Zach Feinstein: The Best Non-Player in the Upcoming NBA Draft

Zach Feinstein, a junior from Washington University, declared for the upcoming 2008 NBA draft. He’s been interviewed on radio stations and given press from guys like Henry Abbott of TrueHoop (the best basketball blog on the web).

The catch? He has no basketball experience or skills.

Zach is 5′8″ and 130 pounds, and the last time he played basketball was the 3rd grade. Like many jokers around the world, Zach declared for the NBA Draft this year, but no one else has ever been as funny while doing it. His website, DraftFeinstein, is chock full of hilarious information that you’d be hard-pressed to find on the scouting reports of other draftees this year.

Things such as:

• Strong decision making skills. Brilliant basketball IQ.
• No actual basketball skills, ability or experience.
• FG: 20%
• Rebounding: only to get over Sarah.
• Steals: like a Times Square Rolex.
• BLK: WHTE

Zach was interviewed by John and Lance this morning on 1560 The Game (the best sports station in Houston, bar none) here in Houston, and I laughed so hard that I nearly wept. I’ll post a link to the interview once they put it on the podcast channel, but go check out the website and peep this interview with Zach from Hugging Harold Reynolds in the meantime.

Grand Theft Auto IV

I went to GameStop yesterday morning and reserved Grand Theft Auto IV. Yes, I know that the game came out today, and honestly I hadn’t planned on getting the game when it came out. But the reviews of the game (it’s currently sitting at 99% on both GameRankings and MetaCritic) persuaded me to take a chance on it. As yesterday wore on, I got more and more excited, and I ended up going to the midnight release party at the GameStop here in Katy. I went home and played the game for about an hour before realizing that I needed sleep, and then played a bit more this morning. I haven’t done much, but I can tell you right now that this game is absolutely gigantic. It is utterly massive. I imagine that there will be 100+ hours of gameplay on this disc for those of you who are completist.

I’ll have a bigger review at some point, most likely on Friday. I don’t plan on doing much else outside of work over the next few days.

Coldplay — “Violet Hill”

As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a gigantic Coldplay fan. In fact, they’re my favorite band in the world and have been for a long, long time. So it was with much anticipation that I woke up this morning and downloaded the new single, Violet Hill, which the band released for free on its website.

My thoughts? This is not the same Coldplay I fell in love with, but in many ways, it’s better. Violet Hill is far edgier, darker and more experimental than anything they have ever done. After the long ambient opening, the tune opens up with bombastic drums, guitars that are grittier than anything I ever expected from Coldplay, and an absolutely fantastic bass tone that holds the whole thing together.

Chris Martin remarked that the first three albums were “a trilogy” and that Viva La Vida would be something much different, something much more evolved and edgy, and if the first single is any indication, he was speaking the truth. It’s going to be off-putting to a lot of Coldplay fans who love the slow, soft rock of the past three records, but I love seeing an established band take risks.

Can’t wait for the album.

Spike Guy’s Choice Awards

Check this out — Spike TV has an awards show called The Guy’s Choice Awards, and the voting is now open. I’m mentioning this because Anderson Silva is nominated for the World’s Most Dangerous Man award. Go vote and then watch the show on June 22nd.

Josh Kalk’s PITCHf/x Tool

This may be the biggest time-waster I’ve seen in the past month.

MLB tracks all pitchers using something called PITCHf/x. If you need a primer on PITCHf/x, then you’ll probably want to read up on this, but in short it’s a system for tracking pitches much more comprehensively than they’ve ever been tracked in the past.

Josh Kalk has put together a tool called the PITCHf/x Tool, and it lets you plot graphs on any major league pitcher, in any imaginable situation. It’s very cool, though there’s a bit of a learning curve, which is why I suggest going to the primer I linked above and reading up on the system before trying the tool for yourself.

(hat tip goes to Jason Kottke)

Back from Ad:Tech

I got back from Ad:Tech San Francisco this morning at 6am. We had the red-eye flight from San Fran, leaving at 12:30am San Fran time and arriving back in Houston at 5:45 CT. I went home and slept a few hours and then came into work, and I think I’m still running on fumes.

Ad:Tech was good. Met a lot of new people and caught up with some old friends. Everyone in the industry seems to go to these trade shows, so it’s always fun catching up every few months.

I’ll post more later. Still pretty tired.