ApeDonkey Power Rankings - 4/4/11

Top 5

1. Nancy Drew - As I wrote last week, my truck was broken in to and my wife's laptop and my ipod were stolen. Since that happened, my wife has been using all there Nancy Drew and Blues Clues skills to track down the perpetrator. The afternoon of the robbery she started scouring craigslist and ebay looking for postings that looked like they could be our stuff. In the meantime we had to buy a new laptop and I wanted to get a new ipod for the car. Last week my wife sent me a posting and said she thought this was my ipod. I completely blew her off but she continued to try to get information on it. Finally she noticed it was listed as a 7th generation ipod and mine was a 6th so she gave up hope that it was mine. However, they were selling it pretty cheap so I made arrangements to buy it from the person. It turns out they lived on my side of town and meeting them was easy. The person selling the ipod arrived and I approached his car to check out the item and make sure it worked. I turned it on and immediately recognized in the cover flow a record that only me and maybe ten others in the city would own. I went to the playlists and sure enough it was my ipod. At this point I wasn't sure what to do. This guy could have easily beaten my ass in an instance. I calmly spoke to him and told him I didn't want to make a big deal out of it but this was my ipod. I repeatedly expressed to him how important it was that I get the laptop back since it had all of our business files on it. As you would expect, he feigned surprise and told me how his girlfriend had found the ipod by stepping on it in a parking lot. Yeah OK. I just continued to calmly impress upon him the importance of getting the laptop back. Then he decided to be a good soul and knock the price down to $50 for my own ipod. Thanks.

I really didn't feel safe so I told him that was fine and paid for my ipod. I expressed to him a few more times that I wanted my ipod back and even if he didn't have it, if he could tell "whoever" did have it that I wanted to get it back, I would appreciate it. We then went our separate ways. A few minutes later I got a call from him telling me he felt bad about taking my money and offered to give it back. Once again I told him I didn't care about the money, I just wanted the laptop back. Anyway, thanks to my wife's detective skills we now have the guy's phone number, address and a picture of his car and plates. Unfortunately, this was over a week ago now and the police still have returned our call. We've spoken to them a couple of times and even had a police officer friend call and try to expedite the process but still nothing. Apparently there are two police officers assigned to work all the auto theft cases in Houston. Two! I'm not blaming the officers for this but the shitty system. We have essentially done the leg work to locate everything and have been completely ignored. On Saturday, we got a notice from the bank that our account had been disabled because someone had tried the wrong password too many times. I wonder who that was? So if either of the officers working auto theft read this please give me a call. I think we can close a case for you. Until then I'm going to go out a rob a few cars myself because auto theft is Houston's version of Hamsterdam.

2. Clank - This past Monday night Clank had a very good and well publicized evening. I don't know if someone thought it would be funny to replace the Final Four rims with some of those carnival game rims but neither team playing in the championship game could hit a shot. I don't know what UConn ended up shooting but it was beaten into my head yesterday that Butler shot an impressive 18%. I lost interest in the game about four minutes into the second half and started reading with the game on in the background. I couldn't tell you how good or bad the production was but I can tell you without pause how distracting the constant barrage of shots clanking off the rim was. At one point I didn't look at the television for a stretch of about 20 minutes and when I did finally look up Butler had the same number of points as they did the last time I looked at the score. It was just a pathetic performance by both teams. It reminded me of the Presidential elections of the last decade. No one deserved to win but they've got to give it to someone, so congrats UConn.

3. The Killing - A handful of new cable shows premiered this week including The Borgias, Camelot and The killing. Of the three new shows, The Killing looked to have something special. @heydannyv commented on Barry's review how much the cinematography, directing and use of music reminded him of Rubicon. I completely agree with that assessment. The previews gave me flashbacks to Twin Peaks but the reality is Twin Peaks was set in a completely different world where the supernatural and paranormal activity weren't out of the norm. The Killing looks to be an extremely well made murder mystery. 

4. Friday Night Lights Season 5 - FNL comes out on DVD today. We here at ApeDonkey have dedicate a ton of time to praising the series, season and actors of this outstanding show. One thing that hasn't been discussed enough it how stupid NBC is. NBC was set to cancel the series after the second season. Instead Direct TV stepped in to pick up some of the production cost and to broadcast the series on their channel 101 six months ahead of NBC's broadcast. This agreement has allowed me to see the entire series without ever watching a single episode on NBC. I was a late comer to FNL, becoming a fan during its season 3 run, so I saw the first two seasons on Netflix then watched the rest through uploaded episodes on the Internet. Anyway, like I said season 5 comes out today on DVD. If you have Direct TV you could have already watched season 5 on The 101 but NBC still won't be start showing it for another couple weeks. Genius. I'm a bit surprised they didn't cancel Community and Parks & Rec while they were making these brilliant programming decisions.

5. It was a tough week so just pour a little out for #5 this week.

Bottom 5

1. My Wallet - A couple weeks ago my six year old vomited in my Prius. Now I cleaned it up the puke but there's still that lingering barf smell in the car. I need to get it detailed to see if they can freshen it up. In the mean time I've been driving my truck instead. Nothing shocks the wallet quite like going from a car that gets 50mpg to a truck getting 15mpg. Especially when gas is nearly $4/gal. Since I've been driving the truck I've been going through $20-$30 of gas a day. That would last me at least a week in the Prius. If nothing else this week has reminded me why my 2+ yr old truck has less than 15k miles on it.

2. Catholicism - I'm not catholic, in truth I'm about as WASPY as a person can get. However, I did graduate from a catholic university and had to take catholic studies courses as part of the curriculum. So I do know a little something about Catholicism. I find the history of Catholicism fascinating and I tried to convince my wife to let me name our son John Paul so I could call him Pope. That idea didn't fly but I had to try. I do have quite a few friends and people I respect who are catholic. I don't know how they are going to feel about The Borgias but I can't imagine The Vatican being very big fans of the show.

The new Showtime series is based on the 15th century Papal family that was rife with controversy and scandal. In the series Pope Alexander VI has several kids with one of his mistresses. His son who he appoints as a Cardinal is uncomfortably interested in his 14 year old sister. One of his other sons is the head of the Papal army and may as well be based on Uday Hussein. I thought the first two episodes were pretty good but not great. Jeremy Irons as the Pope is his normal terrific self and the show's stand out has been Fancois Arnaud as Cesare Borgia.

The catholic church has a long rich history filled with both incredibly charitable and despicable act. This story happens to be one of the dark times in the Vatican. Showtime has proven they can produce an excellent series and this one has all the elements to be their next one I just wonder how well it will be received by the followers of the worlds largest religion.

3. Toyota Service - I've only had to take my Prius in to the dealer twice for service. Once was for a recall on the brakes and the second time was to have the back seat belts replaced. Both times the service department at Joe Myers Toyota has sucked giant balls. When I bought they car I was given two free oil changes. I used the first free oil change when I had the brakes fixed. At that time the guy told me to skip a few changes before I used the second one because I couldn't use them within a certain amount of time of each other. What? OK. So I tried to use the second one this last time. The guy before never said anything about having to use them before 36k miles. Fucking Dickhead. On top of that the shit heads didn't wash my car like they're supposed. I'm almost glad my car is now out of warranty because I won't be tempted to take it to the retarded monkeys at the dealership. I have a place down the road that does good work and I trust them. For the first time in my life I'm actually looking forward to doing one of those service surveys for a dealership.

4. Brandon Lyon - This is where I was going to talk about Brandon Lyon blowing a 4-2 lead to the Phillies on opening day but the Astros have much bigger issues than Lyon and he's only had one save opportunity so far this season. The Astros are going to suck all season. The best gambling decision I've made this year is not betting the over on the Astros win total. I think they'll compete for the worst record in the majors this year. Thank God for fantasy baseball to make other games interesting to me.

5. Kavorka - I'm not a particularly handsome guy. I probably trend somewhere in the middle of the looks scale but for whatever reason women in the service industry just dig me. I'm a happily married man and don't invite this kind of attention at all. In fact, nearly everything I do should deflect it. I shave maybe once every other month or so. I sustain myself on donuts so that I'm as fat as I can possibly be. I rate closer to the Unabomber on the anti social scale than most. In person, aloof is the best I can do. Mean and flat out ignoring people is more of the norm though. I've adopted a French sensibility to hygiene. Yet, these women and some men still want me. I thought this curse had left me when I moved out to the burbs but then one of the women at the local McDonald's started giving me that extra little smile and wanting look. A few weeks ago though she turned on me and now has started a strict regime of giving me the cold shoulder. I figured out her issue the other day. She finally gave up on me leaving the wife and kids and got engaged to what I assume was at best her second choice. Sorry but I've got a good thing here at home. Now I'm getting those same uncomfortable looks and the eyes undressing me from the girl who delivers pizza. I've tried to tell my wife not to send me to pick up the pizza by myself. You never know when the Kavorka is going to send this poor woman over the edge with desire. My wife seems to be willing to take the chance of my shirt being ripped off but I have to admit I'm a little frightened every time we order pizza.

ApeDonkey Power Rankings - 3/14/11

Here's the power rankings. They're a day late but considering it's spring break, I'm surprised I didn't close the entire site and burn my laptop. I'll be heading to San Antonio this week so I'm sure next week's bottom five will fill up quickly.

Top 5

1. Kemba Walker - I don't watch a ton of college basketball but the conference tournaments were pretty good and Kemba Walker killed it in the Big East tourney. The UConn freshman did his best 2003 Carmelo Anthony impersonation and carried UConn to the Big East Title despite being the ninth seed and needing to win five games in five days. He averaged 26pts - 5 reb - 4 ast over the five day tourney to win Tournament MVP honors. I've got UConn making it to the round on eight in the NCAA tourney before being knocked off by my beloved Longhorns.

2. Buy Buy Buy - It's that time of year to buy as much stock in the makers of Gold Bond as possible. The days are getting warmer getting over 80 degrees here in Houston and with the warm weather comes the scourge of every man. It goes by many names Monkey Butt, Swamp Ass, Crotch Rott but regardless of what you call it, it will soon become a nuisance. Load up on powder fellas, switch to boxers or boxer briefs and prepare to go to battle again. Just at a warning, stay clear of the extra strength medicated powder. It burns in places you don't want burning.

3. Scott Conant - I sent this tweet out while watching an episode of Chopped last week "@LanceZierlein @heydannyv If you guys ever have Scott Conant on Southbound can you ask him where he studied to perfect his dickhead persona?" A few hours later I get a notification that it had been retweeted. By whom you might ask, Scott Conant himself. That right there made me do a 180 on what I thought of they guy. OK maybe a 165 but anyone who can either laugh at themselves or embraces the public perception of his or herself is alright in my book.

Long time readers may recall I made a similar tweet about Chef Michael Symon last year. I was tired of seeing Iron Chef America episodes with him. So I tweeted begging Food Network to please show an episode without him. He like many fringe celebrities obvious searches for mentions of his name and replied to me saying that wasn't cool and to take it easy on him. That is not how you change my perception of you. So if you're keeping score Scott Conant - Cool. Michael Symon - Not Cool.

Pengergast doppelganger Vic Makey

4. The Sean Pendergast Show - I've been a bit of a critic of The Sean Pendergast Show since its inception in January. I'm not a big fan of shows with a single host. I felt like he was spending too much time trying to be Travis Rodgers Now lite instead of crafting his own unique show. More than that though, there seemed to be a real disconnect between Sean's show and the rest of the 1560 station. Last week though it was as if a demon had been cast out and the old Sean that made the Sean & John show so enjoyable had returned. I found myself really enjoying what Sean was doing last week. Then came Thursday and his tournament updates from stringers across the country. It was absolute comic and radio genius. If you haven't hear them yet and have a few minutes to spend here's the links update 1, update 2, update 3, update 4, update 5, update 6, update 7, update 8. Welcome back Sean, I hope you're back to stay.

5. Ark Music Factory - I'm sure by now you've seen the video by Rebecca Black. It was featured on Tosh.0, Yahoo and John and Lance this morning. The bigger story is the company who made the video Ark Music Factory. They've made a ton of these videos and they're all equally awesomely terrible. It's an auto tuned cornucopia of untalented young girls singing ridiculous songs and schmaltzy videos. You can literally get lost for hours in their YouTube catalog. My fear is that the 6 million and counting hits of the Rebecca Black video will somehow alter the way they go about their business and we'll lose the magic touch that is Ark Music Factory.



More Ark Music Magic


Bottom 5

1. Quanell X - I don't comment much on political or racial topics because either I don't care or I don't know enough about the subject to form an opinion. However, as the father of a 6 year old girl the Cleveland, TX gang rape case is one that has grabbed my attention. In a case that involves all kinds of disgusting, horrible things, I thought Quanell X holding a rally for the men and boys accused of raping the 11 year old was one of the more disgusting, attentions seeking, pandering events. Look, I understand if you're the parent of one of the boys who did this, you have to support you child the best you can but this rally held by Quanell X in which he showed Facebook pictures of the girl dressed provocatively was way over the line. The message circulating around this rally was that the girl was either "asking for it" by the way she dressed or she lied about her age. What? She's 11. What did she look 13? does that make it OK? Does dressing inappropriately make it OK for 17 men some as old at 27 to have sex with an 11 year old? Come on. Hell may be a terrible place but it damn sure won't be a lonely place.

2. Gene Smith - Ohio St. AD Gene Smith had an outstanding week. First Yahoo broke the story that OSU head coach Jim Tressel had known about players selling memorabilia eight months before the NCAA found out about the infractions. Then he lied to the NCAA about his knowledge of the situation. So how does Gene Smith and the OSU brain trust punish their coach? They slapped him with a limp wet paper towel. Suspending him two games and $250K. How will OSU ever survive games against perennial powerhouses Akron and Toledo without their sweater vested leader?

If the Tressel punishment wasn't a big enough joke, Gene Smith was the chairman of the NCAA tournament selection committee. You know the committee that got everything but the four number 1 seeds wrong. He then went on national television to defend the committee selection process. This was a big mistake. Unless confusion and contradiction was the committees PR strategy. If that's the case then awesome job Mr. Smith. My friend and fellow blogger Tony Prock had a thing or two to say about Mr. Smith and his selection committee.

3. Rolling Stone - When I bought my tickets for the Old 97's I received a free subscription to Rolling Stone. I haven't bought the magazine in probably a decade and within a couple of issues I was reminded why. On the cover of the latest issue was none other that Snookie. Yeah that Snookie. The magazine that used to cover people like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and The Clash is now trying to sell me with a nasty four foot tall skank. No thanks. The worst part of all is that now that magazine is sitting in my bathroom ruining my most treasured time of all. Every time I take a trip to the throne to do a little reading or play some Words with Friends, there I am stuck looking at that disgusting saddle bag with hair. Thanks for the free issue RS but I think I'll be passing or continuing my subscription. Who knows maybe Playboy will offer me a free subscription with Courtney Love on the cover.

4. The NFL - We all know the NFL entered a lockout of the players last week. Now the PR barrage from both sides is coming in full force through the press, twitter and any other media outlet the NFL and NFLPA can get to tell their side of the story. Well let me tell my side. I don't give a shit what either of you have to say. Get to the damn table and hammer it out. The fans don't care who gets how much money as long as the ball gets kicked off in September. 50/50, 60/40 who cares, with $9 billion to divvy up there's plenty to go around. Hell what you ought to be doing it figuring out a way to give the season ticket holders and tax payers some of our money back.

5. Harbingers of Death - My distaste for Christmas and Halloween is well documented but now there's a new contender for my most hated time of year, Daylight savings time/spring break week. Lets talk about daylight savings first. Kids have no concept of time change so they keep trucking along on their own whacked out biological clocks when the time changes. So what you end up with is your 2 year old running around like a crazed jackal at 10:30 pm. Then your 6 year old is up at 5:30 waking everyone else up. I understand why they created DST to help farmers and the such but the last time I checked we're an urban nation now. Not many of us have kids who need to plow a field when they get home from school. How about we just pick one standard time and stick with it year round. I'd even be willing to split the difference with you and adjust the clocks 30 minutes if we can just leave it there.

Now spring break. How much am I hating spring break? Let me cover day 1. By 9am the 6 year old was already throwing a fit because she was bored. The 2 year old got into a bottle of stool softener, ate one of the capsules and then proceeded to vomit chocolate milk all over the house. There are no ruins left of the clean house the maid left me on Friday. While I was out of the room the 2 year old decided the 50" plasma was his gigantic coloring book and took a crayon to the screen. The 6 year old tried to balance her lunch plate on a 1" pipe and spilled it all over the play room. There is no less than 6,000 toys scattered between me and the front door. The 2 year old has bumped his enormous head no less than 1200 times. Worst of all, the wife and I spent March 14, Steak and BJ day eating peanut butter sandwiches and sleeping with the kids in separate bedrooms. Fuck you Mr. inventor of spring break.

ApeDonkey Power Rankings 12/20/10

Top 5

1. Juliann Faucette - I was fortunate enough to catch the UT women's final four volleyball match vs. Penn St. this weekend. These two teams met in the finals last year in one the best match ups I've ever seen in any sport. Penn St needed a furious comeback to thwart the Lady Horns championship dreams. Once again Penn St. upended the Horns, eliminating them from the tournament. However, the Lady Horns pitched a shutout in the looks department led by their ace Juliann Faucette. Beyond being the best looking player on the court, she was also their best player.  Did I tweet that I'd have her babies during the game? And did I mean it? Yes and Yes. Juliann (yes we're on a first name basis following this weekend) was extra special hot on the court. I'm very much looking forward to seeing her on the beach volleyball circuit soon and perhaps in the 2010 Olympics.

2. Mike Vick - That guy may have killed a bunch of dogs but man can he play football. He put the Giants on the rape stand and choked those bitches out yesterday. Or did they do that to themselves? Either way the Eagles pulled another one out of their asses and Vick had a couple spectacular runs in the fourth quarter.  However, neither of the Vick runs were as remarkable and improbable as DeSean Jackson's punt return for a touchdown on the game's final play. If I were Matt Dodge, I would have gone to the Eagles locker room to avoid facing Tom Coughlin. This is a guy who fines you for being late to a meeting if you're not there 5 minutes early. What do you think he does to guys who kick the ball to the games most dangerous return man, when he has specifically told you to kick it out of bounds. I guess is Matt Dodge will soon find himself a lying next to Jimmy Hoffa on the old Meadowlands site.

Wow. That really happened

3. Rockets Fans - I initially put this in the bottom 5 when the news of Yao Ming's stress fracture was announced. Then I realized this was actually a good thing for the Rockets and their fans. The Rockets can finally leave the Yao/McGrady era behind them and build for the future. Morey has been kind of hamstrung because of having to build a team around "stars" he couldn't count on being on the court. As Rockets fans we may need to come to terms with the the fact that this season isn't going to be successful but I still believe in Daryl Morey's ability to build a team and like every other sport it's better to be really bad or really good than it is to be average or just below average. Being really bad gives you a chance to improve through the draft. Of course this year's draft class may be the weakest in decades. The Rockets will probably be major players on the trade front as well, although maybe not a much as they would like to be with impending labor trouble on the horizon. If the team is willing to admit the days of waiting for Yao to comeback are over then I'm willing to be patient while they put together something new.

4. IFC - IFC is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. This past summer they began running the entire Freaks & Geeks series on Friday nights. They followed that up with Judd Apatow's other series, Undeclared. Their original series starring David Cross and Will Arnett, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret was outstanding. Oh did I happen to mention they also show reruns of Mr. Show and Arrested Development. Now in preparation for carrying reruns of The Larry Sanders Show in the spring they are having a Larry Sanders marathon all day January 1. Lucky for us the idiots that run college football have made sure there is nothing else compelling on that day so we can all sit back and enjoy some Larry, Artie and Hank Kingsley. Hey Now.

5. Me - I had a great birthday on Sunday. My gift from my daughter was a promise not to whine all day and unbelievably she actually delivered. My talented wife redesigned this blog and created a logo for me. I had the best pancakes in Houston at Harris County Smokehouse. Beyond going to eat I'm not sure I moved 20 steps from my recliner all day. The Texans gave me the gift of comedy. Twitter gave me the gift of a forum to make fun of those Texans. I now am 365 days away from my 40's. That's a scary number for some folks but as an unemployed father of two, it doesn't bother me at all. Regardless, turning 40 has to be better than when I turned 30 and someone thought what I really needed was to go to a Creed concert. Even though I had made it explicitly clear that Creed sucked and deserved to have their tour bus driven off a mountain side. This "friend" said I just needed to see them live to get a proper appreciation for them. They bought me a ticket and they were right. Creed sucked even more live than I ever could have imagined. Thanks for that.

Bottom 5

1. Texans Fans -Did it look like the team quit yesterday? Yeah I think so too. As bad as the team looks though, the scarier thing is that Bob McNair thinks they are on the right track. At least, that's what he's saying publicly. Maybe yesterday's performance changed his view but I doubt it. McNair has always seemed like a guy that was pushed into buying an NFL franchise. He was the richest guy in the best market to add a new NFL team and that's a good business decision. He's never struck me as either an NFL fan nor a super competitive person. He obviously allows his personal feelings to affect his decisions with the Texans. If he didn't, David Carr's option would not have been picked up when it was evident to everyone, he wasn't a starting NFL caliber quarterback. I hope, no pray that his son or someone gets in his ear and convinces him to blow this regime out. He desperately needs to bring in a veteran NFL personnel guy who has had success to completely revamp this organization. Yeah, I know I'm not telling you anything the 4 million other people in the area don't already know. Unfortunately, the only person who doesn't seem to know what needs to be done happens to be the only person who counts.

2. - Uncircumsised Houston Texans Players - I don't know if you've heard but The Tebow is starting for the Texans next opponent, the Denver Broncos and he hates foreskin. Among the many miracles The Tebow has performed, circumcising underpriviledged kids is one he likes to get his hands dirty and do manually. But there is hope. There is a group called Intact America or Sat(b)an's Army as Tebowists refer to them, that are putting up billboards and trying to unite the rest of the world against this ghastly tradition of cutting the foreskin from the penises of baby boys. There's a war coming and we'll all have to pick a side. Will you be on the side of The Tebow or will you choose the foreskin?

3. Fantasy Football - Let me start with this, Fuck You Ray Rice. You sucked all year long. You were by far the biggest bust on any of my 7 fantasy football teams. Then after 13 weeks of being a giant turd you have a game like that, 233 yards and 2 Tds. I could even handle you have a good game except because you were such a lousy pick I missed the playoffs in my main league then you explode this week to knock me out of the playoffs in another league. If you want to know how I really feel about you see Ruxin v. Gates on The League. And yes I did wish mouth cancer on you yesterday.




4. UCLA Dynasty - In case you hadn't heard, the UConn womens basketball team equaled the UCLA 88 game win streak. Except, they didn't. There is no way to intelligently compare the UCLA streak and the UConn streak. Yes, they are both winning streaks involving games played with a hoop, a ball and involving humans. And that is where the similarities stop. I'm not saying the UConn streak isn't impressive because it is. If you win 88 games in a row at anything it's impressive but just because you win three Super Bowls on Madden '11 doesn't mean you can start comparing yourself to Bill Belichick. Hell, Edwin Moses won 122 races in a row. I guess ESPN will have to get stable of goons ready to compare a women's basketball team to a hurdler as they approach that streak. Someone needs to tell Geno, no one is saying his girls don't deserve recognition but just don't disrespect those great John Wooden teams by comparing yourself and your sport to what they accomplished.

5. Tron Legacy - Wow sorry Tron maybe I was wrong. That $43 million you pulled in this weekend was a little less than the $4 trillion or so I predicted for you. Worse still it's significantly less than the $200 million it cost to make the movie. I know it's just the opening weekend but with a low buzz/marketing ratio and lukewarm reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm a bit skeptical it has the traction to be called a success.