You didn't think we'd end with anything other than an "Alison Brie type of day" did you?
More Alison Brie photos can be found here. And of course, my favorite screen capture from the show Community. Please watch that show so she can stay on my TV. Doubt the power of Ms. Brie? Watch her transformation at the 1:40 mark of this video. This site is pretty awesome too.
One final reminder: SportsBubbler will still be around for several more days but I need to focus on getting that done, rather than blogging. So please come back to Bubbler to read the blogs that do a better job than I do.
"Lost" had me saying 'What the F' is going on?" several times, but that's what makes it such a damn fine show.
iPad Equals Nachos.
More on Rip Torn.
Today is also the day that music died.
Tom Izzo said it best, last night was "An old-fashion whooping." The well rested Badgers who had been shooting poorly over the last 3 games, were on fire last night. The Badgers took control right from the start and never looked back. Bo Ryan owns Izzo at the Kohl Center and Izzo owns Ryan in Final Four rings. (Really, as a Marquette grad you really think I wouldn't take at least one pot shot at Bo on the way out?)
Kudos to Yooper Nick Baumgartner from Iron River who is headed to the Olympics. (via the Polish Pickle)
Here's my attempt to not sound like Stuart Smalley.......
First off, I've been working for Journal Communications now for 12 years. I started off as a overnight weekend DJ at WKTI when I was still in college at Marquette. Then I moved down the hall to work at TMJ and produced Jeff Wagner's radio show for many years. People still to this day know me as "Young Dan". Jeff is truly the nicest guy in radio. I also produced the Packers radio game broadcasts on Sundays for many years. It gave me chance to work with some of the best in the business like Dennis Krause and Wayne Larrivee. Several years ago at a Journal Christmas party Wayne Larrivee told me about this website called "WithLeather.com" and I was quickly hooked on sports blogs. I then went into sales at WTMJ until someone asked me, "What do you do when you're not selling?" I responded with the obvious answer of "sports". Hell, I even sent a picture I took at the College World Series to With Leather that got posted.
Now backtrack a little bit, so a couple years prior I got this. Because of the high survival rate and my young age I wasn't terribly worried, but still, the word 'cancer' in any form scares the bejesus out of me. So, I wanted to try something work related to what I love to do with my friends, talk about sports. But I didn't want to be a beat reporter. They're a dying breed. I'm a huge sports fan and as someone who loved Deadspin, With Leather, the now-defunct Daily Quickie on ESPN and the now-defunct Wisconsin Sports Bar. I felt that road would be an interesting route to take and luckily for me the Journal was in the works of building a site like that. I was also amazed at the creativity of Dennis York that I thought we could try pull something off like that too. Speaking of which, I'm having beers with Dennis York tonight at the MU game.
We did a lot of things pretty well, but obviously we did plenty of things wrong too. The guy who I worked with to build this site, Jim Ganzer, had a good idea. Take the Scout.com philosophy and make it localized for all the teams in Wisconsin. Sure we disagreed at times, I wanted it more to be like a blog and he wanted it as a news-y with postgame stories site. In the end, I had the Daily Drink and we worked together on the rest. Did we try to do too much too fast? Maybe. I still think together we did a damn fine job considering how we had one arm tied behind our back.
I'd by lying if I didn't say I felt that some in this building were rooting for our failure. We had to fight too hard just to get the simplest things done, way too many e-mails went unanswered and the failure of some to even acknowledge our existence in this building was beyond frustrating. We did what we could, but in the end, it didn't matter. The site wasn't making money and the economy didn't help our cause. When your website is the 3rd or 4th option for a sales person, it isn't going to get done.
We also started up this site at a time when the big dogs starting limiting how much you can cover online. The NFL, MLB and NBA have really cracked down on what websites can do content wise, with limits on audio and video that are ridiculous. I think the MLB policy is you can't have postgame audio posted for longer than 24 hours from when you recorded it. So the media goes into the locker room and asks the questions, but since it's on stadium grounds, reporters don't have a right post that audio. Instead of all their info coming via the news outlets like Journal Sentinel or Wisconsin State Journal, the teams are now becoming the news source. The Brewers want you to come to Brewers.com and the Packers want you to come to Packers.com for all your news and information. They don't want you going anywhere else for your news. They set limits on what others can do with video and audio and then they post it all on Packers.com, even though its the reporters who are asking the questions. I don't like that policy one bit.
Ok back to Bubbler. We found some great writers and built some great fan blogs. I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done and I hope you've enjoyed some of the writers we've found. Our top blogs, Railbird Central, Bernie's Crew (with help from Junkball Blues and Between the Green Pillars) and Admirals Short Shifts are going to continue on at the new JSOnline page that's I've built. Others you can find on their new locations like BobBoozerJinx.
I've never been a great writer, but that wasn't the point. My goal was to entertain and provide an outlet to fans to discuss the topics of the day - sports and/or entertainment. I hope I was able to do that. I've meet some great people along the way like klwillis45 (the DD's first 'fan') and people I feel I at least know a little about, crichar3, BrewTownBoozer, brbutler, burniebrewer. rdeglow, coach and MushroomCloudMoFo (a great name) and many others I'm probably forgetting. Post-it Note Paul was a huge help as he knew more about sports blogs than I did and told me what I was doing right or wrong. Plus he kept telling me, "you gotta have more babes with big knockers on the site" So you can thank him for that. And thanks to all the readers who never commented, but showed up on my pageviews count. Your readership was greatly appreciated.
Thanks to all the writers who raised the bar for content in the Drink such as: Winks, Christian Schneider, Stix, Brew Town Beat, Rattler Radio, Chuckie Hacks, Right Field Bleachers, Railbird Central and Brew Crew Ball.
For the time being, the best place you can find me now is on Twitter @SportsBubbler. If I end up writing somewhere else, that's where you'll find out. I'll be posting links and such on my twitter account on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to miss doing this, but I won't miss getting up at 4am anymore. Who will fill the speck of a void that the Daily Drink leaves? I'm not sure but I know the guys at PocketDoppler.com are going to give it a shot. I hope they can pull it off.
For those wanting to know where I get most of my stuff, here's my links: BuzzFeed, Fark, Warming Glow, Film Drunk - the rest just came from readers like Safford and Son sending me good stuff. All my sports links will be posted on the new JSOnline page I've created.
As always we close with a music video but unfortunately I couldn't find a embeddable version. So, I just have to send you link to a very fitting closing song.
One last note - Life is too short to drink shitty beer. Find a good brew and enjoy. You can always find me at halftime of MU games at the Irish Bar by section 208 drinking a Smithwicks or a Guinness. Stop on by.
I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight if I didn't thank Mrs Daily Dink for putting up with me looking at half-naked women and watching sports all the time for the past 2+ years. It's gonna be nice going back to just watching games and not wondering how I'm going to write about it the next morning.
The lovely interwebs is much like TV in the 50's, it has a chance to be great.
Ahhhh who the hell am I kidding. This is what you came for - b00bs, b00bs, b00bs and b00bs.