Tait's Rant

Brian Regan (comedian)

2006-01-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

Brian Regan (http://www.brian-regan.com) is the funniest stand-up comedian in the world.

I discovered him in the mid-90s and became a huge fan, practically wearing out his CD. I decided to start a little fan page on him since I couldn't find any info on the Internet about him at that time. The page grew and grew and eventually, I started an entire site for him instead of just the one page: http://www.brian-regan.com I would've obtained www.brianregan.com, but it was already registered by Brian's management company (although no site was up at the time).

Now, fast forward about 10 years, and Brian Regan is more popular than ever. He's appearing on night time shows all over the place, was in a commercial at the movie theaters, is booking larger venues than when he started (playing things like the Majestic in Dallas instead of the Improv, etc), and he's in discussions with people from the hit show "Scrubs" to star in a sitcom.

The unfortunate side-effect? Even though I've talked to Brian Regan before and he always expressed enthusiasm for the site I put together at my own time and expense just because I'm a fan, his people are much less enthusiastic. They've continued to make me remove items over time, lied to me, threatened me with lawsuits, and actually taken images I've created and obtained trademarks for them stating that they are based on Brian's comedy.

I'm still a fan of Brian's comedy - it's hilarious stuff. But, my enthusiasm has waned and I no longer update the site because of the way his people treat his fans. I wish he would've stepped in and protected me from the harrassment, because he's always been great with the fans himself. I don't know, maybe it's just a sad byproduct of success. I never wanted anything other than to promote him and his comedy, and his people treat me like crap. *Sigh*

Anyway, check out my fan site dedicated to Brian Regan at http://www.brian-regan.com or search for "Brian Regan" to find it (it's usually listed second right behind his own site).

What is Life?

2006-01-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

What the heck is this thing we call life, anyway? I mean, I'm here at work and I realize that time just shoots on by broken up by the occassional vacation and Stars Games. I miss gradeschool.

Back then, we got time off - and I mean, true time off, like a whole summer, several weeks at Christmas, a spring break, holiday after holiday. But, I think what broke up our lives the most and allows our childhoods, or at least mine, to stick out in our heads is this: change. Every year was different. 6th grade was not 5th grade. 8th grade had new experiences. I can trace back my entire childhood by grade level and remember very specific events that happened:

Kindergarten - broke my little toe. I had a 22 lb weight fall out of a closet (what the heck was a round weight doing being stored in a closet in a house with kids, anyway?) and land *smack* down onto my little toe. That hurt. The doctors taped it up and then I had to wear a wooden "sandel" (open on top) to keep it stable. Wouldn't have been so bad, except our school was doing the Pied Piper and I was one of the kids that followed the magic fluting. Yup, I'm skipping along in my wooden shoe: clack-clack..... clack-clack.... CLACK-CLACK!!!!!! I remember hiding my Yellow Chair, getting covered in ants in a corn-husk pile, and writing my first poem. Oh yeah, and singing that kite song. My first kiss - Patricia Rayburn - we practiced the Colgate commercial. Funny how "firsts" stick out in your head. I don't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I remember these things...

1st Grade - Mrs. Williams is my teacher - she makes each student feel special by taking them to lunch by themselves there at school - I got McDonald's and we played the connect-the-dots game in homeroom.

2nd Grade - I remember this kid, Marvyn, who was hilarious and didn't care for the rules. We had cups with sticks in them that could be used to buy stuff, but we always had our sticks taken away for misbehaving. Oh yeah, and Kim and Jennifer Keene - the twins. I "went out" with them - bought them plastic rings at Crystal's pizza. LOL.

3rd Grade - I remember my homeroom teacher and where my classroom was. I remember going to the water fountain and seeing a redhead through the door in the 2nd grade classroom. I can't remember much specific to class

4th grade - Mr Bradshaw, who was an amateur pen and ink artist and calligrapher. I remember winning math contests on the blackboards, my GoBots and Transformers. Trinity Christian Academy (TCA), where I went to school through 8th, was doing a Math contest - a math question was posted outside the 5th and 6th grade areas on the wall. The question was open to anyone from K-6th. I solved it - I remember during announcements, my name being called and I went down to the principals office and received a trophy. I won the next one as well.

5th grade - I was selected to represent our school's 5th grade entry into the ASCI (Christian schools) math competition. I placed first. I remember Mrs Franzmeier taking an interest in my future and working with me on my stamp collection. Actually, now that I think about it, I actually had a tendancy to have these types of friendships with adults and my teachers until adolescence...

6th grade - Square dance. Sky Ranch. Got selected as one of 3 students to go with Mrs Miner's husband to the American Airlines training facility and fly a DC9 flight simulator. That was cool. My first cat, Oreo, died of Feline Leukimia (sp?).

Now, I also have a lot of random memories from my childhood that I can't quite place with a particular schoolyear - well, I probably could if I spent enough time connecting the dots, but I figure at this point of my life, anything I really want to remember, I remember.

Fantasy Football

2004-10-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

I'm so frustrated and need to vent about it:

I'm the commissioner of a Fantasy Football league. Every year, we get the gang together and trash talk our way through the season. One thing that I do, though, is constantly try to get a lot of involvement in the league: people trading, people posting, people getting together to watch games. I believe it adds more to the league over all to have high involvement.

Last year, early in the season I saw a team struggling in last place and sent a lengthy e-mail to try and lend whatever insight I thought I had into their team so they could improve and catch up with the rest of the league. Well, he didn't reply for many many weeks and when he finally did, he told me that he was angry at me for trying to make him drop good players so that I could pick them up. I was flabergasted - I had good intentions that I had wrestled with and he took it differently, but instead of coming to me, he stewed. He also stated that he told his friends about it and they agreed with him. So, he had a whole army of people of one misunderstood opinion before going to the source. Things have never been the same between us since - he doesn't come to any of our get togethers, but gets upset when we don't come to his last minute get togethers (one stands out in my mind - I planned a Saturday get together and then he planned one on the same Saturday sending out the email on the Thursday prior).

Anyway, my newest beef with Fantasy Football is this: I've been trying to get my league to trade more and I posted a message on our forums about the subject. See, I had tried to get trades accomplished last week but kept hearing the same thing: "well, the player I have is ranked higher than that". Our site allows you to get a list of Top Performers that shows total points scored for the year (by default, that is. You can change this to show other things too). The other owners were going by this list as a ranking which is not accurate. A ranking is when intelligent decisions are made of a player's future impact using many factors such as past performance, injury status, future matchups, changes in team philosophy, teammate injuries, etc. For example, let's say I have a player that has the highest point total thus far this year, but he blew out his ACL last week. It would be stupid to keep him, regardless of his point total because he won't be playing the rest of the season!

Here's another example - let's say you have a QB that averages 24 points per game through the first 5 games and he has not had his bye week already. Now, you have another QB that averages 23 points per game who has had his bye week already. Which QB is better? Tough call - if you have a good QB backup, QB one is better because you can play your backup during his bye week. But, if you're bench is useless, then QB 2 is better. Why? Well, QB one gets 24 points per game but has 11 games left which totals 264 points over the rest of the season. QB two gets 23 points per game and has 12 games left which totals 276 points over the rest of the season which is 12 points better than QB one. Again, though, if you can get a fill in QB that makes at least 12 points for your QB one bye week, then stick with QB one.

I also attempted a trade with a team that would have benefited both of our teams by about 5 points per week - this is because a trade only makes sense if it helps BOTH teams. But, the team owner denied it. Weekly averages don't mean future results, but are more accurate over a season than a grand total that doesn't take bye weeks into consideration. I posted the following message to our Fantasy Football forum:

Sure, it looks like Super Mutts are FAR in the lead with 590 points over all, but what you may not see is that the weekly averages are much much closer. So, if you can eke out another 10 points per week, it can make all the difference in the world. For example, I had Bulger on my bench last week with 34 points - if I'd started him in place of Favre, that's a 25 points difference which would've been an extra 5 points per week over the first 5 weeks and bumped my weekly average up to 115.0 - right behind SuperMutts.

118.0 Super Mutts
110.0 Fandingos
105.4 Bradford Brutes
102.6 Rando's Commandos
102.4 Dastardly Shizzles
97.8 Shawnee Rhinoceros
85.6 Gravy Train

Trades that help you get a few more points each week can be the difference between 6th place and 3rd place (which gets a trophy). Keep that in mind when thinking about trades. One player may be GREAT, but it's the TEAM that needs to perform well to get you to the top. Tait

Now, on first glance, you can see that I may be interested in trading for myself - absolutely! I try hard to get the best team possible. However, I am fair and always attempt to find a trade that is beneficial to both parties. I don't take advantage of other people. Honestly, if I did, I could do better because I could've just traded with people based on their perception that total points equals ranking and ran off with great players. But, I didn't - I try to help make the league competetive. It's just what I do - I'm interested in winning, but only in a competetive fashion.

Honestly, though, sometimes I don't know why I bother. Some people in my friends group are so sardonic and pessimistic that they always think the other person is out to get them with any offered advice. It appears to be completely incomprehensible that someone wants to get better through improving the team rather than trying to control others and take advantage of them. It's sad, really.

I'll give an example from an XBox game called Halo - now, in my circle of friends, I'm the best Halo player. However, when we've played with other people in the past, I've learned that I'm not that good over all - just in my circle of friends. Do I gloat and take pride in the fact that I'm the best in our circle? Overall, no - I want to get better. I don't want to settle for that, I want to improve. The only way to improve, though, is with challenge. So, my options are:

Be proud of being the best in my group
Be obnoxiously proud of being the best in my group
Find a new group that's better so I can learn to be better
Help my group improve - as they get better, I'll get better

I choose option 4 - I want to get better, but with my friends. I want them to get better. I don't want to triumph over them over and over now - it's too easy. But, when I give them pointers on how to improve their game, they don't listen. Or, if they hear, they don't apply - some of them are about the same level now as they were a year ago. It's frustrating - I want to improve, but not at the expense of others - I want us all to get better.

I'm constantly trying to get better - if I'm struggling at something, I'll go buy a book or read on the Internet to figure out how to accomplish what I'm attempting. I don't like losing, so it raises my competetive spirit to a new level and I learn. I'm not seeing that in my friends group - they complain about losing, but don't work to win. Arrrgh!

So, back to Fantasy Football - after my post, I get a reply post: That Tait.. always looking out for our best interests. I'm sure he's not trying to justify why we should trade our best players to him. I think he just wants other people to win.

Wow - sarcasm and an accusation (again) that I'm only interested in myself and have no interest in helping others improve. Totally missed the point and improperly put together the facts to form an opinion as sardistic as ever. *sigh*

1st Blog Post 05-11-04

2004-05-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've often heard of "blogs" and - of course - remember the traditional "diaries". In fact, at times in my life, I've tried to maintain a diary. But, the traditional methods were always too restrictive to me - an organized physical paper medium and the actual act of writing with a pen or pencil *gasp*

I've always embraced technology, so blogs are a natural fit for me to write down my life. But, still - it's a ton of work. So, I've procrastinated for years to start my own and then - boom, here I am. Don't ask why - I can't hear you anyway.

I have no idea what I'm going to write - some things still seem too much to throw out publicly. I mean, I don't say some of these things to the people in my life now - why risk them stumbling across my rants later? So, at least at first, I'll more keep it as a log of my life than a rant or long complaint letter. For now....

I'll kick things off here - I went to lunch today at Iron Cactus in downtown Dallas. Iron Cactus is an eclectic Tex-Mex restaurant that opened a couple weeks ago here. I was quite impressed with the food - first, the chips are allright (thick corn) but the salsas are great - 2 kinds: 1 fresh tomato salsa and 1 warmed chipotle salsa. Yum. I had the stuffed chicken relleno and it was incredible!