this post has been edited on june 10, 2005 10:26

the spurs won game 1 of the nba finals
the spurs are just way too good for the pistons. sports guy's finals preview had a little blurb about how the spurs had to adapt to 3 styles in the playoffs and stymied all 3 of those teams and dictated the action offensively in each series, while the pistons just do the same thing no matter who they are playing and hope it works. if wade didn't hurt his back the whole pistons 'clog the lane and use length and quickness to close out on shooters’, as effective as it is, would have been good for ‘eastern conference finals’ tshirts and not much more.

i'm pretty sure the top four teams in the west (sa, phoenix, seattle, dallas) would slice up the pistons. the thing is, if you can score 90 points against them you have a very good chance of winning, cuz the pistons are a joke offensively. they have rasheed wallace (ok i'm going to finally get into the actual game) and he comes out and makes two sick jumpers RIGHT OVER tim duncan at the start of the game. so the pistons don't give him the ball the rest of the game and they try to out-quick bruce bowen with rip hamilton and they have billups run around jacking up ridiculously stupid shots. you'll notice the pistons didn't score that much last night and also lost decisively. so basically, they come out at the very beginning of the game and totally own the spurs by fully utilizing rasheed wallace and having their guards expend their energy on DEFENSE, creating turnovers and running amok on the spurs. after this WORKED for the first three-fourths of the first quarter, the pistons decided to let their guards expend energy on OFFENSE and not utilize their amazingly talented power forward. the result? parker and ginobili became MORE effective as the game went on and duncan did not have to expend nearly as much energy on defense and thus had a monster game.

larry brown is a x's and o's genius. you're telling me he isn't looking to cleveland next year or something like that? i guess it's more likely that he just has no control of his team because he's had one foot out the door all year, plus he isn't the most popular coach with the players in general.

video games
i just got this email from z

ok
so
you're pretty tied in with the electronic underground
and you're a gamer
so can you give me your thoughts on the evolution of the gaming
business over the next few years, in terms of the new consoles, the
increased connectivity, and any possible move away from real world
game sales towards downloading....and regarding that, legal vs.
illegal downloads??

when you've got a minute

this is just such an interesting question, it has to be addressed. i haven't talked at all about the next generation of video game systems, even though i'm pretty excited about all three of them (revolution, 360, ps3 is the order in which i'm excited). this is a pretty important generation now too. i read something recently calling gamer culture up to this point the 9th grade of the entertainment industry - almost there but not quite grown up. this next generation is going to enable this industry to graduate high school. this shit is about to go mainstream in a big way.

nintendo is going to offer, for a price, their entire back catalog of games and allow 3rd parties to make their old games available as well. what a brilliant use of the emulation technology they've been fighting against so hard up to this point - the record industry SHOULD TAKE NOTE (more on this later). the xbox 360 is attacking on two amazing fronts - more immersion with the live service, which is already a very very strong service (consider that the xbox was microsoft’s first attempt at a video game system and its even more boggling how good xbox live is), and the whole media center extender, which may or may not backfire. the xbox live thing is more interesting to me, as they are going to integrate the whole micropayments thing as well as go for a community feel with video games that harkens back to the glory days of arcades

about micropayments - ok so valve, the company that makes half-life (best pc shooter ever?) tried to publish their most recent game through a download service. you can find boxes in stores and shit, but they wanted to do it primarily through a download service. now microsoft is allowing publishers to offer downloadable content for trivial prices through xbox live. it's a very interesting advancement, and i honestly have no idea how its gonna play out. i think the idea of adding downloadble content really makes it possible for companies to publish shitty games and then make people pay for patches down the line, which sucks ass. but it also opens up the possibility of "upgrades" to madden instead of whole new versions every year. it goes both ways.

about hardware advancements – ps3 and microsoft have been pimping their sick hardware, and while it is sick, it has grotesque side-effects. 1a) video games are gonna cost a shitload to make. i don’t think video games gross as much as movies do, so while movies can justify high production costs, video games cannot. this might bite the whole graduating to mainstream thing in the bud. nintendo has it right (big shocker that i'd defend the big n), in that they are less concerned about the latest hardware because they know that the computer will always end up with the latest hardware, since consoles get ‘stuck’ at a generation of hardware but the pc is constantly evolving. anyways, the focus at nintendo is on the games, by making the platform’s programming language accessible (unlike sony/xbox). this is a lot like the rhetoric being spouted before the current generation came out, but a few things are different – first to market is microsoft this time, nintendo will be alongside or just after sony, and nintendo is pulling out more stops in terms of online play and their backlog of games and stuff. this generation is gonna be fun, for sure.

so, z, that is what i think about some of the stuff. there’s more to your question, but at least i’m getting the ball rolling on this conversation.

music music music
i've been listening to a ton of music recently. i've wanted to write about all of it, but i just don't remember to or don't have time to. ALSO i want to write a whole manifesto on how the RIAA should fix itself. just think of what i wrote earlier - embrace technologies you've fought for piracy reasons. basically, no company will ever stop piracy 100%. the key is to make it irrelevant to pirate music/movies/video games/whatever.

the thing is, the music could quickly take over this space. i’m not ready for that to happen. therefore, i have taken and will take further steps to prevent this from happening. i will explain myself more either this weekend or next week.