Do you ever look at pictures of food on your phone in a restaurant before ordering?

A recent experience I had while bartending: After intently scrutinizing the menu for a few minutes, a women asks me if an item is good or not.  It just so happens to be one of my favorites, but when I tell her that she says she needs a little more time to decide.

I walk away, but notice out of the corner of my eye that she has whipped out her smartphone and is now looking at a photo of said menu item online.  When I return she asks me about something else that I don't enjoy as much.  I answer honestly and the process repeats itself.  Eventually she orders the not-as-good thing.

When the food arrives she takes a very long time to eat.  She says it's great, but I can tell it's not as good as she hoped it was, which is what I told her in the first place.

The moral of the story?  You're not buying a new car here.  It's just lunch, a pretty low-risk situation--listen to the person who knows what they're talking about.

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Celtics vs. Lakers: Do you still get excited?

The Lakers are in town to play the Celtics tonight.  I'm honestly shocked that my tickets actually sold for more than face value.  Boston is 5-11, L.A. is 5-14.  The Celtics have lost 17 straight games vs. Western Conference teams, including 0-7 this season.  And despite their terrible record, the Lakers are 4-1 against Eastern Conference teams.

Yesterday Rajon Rondo and Kobe Bryant had breakfast together at the Paramount in Beacon Hill, just a few doors over from where I used to live.  Here's my analysis:

#Kobe & #Rondo eating breakfast together means Rondo is going to the Lakers. Just like Kevin Love's visit meant he was coming to Boston...
— Mark Vandeusen (@LucidSportsFan) December 4, 2014

Earlier this week I wrote an article for Hoops Habit, Stat Central: The Top 5 Most Efficient Scorers In The NBA This Season.  Neither Kobe nor Rondo comes anywhere near cracking the list.  Kobe is missing shots at an alarming rate and Rondo can't hit anything lately, he's scored just two points in each of the Celtics last three games.

Also on Hoops Habit, check out Is John Wall Now Better Than Derrick Rose?  

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This CougarLife.com commercial is real and on TV? Wow.

Recently I saw this commercial while watching sports highlights on TV late at night:



Apparently the actress is a porn star who goes by the name "Julia Ann."  Yes, it was on cable and very late at night, but the fact that this is ad real and on television still blows my mind a little bit.


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Did CBS take my advice about making NFL broadcasts more fantasy-friendly?

Recently I wrote a blog suggesting the NFL create a "fantasy football" app for its TV broadcasts that identifies players with the ball.  This would make it a lot easier to know right off the bat whether or not one of your guys just made a play.

While watching the Patriots-Packers game this past Sunday, I noticed something I hadn't seen before:

From time to time CBS listed all the offensive players on the field who might get the ball.  While this isn't quite as helpful as my suggestion, it's easier to do, much less intrusive for the people who aren't interested, and clearly a step in the right direction.  So, thanks for listening* CBS.

*Disclaimer: It's more than likely CBS has been doing this for a while and I only noticed it now because the idea was fresh on my mind.  But until told otherwise, I'm going to believe some high-up executive at the network likes to read my blog and suggested they make an attempt to implement my plan.


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How to do math like Texans QB Ryan Fitzpatrick's son

Houston Texans journeyman quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick graduated from Harvard.  After a career-best day in which he threw six touchdown passes, in his postgame press conference Fitzpatrick was more interested in showing off the brain on his eight-year-old son Brady (jump ahead to the 35-second mark):



The kid is clearly a math wiz, but the problem was not actually as near-impossible to solve as most people might think.  While it does require some quick addition and multiplication, it's also a trick--one I'm sure Fitzpatrick and his son have spent some time practicing.

With the premise that both numbers be in the 90s, Brady knows right off the bat that he's starting at 8100 (90 x 90).  Since he was given 93 and 97, he can then just add 3 + 7 to get 10, multiply it by 90, then add that 900 to 8100 for an even 9000.  All that's left is the 3 x 7 for an additional 21, and there you have it, 9021.

Yes, it's very impressive for an eight-year-old kid to calculate all that in his head in only a few seconds.  But it is also something humans are more capable of doing than they might realize.


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Why doesn't anyone on 'The Walking Dead' call the zombies 'zombies'?

Last night was the "mid-season finale" (something that is becoming weirdly popular with TV shows now, and I don't like it...) of AMC's The Walking Dead.  I'm a huge fan of the program, but one thing about it irks me: Why don't any of the characters ever refer to the zombies as "zombies"?  The phrase most commonly used is "walkers," but the terms "biters," "roamers," "creepers," "eaters" and many others have been mentioned as well.

How is it possible that every single human being in The Walking Dead manage to go their entire lives without coming across the word "zombie"?  What's the deal?  Does the show take place in some sort of alternate parallel universe that is exactly the same as ours, except for the fact that in the history of time nobody ever once wrote a book about/made a movie with zombies?

And if that's the case, it's a pretty weird coincidence that the zombie apocalypse just so happened to occur in the world that oddly enough had no prior knowledge of zombies.  Bad break for those guys I guess...

Imagine if the Twilight series refused to use the word "vampire," how annoying would that be?


RELATED: Awesome Old Song of the Week: "Zombie" by the Cranberries


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Awesome(?) New Song of the Week: "The Hanging Tree" by Jennifer Lawrence

I saw the new Hunger Games movie over the weekend (Mockingjay Part I).  It was a little boring, probably because it's only the first half of the book--how good can just the first half of any story really be?

My favorite parts were a couple scenes when unarmed citizens fought back against the "Peacekeepers."  During one of them Jennifer Lawrence sang a song called "The Hanging Tree."  It's from the book, with the lyrics written by the author, Suzanne Collins (the Lumineers helped write the music).  As I was watching I remember thinking "Huh, that song is actually kind of cool."

Apparently other people agree.  It just debuted at No. 29 on the British pop charts, and Billboard Magazine expects "The Hanging Tree" to crack the top 40 here in the U.S. when the latest numbers are revealed on Wednesday.  Here's a movie trailer with the song in the background:



And for super Hunger Games nerds, the complete song:



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