I'm watching game five of the Lakers-Celtics finals right now. It's the third quarter and the Lakers are hanging on to a 65-64 lead. I've been watching most of the finals with a bunch of fairly hostile Laker fans, but tonight they are fairly subdued. Everyone knows that teams don't come back from 3-1 down in the NBA. Most of the time the body language of the Lakers seems to indicate that they are going through the motions as well.

For what it's worth, I picked the Lakers to win this thing, and was considering getting some $$ onto bodog to bet on it. I was going to take the Lakers in 5 and the Lakers in 6, which combind would have given me about 2-1 odds. Fortunately I didn't do it, so I can root against Kobe and the Lakers wholeheartedly.

I watch Big Brown Choke from Couch

I considered heading up to Elmont for the Belmont. The Belmont stakes is in Elmont, in Long Island's Nassau County. I could tell you it's a town, but I imagine it is to Queens as Yonkers is to the Bronx, which is to say, nearly indistinguishible from it.

Instead I stayed at Fort Meade, and watched the spectacle on a big screen TV. The boy who sang the National Anthem looked like a refugee from the Neverland Ranch. He (?) was either prepubescent or a professional catastrata. Either way, he sounded like Britney Spears did the day she was discovered on Star Search. Perhaps it was fitting, a professional midget singing tribute to Old Glory before a contest where hormonally enhanced beasts would be flogged at will by men who looked and sounded like they represent the Lollipop Guild.

After two lackluster minutes from the 1-4 favorite, I got to hear two days (so far) of assurances placating the animal rights pinkos that Big Brown was not endangered during his last place finish. You'd think Michael Vick was his jockey or something, but of course, that's impossible.

Unless, of course, Big Brown was a Clydesdale....

And Vick was out of the pokey.

Or in a white collar pokey, with a race track....

And a golf course....

And a polo field....

And Tennis courts....

Am I off in left field? Did I leave out baseball? My bad.

The next day I was in the chow hall and caught the final set of Federer losing to Nadal in the French Open. Federer was gracious in defeat, and, as a Swiss, spoke to the crowd in their own tongue. Nadal gave Paris about three elementary sentences of French before switching to English. He was immediately booed, and he immediately switched over to Spanish. The crowd seemed satisfied to hear words in a language most of them did not understand, rather than English which perhaps 3/4 of them speak better than Nadal. You'd think this would have come up one of the last three times Nadal won the French. Maybe he didn't know English until this year....

I'm pretty Francophilic for an American, but these guys make it tough sometimes.

Pistons done in Six

The Pistons are out. I briefly felt vindicated by their Game Two win against the Celtics, as the path looked clear for them to march into the finals. Then the Celtics finally won on the road in Game Three, and I knew the Pistons probably weren't going to get it done. I still think my bet on them to win the East was justified, since the odds as they stood at the time made them about a 3.5-1 or 4-1 dog against the Celtics. They deserved a bit more respect than that. It was pretty cool just before the East Finals started, as all the experts that had been picking the Celtics to win the East on the way into the playoffs had swung over to favor the Pistons. I'd managed to be ahead of the curve, but then Boston came through and the experts were right after all. Well, really I never swung over to where I was picking Detroit, I just bet on them because I thought I was getting good value. Once Billups got hurt I figured they were in trouble, though.

I would have felt even more vindicated if Cleveland had beat Boston, but I suspect the LaBrons may have beaten Detroit as well.

I was at the Preakness three weekends ago, and watched Big Brown win the 2nd leg of the Triple Crown. I drank Black-Eyed Susans and Margaritas, and made about 4 small bets on the last few races. I'm still considering heding up to the Belmont Stakes this weekend, but it's looking like a strenuous enough commute that I will probably watch the race in some bar in Baltimore instead.