Koo’s Corner

With March around the corner, I thought I would call attention to a handful of interesting items. Also if you are bored feel free to check out my blog on ranking the sports months and see where February and March get ranked

- ESPN this week got rid of Sean Salisbury but added two Buckeyes. Bobby Knight and Chris Carter will join ESPN and will cover NFL and college basketball respectively. Chris Carter’s son, Duron Carter, is one of the 2009 top receivers in the country and has had an influx of scholarships come in as of late.

- It was merely a week ago I commented on street fighter, Kimbo Slice’s rise to fame. At the time I was cautiously optimistic on just how much further Kimbo could penetrate American pop culture.

Today CBS announced an agreement to televise 4 two hour events per year for the next several year. A lot of analysis on why CBS would pick Pro Elite fighting over the more established UFC points to A) Viacom’s prior relationship with Pro Elite B) the demand for Kimbo Slice.

As I stated earlier, I am not a MMA fan by any stretch of the imagination, but just find if surprising to see such a rapid ascension in sports media and such an infatuation with Kimbo.

- The Terrelle Pryor Sage is picking up steam again. Pryor made a surprise visit to Ohio State this past weekend. By all means it was a positive trip as Pryor seemed to enjoy sitting with fellow recruits, synching up with Coach Tressel and Daniels, as well as enjoying the crowd’s chants of “we want Pryor”. Rumor’s have Pryor visiting Penn State this weekend which may in fact be his last visit as he is iffy on the need to visit Oregon.

- Speaking of recruiting, this link is a map of the countries top 100 recruits via Google Maps. You will have to zoom in, but it’s pretty damn cool.
- Lastly big props to Indiana for giving Kelvin Sampson the boot

You probably have never heard of the web video rising star “I am f_ucking Ben Affleck” and are probably unfamiliar with the works of Jonathon Coulton.

However via the power of new media outlets such as youtube, instant messenger, blogs, and message boards (and of course procrastination) both are poised to infiltrate the American sub culture that is internet phenomena.

Let’s start with the Ben Affleck video.

What it is: Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has had a running gag in which he apologizes to Matt Damon for bumping off the show due to time constraints. Its a gag as Damon is not even scheduled to appear. Kimmel’s girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, made a comedic music video poking fun of her husband entitled “I’m F_cking Matt Damon”. Below is Kimmel’s response on his talk show.

Disclaimer: No swearing, lots of bleeps, hilarious

Why it will be a internet phenomena : Its been one day since that aired (Feb 24th). Its already been seen 75,000 times on Youtube. If the video is not taken down its on pace to be seen by millions of Americans by April.

It has star power with Kimmel, Silverman, Damon, Brad Pitt, Lance Bass, Cameron Diaz, Robin Williams, and countless others in it. Its risque, hilarious, catchy, and most especially something that is compelling enough to be circulated to the masses of procastinating Gen X and Gen Y ers.

Original Matt Damon video

from www.break.com posted with vodpod

Moving on to Jonathon Coulton

What it is: Actually it’s who is he? Coulton is a retired software programmer who quit in hopes of pursuing a music career. If you click on this link a yahoo video (advertisement will play first) will give you all the details if you are really curious. He runs all of this through his website jonothancoulton.com where he has cultivated of large community of listeners via free downloads, podcasts, blogs, and of course videos.

Coulton’s music is somewhat tailored to developers and IT professionals but seems to have crossed over and attracted a broader audience. While he still is mainly unknown his cult like fan base is attracting a lot of attention.

Below is a video made by a fan of Coulton. It has been viewed over 2 million times.

Why it will be a internet phenomena : 2 reasons

1) Coulton and his fans are web savvy and proficient in the proliferation of content via the web.

2) I believe his music will resonate with a larger audience besides developers. His music is a satirical commentary on society and seems on par with what many 20-35 year olds would rant about.

  Haven’t seen to many new ads I like this week. Chevron has some cool advertisements about clean energy that I like, but I know its just a lot of fluff and marketing spin. I think most viewers are probably skeptical of if as well.

One company that seems to be legitimately committed to improving fuel stands is Toyota who owns Lexus as well Scion. Below is a new Lexus ad promoting their three hybrids, that they bill as the only luxury hybrids on the market. Lexus has been pushing their hybrid fleet of late knowing that most auto companies plan on rolling out more luxury hybrids over the next couple of years. But until those cars hit the market, Lexus is in good position in attracting buyers who want luxury and efficiency.

With blu ray vs hd dvd being a dead topic, I am starting to grow my interest the automobile industry as fuel standards and non conventional gas engines become more prevalent. Tesla Motors is  a cool company right down the road who is beginning to make a lot of noise on this front, who has caught my eye.  Do a google news search on them or check out their wikipedia page.  With all the stagnation in the US auto industry, it would be great to see some Silicon Valley innovation really spearhead a movement to decrease dependency on foriegn oil.

Yesterday I wrote one of my more popular blogs about how I find my interest and patience waning in social networking sites like myspace and facebook. In regards to myspace, I wrote that in no way shape or form has myspace made any improvements to its interface, realizability , and ability to handle illegimate accounts since being acquired by Fox News Corp in 2005.

Today serves as a perfect example as I have not been able to login to my account all day.

Screenshot Below- click to enlarge

I have grown accustom to Tom asking for patience when myspace crippled with back end IT performance and maintenance issues. Working in the world of IT (information technology), I know its no easy task to maintain, scale, and improve a large infrastructure and data center that myspace’s traffic warrants.

Recently rumors emerged that yahoo would be willing to give 25%-33% of its shares to Fox in order to acquire myspace. I would assume that Fox would jump at the opportunity to cash out their $500 million investment with limited revenue streams, performance issues, consistent IT flareups, and dated user interface for a 8-15 billion dollar chunk of Yahoo.

Despite Myspace’s inability to provide a stable platform, the networking site has served be beneficial to many young people looking to network as seen below.

Fallout from party invitation distributed on myspace… fast forward to 1:45 to laugh your ass off

Initially I was thoroughly enthused with social networks like myspace and facebook. I added friends, left comments, described how I awesome I am, reconnected with people, and of course looked at pictures of people trying to out awesome me.

It was great. I was by no means the king of myspace or facebook, but Ben Koo was a man of the people, adored and respected by hundreds of close friends, classmates, random acquaintances, and former colleagues from Chippendales.

Then it suddenly went all down hill. My first employer after college (Etrade) did not share my enthusiasm for social networking as exhibited by their restrictive internet network which blocked both facebook and myspace in addition to everything else where business efficiency goes to die.

Luckily I moved on from Etrade but it didn’t help. My current employer does not literally block these site , but oddly I find myself prohibited in dabbling in the art of procastination and e-schmoozing due to a steady diet of too much work.

I would love to read so and so’s 100th survey bulletin of 2008, look at pictures of someone’s new apartment, and perhaps say some deragatory comments to the friends I miss most. If only one could get paid for being the prom king of myspace or facebook.

But what bothers me most besides not having the time, is the actual direction of both these social networking platforms. I initially thought when Fox purchased myspace in 2005, that the website would a) run better b) restrict shady myspacers c) get a better user interface

Regardless of connection speed, processor, or browser,  myspace continues to befuddle computers of all types. Browsers consistently lock up for long stretches of time as pictures and music struggle to render in what I suspect is some very shotty HTML code and underlying architecture.

Myspace continues to struggle with a variety of illegilimate accounts promoting sex, gambling, and bands that are just god awful. Although page layouts are readily available, the internal interface to update your settings are still pretty dated compared to other similar networks

.

Moving on to facebook, I have to admit there are a lot of things that I still enjoy about facebook in terms of usability and functionality. However the inundation of third party extensions and more specifically third party extentsions requests have saddled bagged my enjoyment of facebook. I am all for third party extensions as my employer promotes two website devoted to this concept for our own software, but every day I survey the new influx of odd requests and contemplate the pros and cons of adding an extension.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the extensions are pretty cool (list of 10 most installed extensions, ) but most of them are just all fluff. I don’t need extensions like the Karma, Hotness, Groupies, Speed Racer, Secret Lover-Love Notes, and Booze mail extensions.

But I am 100% in the school of thought that if you don’t like it, change the channel, look away, etc. However facebook extensions invitations have reached critical mass with usually 2-4 invitations being sent to me daily. Not only are the request frequent but they are extremely random. People I don’t really know, haven’t seen in ages, or even co workers feel the need to spread the joy that is “The Friends For Sale Extension” .

Essentially I like the idea of extra functionality on my facebook, but the onslaught of these extensions has turned into a spamming turf war for my facebook page. With my facebook time devoted to ridiculing my friends, hollering at babes, and keeping risque comments off my profile, I find myself annoyed with the continuous flow of invitations to add very niche specific extensions to an already solid product.

I’ll continue to utilize both myspace and facebook as sadly for many old friends its the only form of communication remaining. However I think it would be nice to see both platforms evolve and grow along with their Generation Y target market who are hitting the work force and are shifting their online social networking preferences.

Thats it for now. Maybe if you send me a “Grumpy Ranting Old Man” extension, I will just have to make an exception.

This has been probably my longest stretch at Bucknuts without an article. I have a couple of things in the works but am pretty focused on a magazine article I am writing for Bucknuts the Magazine focusing on the NFL transition for Ted Ginn, Anthony Gonzales, Antonio Pittman, and Troy Smith.

I actually conducted an interview with 2006 Heisman winner Troy Smith who was gracious enough to give me 20 minutes of his time. Lots of good stuff that I am working into my article (Smith indicates he is the starter in Madden 2009 next year) . I am hoping to speak with the other 3 former Buckeyes as well.

Moving on here are some random thoughts.

-I cannot wait for this weeken’s showdown of #1 Memphis and #2 Tennessee. I heavily advocated that these two teams were undervalued in my pre season rankings article where I predicted Memphis might be headed to a cake walk season in addition to giving abnormally high ranking for Tennessee. I actually picked Tennessee to win it all in our staff predictions article.

“Ben Koo: Call me crazy but I think the Volunteers have the best mix of talent, experience, coaching, and tenacity to bring home the championship.”

Saturday’s game will be a high scoring, hotly contested, fast paced in state showdown pitting the country’s most talented team against the country’s best team suited for tournament play. Should be awesome.

- Kelvin Sampson will be fired. He can’t dance his way out of this. Too much evidence against him + a track record of documented cheating. ESPN.COM had a poll on Sampson’s fate and despite their being 4 different options, all 50 states has 0ver 50% of voters opting to fire Sampson. Incredibly Indiana was one of the states most in favor of letting him go. Indiana is too classy of a institution to tolerate his BS. (Interesting side note, my final school decision came down to osu or IU. Phew! that was a close one)

- Speaking of Indiana basketball, I have to say that watching Eric Gordon has been awesome. Time will tell if the NBA High School rule is a good thing, but I really think its been successful thus far. Seeing guys like Oden, Durant, Conley Jr, Mayo, Gordon, Beasly, Love, and Rose get one year under the belts at the collegiate level before going pro is good thing for all parties involved. NBA teams get a better feel for who they are drafting. NBA fans are more familiar with the leagues newest additions thanks to a year at the collegiate level. College programs are able to catch lightening in a bottle and are capable of making unexpected runs in the tourney.  Lastly I think the players benefit from allowing them to improve and fine tune their game at the collegiate level.

- Ok on to football… LSU may find themselves with a painfully sudden headache at the quarterback position. LSU the defending National Champs, have suspended the highly touted heir apparent QB, Ryan Perrilloux. Perrilloux has found himself in the doghouse multiple times due to various indiscretions. The word is that Perrilloux cleaned out his locker and might be done at LSU for good. Considering he waited 3 years as a backup and was set to take the reigns for the offense of the defending national champions, this is a judgment error on par with Maurice Clarrett and Rhett Bomar.

LSU now fans themselves in a similar position as the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners who were believed to be a national contender before losing their QB to a scandal. Similar to Oklahoma, LSU has no experience at the QB position and will be hard pressed to repeat as national or conference champs should Perrilloux not make it back to Baton Rouge.

- All has been quiet on the Terrelle Pryor front until today. Multiple articles came out indicating that Pryor was set to pick Ohio State 2 weeks ago but heeded to his father’s advice to take his time and take some more visits. There are strong indications that Michigan and Oregon are not really in play here leaving Ohio State and Penn State. Pryor will not make a decision until after basketball season and a visit to Happy Valley. However there are rumblings that Pryor is still firmly leaning towards the Buckeyes and may even pop in for a visit before the end of the basketball season. If he were to visit Columbus ahead of Penn State, I think it would be a very telling sign of where he will end up.

- With the 2008 recruiting season behind us (minus Pryor), its time to take a look at what’s on tap for 2009. Out of the 3 recruiting networks, Rivals is the only one to release a top 100. As you can see USC is off to a monster start with Texas and Florida State also off to impressive starts. Today the Buckeyes nabbed the 88th ranked player in the country in receiver Chris Fields making them the 4th school with 3 top 100 commitments according to the rivals rankings. Justin Turner and Marcus Hall are two top 30 nationally ranked Ohio recruits who the Buckeyes are honing in on.

Thats it for now….

A couple nights back I started writing the blog below, but decided not to finish it as I was not 100% sold on the idea that Kimbo Slice was a pop culture phenomena that warranted a blog. 2 days later I have seen him on ESPN for an interview and on Yahoo.com’s front page. I am now 100% sold and have finished my blog below.

Over the past few years MMA (mixed martial arts), has steadily gained traction with the US public as a viable sports entertainment option. UFC reality shows achieved good ratings and was subsequently aided by Chuck Lidell’s rise to fame.

While the UFC has steadily risen from obscurity, lurking and incubating has been the internet phenomena that is Kimbo Slice.

I first heard of Kimbo Slice a year and a half ago at my fantasy football draft. Usually considered to be someone “in the know”, the name Kimbo Slice was new to me but one that 2/3 of my friends knew well.

Kimbo Slice fought in a series of unsanctioned back yard brawls in the Miami area. All the fight footage can be found on youtube or by googling his name. In all but one of his fights the massively big and grizzly looking Slice knocks out his opponents with due diligence.His one loss is a 10 minute epic war in which he succumbs to a Boston policeman.

In short, Slice is a modern day big and black version of Lionheart who has been harnessed by the internet and in particular youtube. Oh and by the way Slice also moonlights as a body guard for a handful of internet porn sites under the Reality Kings brand.

As interest snowballed into the giant, an effort to take the Kimbo to the mainstream was unfolded. A couple months back Kimbo took on ex heavy weight boxing champ, Ray Mercer in both of their first sanctioned MMA fight. In reality this was a pushover opponent as Mercer was just picking up a paycheck and had enough star power to warrant the purchase of the Pay Per View.

Next on tap was Tank Abbot, a former UFC champion, well past his glory days. I didn’t circle the date on my calendar as I am not a MMA enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination. However flipping through the channels 2 nights back, I was surprised to find that this highly anticipated fight was actually on my normal package of channels which includes Showtime.

Slice destroyed Abbot and was unveiled to his largest audience yet. The room lit up for his fight and chants of Kimbo could be heard before, during, and after the fight.

So what’s next? Both Kimbo and his handlers probably know, he is not an elite fighter and one capable of sustaining a successful career in MMA. However every fight he wins, adds to his appeal regardless of his opponent. People like Kimbo’s story of a mysterious behemoth man who made his name on the streets, without the pedigree and tuteledge of most MMA fighters.

My best guess is that Kimbo will continue fighting a mix of guys who have name appeal but are either too old, too small, too weak, or too apathetic to put up a fight. Kimbo’s legend will continue to grow until one day Kimbo falls short of victory to a seasoned fighter who is not in their forties.

Until then look for him on ESPN doing interviews, his BET reality show, or on Yahoo Sports features.

This week I am going with this catchy satirical jingle ad by Dunkin Donuts. Its pretty obvious who they are mocking in this commercial. Starbucks is beginning to feel pressure from cheaper more basic offerings from Mcdonalds, Dunkin Donuts, and 7 Eleven.

Although I already recognized a Jackie Moon commercial, I wanted to give some love for these Old Spice Commercial as well.  The one with the girl in the locker is priceless.

Reports are surfacing that Toshiba backed HD-DVD will throw in the white towel following a string of setbacks that have unfolded in 2008.

Back in December I predicted that sagging HD DVD sales would help the biggest studio, Warner Brothers, switch becoming a Blu Ray Exclusive studio.

A month later Warner Brothers did make the switch, tilting the playing field heavily in Blu Ray’s favor.

In the following month corporate America opted to accelerate the death of HD DVD hoping to end the next gen format war.

In Late January , Woolworths, the biggest distributor of UK electronics decided to exclusively back Blu Ray with Best Buy and Netflix making similar commitments in the following weeks.

I had planned to write up something on the eminent demise this weekend only to find out that Wal Mart, the biggest domestic seller movies and players had also joined the Blu Ray party.

With the onslaught of setbacks, Toshiba will allegedly throw in the white towel early next week. Its been a fun, intriguing, and hard fought battle between Sony and Toshiba. Its been intriguing to see the corporate game of chess played with Fortune 500 companies filling up the board as all the major studios (Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Unviersal), retailers (Target, Blockbuster, Wal Mart, Best Buy, Netflix), and hardware makers (Apple, HP, Microsoft, Samsung).