At Least I Know What Mackenzie and Bsmoked Turkey Want for Christmas

Mackenzie still can't quit talking about last night's big fight between the Nuggets and Knicks, which frankly I could give two shits about, primarily because I think Isiah Thomas staged the whole thing and roped golden boy Carmelo Anthony into some of Zeke's Bad Boy ways. It's gotten some pushed back in favor of today's NFL action. Which is fine with me, fights in the NBA have been around forever and this one got big attention this morning primarily because it was in New York. But Mac can't give up the fact that this is it for Thomas. I doubt it, look at the guy's history. He's a fucking cock roach and is seemingly going to outlast everything. But it'll give Dan Patrick a lot to talk about tomorrow on the radio, provided he's not on another one of his Johnny Carson-esque vacations.

Meanwhile, consider me guilty of once again coming late to the party. I totally bypassed last year's Rick Rubin produced Neil Diamond album, primarily because frankly I figured I had all the Neil that I need. In college -- and this ought to date us -- the only real Neil Diamond best of set was this cheesy two disc set that had one disc of horrible live versions of some of Neil's best early work, and one disc of studio versions of his bad later work, including the ET inspired "Heartlight". But since then, all of Neil's stuff has been brought out in many compilations, so if Bmoked Turkey -- who was so upset that he couldn't find this back in college -- needs to hear "Solitary Man" or "Cracklin Rosie" the way they were intended (which in reality, is on LP in MONO), he and everyone else can do so. But I finally took a shot on the Rick Rubin disc, called "12 Songs". Rubin encouraged Neil to do a bunch of stripped down versions of stuff I've never heard before. The one song I've been playing over and over again is "I'm On To You", which sounds like something David Chase should use over the closing credits over one of the final 9 episodes of The Sopranos. Neil should stick with Rubin, ala Johnny Cash, going into his final years. Neil will forever sell out crowds in Omaha and any other market he wants doing his cheesy "We coming to America" Vegas like shows. But this is bringing Neil full circle. And I'm sure Bsmoked is going to make me email him an mp3 of "I'm On To You", just like I did with the original Fleetwood Mac version of "Landslide." I don't even want to tell him that Neil does a great cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" from the "Love Songs" compilation. It's been OK to admit to liking Neil Diamond for a while now (even after the God awful movie Saving Silverman). Rick Rubin could continue to give Neil the Johnny Cash treatment. Maybe someday Jason Biggs could actually play Neil in a biopic called "Touching You, Touching Me."

Finally, I know Deadspin has been rather congratulatory about this, but Kissing Suzy Kolber was named the best sports blog of 2006. Kiss Me Suzy is a great website (if only for putting up pictures of Sports Illustrated writer Peter King's daughter earlier in the year). They easily have the best NAME for a sports blog for my money. I'll continue to go there every chance I get online, but I hope that they realize that Deadspin made them, sort of like how they made this website. We're nothing without Deadspin. According to Kissing Suzy Kolber, There was a call for nominations early in November for all of the categories. There were around 4,500 nominations overall for the various categories. I'm guessing that Bill Callahan threw our name into the hat at least once.