And I'm back. I highly recommend going to China - it's a nation undergoing vast changes and is on the brink of Superpower status... for the upteenth time in its history. But I can't really recommend taking a tour, although I don't think you could see three cities (Beijing, Xian and Shanghai) for such a cheap cost doing it on your own. That was worth it, but the massive quantities of wasted time in factory 'tours' was nearly unbearable. You see more with a tour, but in a way you definitely see less.

Almost every sign of any importance is in English as well as Mandarin, and there will always be someone speaking English in any of the heavily touristed areas. Really, I was stunned by this. It's not much different than visiting, say, Italy, from a purely tourist perspective. With enough preplanning and research you really could travel to China on your own and have a great vacation.

Plus you get to take every price and divide by 8 to get the cost in dollars. That is fun.

Hey I can post from China! I'm in Beijing right now and have to fill up another 20 minutes of internet time. It's strange; blogger.com is owned by google so they're both under the same account, but the computer I'm using is English so google looks fine, but blogger is all Chinese. Luckily the site layout is the same.

It's Sunday morning right now, but late night Saturday back in LA. We just took a walk while waiting for our tour to begin and we bought a gatorade, a tea drink and a beer for US $1. I can get used to this. We're rich.

Got about 2 hours of sleep on the plane, which took off at 2 AM Saturday morning. I feel fine right not but I'm scared I'm going to crash in a few hours while at the Summer Palace.

Probably won't be any more posts til I'm back.

I apologize for the lack of posts recently - I usually write stuff while 'working' but this damn job has been keeping me busy lately. It's going to be bad for a while longer (I'll be in China all next week, thankfully on vacation).

The CD is nearly done. It's almost there. I'm meeting with a producer on Friday to go over my mixes and discuss mastering, so it will be out the door shortly after I get back from my trip.

In other news, I'm going to pull a Simmons and declare an NBA general managership my dream job. Any fans out there (either of you) who become a billionnaire or inherit a team please consider me for the position. I am unequivically sure I could do a better job than Danny Ferry. No question, no hesitation. I would be a better GM.

Matt Barnes is practically begging for a team right now. He's not getting any offers despite a fantastic season. Why? Because he averaged 9.6 points a game. He didn't reach double figures. So all his other contributions - rebounding, lack of turnovers, etc., are ignored because of this one fact.

Brevin Knight, whose contract was unexpectedly bought out by the Bobcats, is also still teamless. True, he's had injury issues the past two years, but when healthy he's a top 7 PG. No joke. But like Barnes, he doesn't score a lot, so the Cavs could get him for cheap.

The Cavs' main issues are both guard positions. If only there were effective, affordable players available...


**Update - the Bibby trade is dead! The Kings (clearly a horrendously-run franchise) signed Mikki Moore to a 3-year, $18 million contract! That's worse than if the Cavs' had traded Gooden for Bibby!

Nooooo, the Cavs are trying to acquire Mike Bibby again. They are thinking of trading Gooden for him.

The trade would look like this:

Gooden (young, incredibly cheap, rock solid power forward)
Damon Jones (for salary purposes)

for

Bibby (old, expensive, half-decent point guard)

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything agains Bibby and he's certainly better than any PG we currently have (the jury's still out on Gibson). But we have a tremendous frontcourt in Z, Gooden and Varejao (it looks like we'll be able to keep him). Lose Gooden and we're stuck with a heavy dose of Donyell Marshall and Dwayne Jones (?). Would the increase at the PG spot be worth the decrease in production from the frontcourt? No way. Absolutely no way. If this happens, and it is the major deal of the offseason for the Cavs, there is no freaking way they're making the NBA Finals again next year.

Well, they're not going to make it again with the team as it stands either.

Frankly, shooting guard should be our main concern. We have a perceived asset in Sasha Pavlovic, who really doesn't help the team much. Involving him in a trade could be potentially lucrative. I'm thinking Mo Williams or Matt Barnes.

For a team that is already going to be over the salary cap I really don't see how making a marginal upgrade at PG is worth 28 million over two years. If we're willing to do that then we should mitigate the cost and use our midlevel exception to get Barnes. I get giddy thinking about our starting 5 if we played him at the 2. Also, did we even pursue Mo Williams? I never heard the Cavs mentioned as an interested party and he's willing to take less money to go to a contender. And he can play both PG and SG.

I'm glad I'm going to be in China starting next weekend. I don't want to be around for the 'Bibby to Cleveland' headline.

I feel like I missed the internet boat... like I was born three years too late. If I was out of college in '99 I would have been salvaging gems from the dot come collapse. Instead I was oblivious to the outside world until '03 and the internet pioneers had already staked their claims (Sean Fanning, Bill Simmons, Jason Kottke etc.). I know I'm making excuses. But no one reads this thing.

Now we've been in the throes of web 2.0 for a few years now and everything is pretty and pastel. Google is a giant - I wish I had moved to San Fran instead of LA and started working for them. Again, their ascent is something I could have recognized had I been in the position to do so earlier. There's also probably something going on right now that I should jump all over but just don't know it yet. I'm sure in three years I'll know that I now actually know this 'something' is going to blow up. I just don't know it yet.

I think I lied; the CD is only going to be 15 songs. I'm still happy with that. It's just gotten to the point that finishing the thing is more important that meeting a preset quota.

The production wheels are in motion - we're looking at a nice screen printed package similar to the original Ultraviolet Effect packaging. I just can't bring myself to use a standard jewel case. Just can't do it.

It's always when you're procrastinating on one project that you find the most time to work on another. I've got a bunch of ideas for future EPs/concept albums but I... must... resist...

Hopefully one of them will manifest itself before the holidays.

I can't believe it's July 2 already... only 18 days to get the CD done.

Big day today with the NBA draft about to start in an hour. The Cavs are not in the draft at all, but there is word that they are trying to get in to draft Jared Dudley. This makes me happy, as the Wages of Wins metric has Dudley near the top of his class. Seeing as how he's predicted to go in the bottom of the first round, this would be a tremendous steal for the Cavs. Huge. Between him and Shannon Brown we might just have something at SG in the future. My Dad reports that the Ohio papers are admitting the Hughes experiment is over. This bodes well...

Yesterday's Europe post has me itching to go back. Today's the last day for the ridiculous plane ticket deal...

After the draft I'm going to post some predictions for next year. Of course, there will/should also be major trade shakedowns that will happen in the months to come that will change things. Basically I want to make predictions based on Win Score that will (hopefully) help prove the value of statistical analysis. This will be a difficult undertaking, but I accept the mantle.

If you are even remotely thinking of maybe going to Europe sometime soon, make your mind up right now. You have until tomorrow to buy round-trip tickets to Dusseldorf, Germany (via Detroit) for $615 from Northwest Airlines. I almost feel obligated to go, even though I'm already heading to China in a month. That's the deal of the year for sure.

Ironically, Dusseldorf is where we flew into last September. From there we bought a train ticket to Amsterdam, and a couple days later we started our rail pass and circled through Europe hitting Bruges, Barcelona, Arles, Vernazza, Venice, Constance, Munich, Interlaken, Bern, the Rhineland and Cologne. Absolutely the best-spent $2200 of my life. If you haven't taken a big trip like that, I really can't recommend it enough. As Mark Twain said:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
--Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

I may have posted that quote sometime earlier.

A quick recap of our stops:

Amsterdam - It wouldn't take much for me to live here. Everyone is on bikes - I mean everyone - so it's basically the antithesis of LA, where people hose off sidewalks instead of using a broom, because hey, we're in a desert and all.

Bruges - A small medieval town center is the perfect day stop if you can get to it. Huge clock tower, great brewery tour and Belgian frites (fries) with mayonnaise.

Barcelona - Mildly disappointing, probably because after the first muggy afternoon at the beach we had a monsoon to contend with. Definitely the most near-death experience as we desperately searched for a metro station for over an hour in a raging thunderstorm (turns out on the map the 'M's with a square around them mean 'museum', not 'metro'). We passed a group of people standing under metal scaffolding and seconds after turning the next corner we saw a mega-flash and heard an ear-splitting crack of thunder.

While trying to leave Spain we saw the track in front of our train get washed away by a torrent of water. This led to the day-long 'get out of Spain' game in which we spent a night on a train parked at a station. On the plus side, we teamed up with reps from the entire English-speaking world - Aussies, Brits and South Africans.

Arles - Still rainy, but a blast. We only had two days everywhere we went so small towns like this ended up being perfect. You can walk around the whole center in a day and feel like you really know the place the following day. Plus we lucked into the best hotel room of the trip with a cafe-scene view from the balcony.

Vernazza - Five tiny cliff hugging ocean towns and the high point for Mona. Nothing I say can add to the vast resources Rick Steves has compiled in his books, shows and website. If you are anywhere near Northwestern Italy on your trip, do not pass up Vernazza (and the rest of the Cinque Terre).

Venice - Duh, Venice was cool. You can take a picture of anything and it will come out good. It's fun to just walk around looking at stuff like a tourist and wishing you could stay for more than 9 hours.

Constance - I was lucky to have a high school friend (exchange student) living here that we got to stay with. He and his girlfriend drove us to...

Munich - We were here during Oktoberfest. I've had my fair share of puke sessions from drinking too much, and every time it's happened I've been hugely regretful. Well, not during Oktoberfest. We were at a table full of non-English speaking Germans, but by the third stein it didn't matter; we were best friends.

Interlaken/Switzerland - Hands down my favorite country. Just look at some pictures and imagine it being way better than you think, cause it is. Not only would I live here, I think at some point I actually will.

Rhineland - took a quick paddleboat ride down the Rhine on our last day in Europe. It's packed full of old castles and cool little riverfront towns. We had a crappy hotel in Cologne for our last night, but we were really only in it for like 4 hours.


Here's a tip - take the blankets from the plane ride with you. They were invaluable as picnic surfaces, dirty sheet covers, impromptu pillows and even as blankets on trains. Then we just left them at the last hotel.

I have become exceedingly lax in my posting dutues as of late. I blame the Cavs' loss in the NBA Finals ('loss' being a euphemism for 'strangulation') as well as my successful posting of five new songs. That and laziness.

I found an intereting new blog site called Make Your Nut. Strange name, but it's primarily a how-to site for personal finance, although it's written by a guy whose knowledge seems to come as much from his own mistakes as from theoretical practices. But it's interesting and he also posts about his first forays into gardening and on the financial benefit of travelling independently through Europe. And he has a 'finance haiku' contest going on right now - I submitted one called 'special credit card offers' (his title) and if I receive enough votes I win $10. Dead serious. Vote now.

I thought his post on European travel was a little thin; I went to Europe last year and did a tremendous amount of research before going, so I think I'm going to post about my travels for anyone else who may be interested in going. Not now, but I'll start tomorrow probably.

Before all remaining hope is shattered into a thousand fragments of plantar fascia, I wanted to post the picture above. It's the wallpaper on my computer here at work. Even after the stark reality of the past two games I still can't believe this moment happened. What a great photo. I wish I had been there.

So we're going to see a lot of boobie tonight. It's about time.

If he is as good as he could be next year, and if we can bring in a decent guard (I don't know how we'll be able to do this unless we get rid of Hughes' contract), the Cavs will become a great team. If not, they'll have trouble beating the Bulls to reach the Finals again.

But we're in the Finals now, and tonight's a big game.