By Rick Morris
At long last, Lounge Lizards, we’ve broken the seal on The FDH Lounge YouTube channel! As we go along, we’ll be uploading classic segments from the history of our program (Tuesdays, 7-9 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) and when we do, we’ll embed them here.
Up next: a man who’s broadcast a lot of big baseball games, Chip Caray.
By Rick Morris
For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week’s newsletter.
By Rick Morris
At long last, Lounge Lizards, we’ve broken the seal on The FDH Lounge YouTube channel! As we go along, we’ll be uploading classic segments from the history of our program (Tuesdays, 7-9 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) and when we do, we’ll embed them here.
Up next: the one and only Dominic Chianese, “Uncle Junior” from the Sopranos.
By Rick Morris
NOTE: Rankings for start of June in parentheses.
TOP TIER
1 Philadelphia (1)
2 Boston (6)
3 Milwaukee (11)
4 Atlanta (8)
5 St. Louis (2)
6 Detroit (15)
7 San Francisco (9)
8 Arizona (7)
9 New York Yankees (5)
10 Texas (10)
11 Tampa Bay (12)
12 Cleveland (4)
13 Cincinnati (16)
SECOND TIER
14 Seattle (17)
15 Chicago White Sox (23)
16 Los Angeles Angels (14)
17 Florida (3)
18 Toronto (13)
19 New York Mets (20)
20 Pittsburgh (21)
21 Colorado (19)
22 Los Angeles Dodgers (22)
23 Washington (28)
24 Baltimore (24)
25 San Diego (25)
26 Kansas City (27)
27 Oakland (18)
28 Minnesota (30)
29 Chicago Cubs (26)
30 Houston (29)
BIGGEST RISERS: Detroit (9 spots), Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee (8 spots), Washington (5 spots), Atlanta and Boston (4 spots), Cincinnati and Seattle (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: Florida (14 spots), Oakland (9 spots), Cleveland (8 spots), Toronto (5 spots), New York Yankees (4 spots), Chicago Cubs and St. Louis (3 spots)
RANKINGS BY DIVISION – 1 POINT PER RANKING SPOT FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL TEAM, DIVIDED BY THE NUMBER OF TEAMS IN THE DIVISION, LOWEST SCORE IS BEST
1T AL East (12.8)
1T NL East (12.8)
3 NL West (16.6)
4 NL Central (16.67)
5 AL West (16.75)
6 AL Central (17.4)
RANKINGS BY LEAGUE
1 NL (46.07)
2 AL (46.95)
By Rick Morris
For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week’s newsletter.
By Rick Morris
THE FDH LOUNGE (Tuesdays, 7-9 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) celebrates its 150th episode in the truest fashion possible: with one super-compelling centerpiece guest surrounded by the greatest cast in the world: The FDH Lounge Dignitaries.
We break format to skip through Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries and This Week in The FDH Lounge (also, we’ll resume next episode with THE FANTASYDRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER in its usual spot of 8:45 PM EDT) to get into tonight’s setup. For each of our Dignitaries, it’s this simple: in an area of great interest for them, they’ve been asked to discuss what they feel is the most noteworthy story or area of interest since our program’s debut on January 14, 2007. These “micro-segments” showcase the wide extent of our content as well as the depth of our talent pool. Here’s how we roll for #150:
FIRST HALF HOUR
^ TV and Technology: FDH Lounge Dignitary Simon Applebaum (Tomorrow will Be Televised)
^ Sports Ethics: FDH Lounge Dignitary Steve Kallas (Sports Plus/Kallas Remarks)
^ Pro Wrestling: FDH Lounge Dignitary Kyle Ross
SECOND HALF HOUR
^ Politics/Geopolitics/Economy: FDH Lounge Dignitaries Chris Galloway and Nate Noy
^ Baseball: FDH Lounge Dignitaries Tim Foust and Ken Detwiler
THIRD HALF HOUR
^ Centerpiece guest, comedian Gilbert Gottfried
^ Football: FDH Senior Editor and FDH Lounge Dignitary Jason Jones
FOURTH HALF HOUR
^ Hoops: FDH Lounge Dignitary Sean Trench
^ MMA: FDH Lounge Dignitary Jake Digman
^ Hockey: FDH Lounge Dignitary Russ Cohen (Sportsology and Card Corner Club)
As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us on iTunes.
By Samantha Jones (posted by Rick Morris)
I look forward to any MTV awards. Or at least I used to. I may just be getting old, but boy, have things REALLY changed at MTV. Granted, I can't remember the last time I saw an actual music video on that channel, but I can feel how old I am just by watching five minutes of any show.
Hosted by Jason Sudeikis, the MTV Movie Awards were not a COMPLETE disappointment. He is one of my favorite cast memebers of Saturday Night Live. He's got a dry wit and delivery that I just love. It's just sad that he was the only thing funny about the whole night, and that includes Chelsea Handler, whom I usually love. The writing was just crap.
In typical MTV fashion, the pre-produced open included a cameo from Taylor Lautner, who is actually pretty funny. They did a spoof on The Hangover 2 (which I did see, and no, I did not like it - the only saving grace for that movie was the repeated appearance of Bradley Cooper's chest), which was predictable. Of course, he loses Taylor, and walks through different movies looking for him. Jason made the most of the bad writing, though, and I actually did laugh a couple of times.
Once our host got onstage, it started to slide downhill. Despite a valiant effort, the monologue was peppered with bad Arnold Swartzenegger jokes. I'm going to chalk that all up to horrible writing on MTV's part, and I'm not going to fault Mr. Sudekis for it.
On to the first award, Best Male Performance which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis presented:
-Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network (I still do not understand the hype over this movie. The performances may have been good, but I was bored out of my mind.)
-Robert Pattinson for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Ugh. Him again.)
-Daniel Radcliffe for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (YES. Good pick.)
-Zac Efrom for Charlie St. Cloud (I didn't even bother to see that movie to save myself two hours of boredom)
-Taylor Lautner for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Better than Robert Pattinson, but still...meh)
Winner: Robert Pattinson
Obviously, twelve year old girls were the only people to vote. I don't think he's that great of an actor, and he's just awkward in real life. Daniel Radcliffe would have been my pick. Harry Potter as a character is growing, and Daniel Radcliffe is making the most of it. We've reached a point in his story where he's angry and is going to do something about it, and I am LOVING every minute of it. I cannot wait for Part 2.
Next, J.J. Abrams, Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney and Steven Spielberg came out to show us a small preview of the movie Super 8. No, it's not about the hotel chain, but judging from the preview I've seen before EVERY single movie this summer, it may have been more interesting that way. I'd still like to see it in hopes that I'll be proved wrong. I love me some Spielberg, and with J.J. Abrams, there's going to be all kinds of good explosions.
Award time! Best Villian, presented by the cast of Crazy Stupid Love - Steve Carell, Emma Stone and Ryan Gossling. Steve Carell is still hilarious, by the way.
-Leighton Meester for The Roommate (Who?)
-Christoph Waltz for The Green Hornet (I still haven't seen this and it makes me angry)
-Ned Beaty for Toy Story 3 (How can you NOT love those movies? If you didn't like any of the Toy Story movies, you are a soulless robot.)
-Tom Felton for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (He did okay, but I've always considered Draco Malfoy a weak villian.)
-Mickey Rourke for Iron Man 2 (THIS DUDE WILL KILL YOU.)
Winner: Tom Felton
Again, the teeny-bopper pick. But, he's a decent actor, so I wasn't too angry. Not sure who I'd pick for this one, but I'm leaning towards Mickey Rourke, just because comic book villians are always cooler. And P.S., I love Emma Stone.
Cut to Jim Carrey wearing a suit that in his words is "the cutting edge in Chromakey technology,” where they put up clips of bubbles, fire, but mostly, two English bulldogs humping. Classy. But, he was introducing the Foo Fighters who played their new single "Walk". Hooray for new Foo! Dave Grohl is one of my favorite rock stars. He's a drummer, singer, guitar player, can scream pretty well when he wants to, and writes quality music. Well played, sir.
Ok, how old is Sway (the VJ with the dreadlocks always hidden under a huge knitted hat of some sort)? I remember watching him on MTV when I was a kid.
Back from commerical, Captain America (also currently known as Chris Evans) graces the stage to remind us to vote for Best Movie. Screw that, I want to see Captain America already!
Next award presented by the cast from 30 Minutes or Less (Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari, and Nick Swardson...these guys were just awkward), Best Jaw Dropping Moment.
-Natalie Portman for Black Swan where she pulls the skin off of her finger (Eeeeew!).
-Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio for that awesome scene where he's teaching her how to bend reality in Inception. (Ellen Page should get every award, no matter what. She's amazing.)
-Justin Bieber for ....I don't know what in his concert DVD Never Say Never (WHY IS THIS NOMINATED? I couldn't see anything interesting enough to deserve this award in the clip they showed)
-James Franco for cutting his arm off in 127 Hours. (Again, eeeeeew, but awesome.)
-Steve-O for the Port-o-Potty slingshot in Jackass 3D. (It does not get more gross than this.)
Winner: Justin Bieber
WHAT? Over people tearing off body parts and bending reality? WHAT THE HELL. This pick hurts me.
Back from the commerical again, Jason Sudeikis talks to a guy in a rubber suit that's supposed to be the rock from 127 Hours. Shame on you, MTV. This was REALLY not funny, and I'm appalled you made Mr. Sudekis do something so poorly written...but then again, SNL hasn't been all that great lately, so he's probably used to it.
Oo! Another sneak peek! This time, brought onstage with some pyro (which was a nice surprise) Shia LeBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel (or as my Jason says "Da-hu-ma-mu-ma-mel"), and Patrick Dempsey bring us a clip from Transformers: Dark of the Moon and present the award for Best Fight.
-Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe vs. the Death Eaters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. (It's always a good fight when magic is involved.)
-Joseph Gordon-Levitt vs. Hallway Attacker in Inception (This was just a cool concept, and it was VERY well choreographed.)
-Amy Adams vs. the Sisters in The Fighter. (Hot girl on girl face punching action!)
-Bryce Dallas Howard and Xavier Samuel vs. Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. (Sigh...of course! How can we have a category without this movie?! Insert eyeroll here.)
-Mark Strong vs. Chloe Grace Moretz in KickAss (She's pretty good for a kid. The movie was kind of meh, but she was all right. She kicked a good amount of ass.)
Winner: (duh) The Twilight people.
Now I'm really getting pissed. Children, I'm going to let you in on something. Just because you think the guys in a movie are hot, it does NOT mean it has to win EVERY award. Inception should have won for this one, just for the choreography. The execution was excellent.
Jason Sudeikis treats us to some of his music stylings with some theme songs to the different movies out this year. This was funny, and instead of sitting through the entire awards show, I recommend watching it on YouTube. Emma Stone and Dave Grohl make appearances as well.
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively (Green Lantern! Yes!) present the award for Best Kiss. I'm sure there is going to be some big to-do on the internet over laser boners, so I'd recommend YouTubing this part as well. Ryan Reynolds had some pretty funny lines.
-Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (....This gives me a headache...at least it's not her and Robert Pattinson again...)
-Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Black Swan (Girl on girl...of course the guys love it, but it was actually pretty hot.)
-Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (It's the part where Ron Weasley is watching some sort of hallucination type situation. It's weird, but it looked cool.)
-Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception. (Let me just say, that Mr. Gordon- Levitt has come a long way from 3rd Rock from the Sun.)
-Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Thought you could get away from it, didn't you! Ha! You were wrong!)
Winner: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson
I shouldn't even have to comment at this point. You know my frustration, anything but Twilight should have won, we can move on now. The only good thing about them winning was that after a very awkward exchange with Kristen, Robert Pattinson ran off the stage, and planted a big wet one on Taylor Lautner. We all knew Edward and Jacob would do it someday. This was the day.
Emma Watson - looking fabulous with her new short hair - gave us a sneak peak of the last Harry Potter movie. Three words - I can't wait.
They presented Reese Witherspoon with the MTV Generations award. I'm glad I didn't fast forward through the entire thing when I watched it again to write this. During his ad-libbing section, Robert Pattinson dropped an F-bomb that the censor didn't catch in time. Hooray for live TV! Have fun with your FCC fine!
Next, a pre-produced spot "A Message from Fast Five" with Tyrese Gibson and Jason Sudeikis in a horribly (on purpose?) done skull cap about texting while illegal street racing. This is hilarious. Watch this on YouTube.
The next award is presented by Jason Segal and Cameron Diaz - Best Line From A Movie. I'm excited about this one. Twilight never has any good lines.
-Justin Timberlake in The Social Network - "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars."
-Alexys Nycole Sanchez (shame on her parents for spelling her name in such a fashion) in Grown Ups - "I wanna get chocolate wasted!"
-Amanda Bynes and Emma Stone in Easy A - (Amanda) "There's a higher power that will judge you for your indecency." (Emma) "Tom Cruise?"
-Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network - "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."
-Tom Hardy in Inception - "Don't be afraid to dream of a bigger gun." (Or at least that's what I think he said...He mumbles and has an accent.)
Winner: Alexys Nycole Sanchez
Ok, she's cute, I'll give her that. But, Aaron Sorkin wrote the Facebook movie, so that alone should have made ONE of them win.
Nikki Minaj and Ashton Kutcher present for Best Female Performance.
-Emma Stone for Easy A
-Emma Watson for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (It's the year of the Emmas, and that's a good thing.)
-Jennifer Aniston for Just Go With It
-Kristen Stewart for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
-Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Winner: (Despite someone yelling very clearly "Emma Stone!") Kristen Stewart
SHE IS NOT A GOOD ACTRESS! THE ONLY EMOTION SHE CAN DO IS AWKWARDNESS! AND THAT'S NOT EVEN AN EMOTION! SHE CAN'T EVEN GET THAT RIGHT! People, please. Was Twilight the only movie you saw this past year? Natalie Portman was the clear winner here, but no. Gotta vote for the crappy vampire movie. I don't think I'd be as mad if the crappy vampire movie wasn't so crappy, but it is, and I'm angry.
At this point, I'm so ticked off about Twilight pretty much sweeping, that I fast forward to the next award. All I missed was a performance by Lupe Fiasco featuringTrey Songz, but it's okay because I don't like their music, anyway.
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis save us from the debacle that is this show by presenting Best Comedic Performance.
-Zach Galifianakis for Due Date
-Emma Stone for Easy A
-Ashton Kutcher for No Strings Attatched (Has anyone else noticed how many movies there are about friends with benefits? Strange trend in movies...)
-Adam Sandler for Just Go With It
-Russell Brand for Get Him To The Greek
Winner: Emma Stone
Emma Stone is very good. But up against Russell Brand as Aldus Snow? There's no comparison. Way to get it wrong again, MTV.
The Twilight kids come out and preview the next movie. Snore. I'll probably still go see it, though. I like to torture myself every once in a while. At least they make the wolves look badass. Wait...they're seriously splitting Breaking Dawn into two movies? These people are shameless.
We finally get to the award for Best Movie, presented by Gary Busey in a giant hamster ball. Wow, MTV. You've offically gone bonkers. Even Peter Facinelli looked confused when they cut to the audience.
-Inception
-The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Apparently they misunderstood the word "best.”)
-Black Swan
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
-The Social Network
Winner: Twilight
I cannot even begin to describe to you how angry this made me. To quote Jason Jones, FDH Dignitary "This is a case study in why people shouldn't be allowed to vote for everything." I cannot believe that this won out over, well ANY of the other movies.
In summation, I'm offically convinced that my time watching any MTV Awards has past. I am too old, and kids these days think crap movies are good. They vote with their raging hormones, not with actual opinions. So if nothing, take this from my review. Teenagers like stupid movies, Jason Sudeikis is funny as hell and twenty-eight is ancient in MTV years.
By Rick Morris
Now that The FDH Lounge YouTube channel is open for bidness, we’ll be bringing our videos over here as well once they’re posted. Although we will be incorporating other features there as well, right now we’re posting clips from our program THE FDH LOUNGE (Tuesdays, 7-9 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com). Today, we bring your our chat from April 12, 2011 with “the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be,” Bret “Hitman” Hart.
By Rick Morris
At long last, Lounge Lizards, we’ve broken the seal on The FDH Lounge YouTube channel! As we go along, we’ll be uploading classic segments from the history of our program (Tuesdays, 7-9 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) and when we do, we’ll embed them here.
Up first: Those Damn Hipsters with Kyle Ross. One of our core FDH Lounge Dignitaries, Kyle is a true world-class hipster basher. Dignitary Jake Digman was a part of the fun here as well.
By Rick Morris
This Tuesday, June 7, marks the 150th episode of the program where “nothing is off-topic.” Airing Tuesdays from 7-9 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com (with our brand-new spinoff THE FDH LOUNGE VAULT airing Monday-Friday 2-4 PM EDT on STN with our greatest segments ever), THE FDH LOUNGE has broken new ground by proving that we can cover wider ground than any other program has ever attempted.
We’ve mixed in a tremendous array of guests, many of them with good-to-great degrees of fame, thanks to our Senior Producer, “The FDH New York Bureau” Steve Cirvello. Our conversations with these guests and our roundtables with “The Dignitaries of The FDH Lounge,” our deep and incomparable crew, have brought to life the concept originally envisioned by FDH Senior Editor Jason Jones and myself.
Because we have celebrated every anniversary of the show’s debut on January 14, 2007 as well as milestone episodes like #100 in April of 2010, I don’t want to be repetitive in expressing my joy and pride in this project. Instead, I’ll simply link to my comments at the time of #100 and the emotions they reflected. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone involved again from the bottom of my heart. Creatively – working with this crew and just killing it with them time and time again – it doesn’t get any better than that. If you’re reading this, chances are good that you are in our universe of followers and if that is the case, thank you so much as well. We’ll keep bringing it, you keep enjoying!
By Rick Morris
NOTE: Rankings for mid-May in parentheses.
TOP TIER
1 Philadelphia (1)
2 St. Louis (8)
3 Florida (3)
4 Cleveland (5)
5 New York Yankees (11)
6 Boston (17)
7 Arizona (28)
8 Atlanta (9)
9 San Francisco (6)
10 Texas (13)
11 Milwaukee (18)
12 Tampa Bay (2)
13 Toronto (16)
14 Los Angeles Angels (7)
15 Detroit (10)
16 Cincinnati (4)
17 Seattle (26)
18 Oakland (15)
SECOND TIER
19 Colorado (12)
20 New York Mets (21)
21 Pittsburgh (24)
22 Los Angeles Dodgers (19)
23 Chicago White Sox (27)
24 Baltimore (20)
25 San Diego (25)
26 Chicago Cubs (23)
27 Kansas City (14)
28 Washington (22)
29 Houston (29)
THIRD TIER
30 Minnesota (30)
BIGGEST RISERS: Arizona (21 spots), Boston (11 spots), Seattle (9 spots), Milwaukee (7 spots), New York Yankees and St. Louis (6 spots), Chicago White Sox (4 spots), Pittsburgh, Texas and Toronto (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: Kansas City (13 spots), Cincinnati (12 spots), Tampa Bay (10 spots), Colorado and Los Angeles Angels (7 spots), Washington (6 spots), Detroit (5 spots), Baltimore (4 spots), Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, Oakland and San Francisco (3 spots)
RANKINGS BY DIVISION – 1 POINT PER RANKING SPOT FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL TEAM, DIVIDED BY THE NUMBER OF TEAMS IN THE DIVISION, LOWEST SCORE IS BEST
1 AL West (11)
2T AL East (12)
2T NL East (12)
4 NL West (16.4)
5 AL Central (19.8)
6 NL Central (21)
RANKINGS BY CONFERENCE
1 AL (42.8)
2 NL (49.8)
By Rick Morris
For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week’s newsletter.
