importantly, if you want the Basketball Gods to look down upon you favorably, go down with the ship, go down with the ship.

To Receive Commission, You Need to Sell Things

I'm currently in the process of looking for a new place in "The City Where the Heat is On," no basketball related pun intended. The Editor and I have decided to move in together for our last year of law school. But that's not what this post is about. Its about the lack of courtesy people in this city have. My reaction to this has slowly gone from I'm-gonna-kill-him anger to apathy to sheer disbelief. "Uhrugh" as by favorite canine dectective would say (that's Scooby Doo for all those who couldn't make that out...I'm sure its partially my fault because I can't translate the sound to a coherent spelling of it.

Anyway, we have been looking for a new place now for about a month and have had no luck. It doesn't help that we are both poor law students, which limits the properties we can see, but I have never had such horrible experiences with realtors before.

We current were working with a realtor who said he'd be happy to help and has done everything but that. He was supposed to call me to set up a time to show us some places on Saturday. He didn't. When I called to see what's up, he gave me a "dog-ate-my-homework" excuse and asked if we could reschedule for today, Sunday. I called him this morning per his request and he asked if I had sent him an email with the MLS numbers for the places we wanted to see. I had, like he had asked...ON WEDNESDAY. He obviously hadn't looked at my email or gathered the keys or done anything what he was supposed to have done. Then he said he'd be able to meet at 3:30 and when I told him I couldn't, he said he might be able to meet me at noon but to give him 15 minutes to see if it was possible. He did call me, only to tell me to give him 45 more minutes to get the keys and all that bullshit. This was at 10:38 according to my cellphone. At 12:38, I still hadn't received a call back.

Now, am I wrong, but isn't it that a realtor earns money by showing properties? Don't they work on commission? So it would make sense to show a place to people who want to rent so that they can get paid. But apparently this isn't a high priority with this realtor. Who knows, maybe he's so well off that I'm not worth his time. But it would be curteous to tell me that I'm not worth his time cause I'm just a broke law student. I've dealt with girls that played less games than this guy.

This isn't the only problem I've had finding an apartment. As a second avenue, I've gone the CraigsList route. But that hasn't been effective either. People leave their phone numbers on the ads saying to call, but when you do and leave a message, they don't call back...or they do like 3 weeks later. This has happened to me multiple times. Look, I'm not dumb, I know how it works. Sometimes places get rented but have the deceny to return messages.

I hope that the realtor loses his license (the Editor is telling the U to specifically inform incoming students not to work with this realtor). I hope the CraigsList people get stuck with their places and have to eat the rent. I hope all of them go bankrupt and then have to live in a cardboard box a la Mortimer and Randolph.

New Directions

MGoBlog has its Blog Ethics. Paradigm Blog has its persona. MZone has its zany wackiness. Starting today, I'm changing my blog's persona. It will include the normal gripes about Michigan Athletics and Detroit Sports, but its also going to take on a more personal feel. I have written in the past about my experiences in Miami, but starting today, I'm going to write more about those experiences. This WILL NOT be an online journal, but more of a place where people get my opinions on a range of topics. And with that, here is my first post in this "new" format.