One of the highlights of a Formula 1 weekend beyond the race itself are the related concerts in the F1 Rocks series. Not every race is special enough to have one, but the lineups tend to be huge.

The inaugural Indian Grand Prix this weekend was supposed to feature a Metallica concert on Friday night, but it was cancelled for technical reasons. It was going to be the band’s first concert ever in India. A couple of the F1 Rocks events have had their share of problems: Eminem’s concert for the 2010 Brazilian race went on as planned in the rain, and David Guetta had to go on an hour late because of software problems at Valencia this year.

Luckily, Lady Gaga was also booked for Sunday night after the race  so all was not lost. I was honestly glad to find out the concerts were not together, because Metallica and Lady Gaga is something I’m pretty sure everyone expects only in mashups.

Several drivers took to Twitter to express their excitement for Gaga’s concert. In the case of Jenson Button, this might be a little too much.

For those unfamiliar with John Button, the father of the 2009 world champion, the man is never seen without a pink shirt or a giant smile. But Lady Gaga fan? I hope he made his son join him! Rubens Barrichello retweeted this with a “me too,” but that wasn’t his last mention!

Rubens Barrichello: precious enough to let you know where he’ll be at all times.

Lady Gaga also happened to be performing in Melbourne around the time of the Australian Grand Prix in 2010, so a few lucky driver fans have seen her a couple times now. One of those men is Heikki Kovalainen. Despite his claimed preference for Nightwish, he is clearly a Gaga fan. Don’t deny it, Heikki. Embrace your guilty pleasure.

Best of all, Heikki even provided a quick review of the show.

It’s only fair to assume seven time world champion Michael Schumacher joined him for this concert too. I have a feeling some of the boys may fess up on their attendance soon enough!

F1 Rocks currently has plans for Melbourne and Malaysia next season. Since this event started with the first Singapore Grand Prix, it could be likely we see one of these big concerts with the 2012 United States Grand Prix, just over a year away. If anything, the Austin, Texas, location means there’s music all around anyway. Sometimes you just need more than the sound of 18,000 RPM.

…And the NBA lockout has claimed its first victim. 

Earlier this morning, TMZ reported  that Kim Kardashian is filing for divorce from NBA player Kris Humpries.  The couple’s marriage lasted all of 72 days.  Can’t say I’m too surprised, but wow, 72 days?  A little over 2 months.  Impressive.  Guess that lockout lasted longer than Kim anticipated? 

Now Kris Humphries can go back to being completely irrelevent.  And we’ll be forced to endure another Kim Kardashian E! Special.  Divorce hurts everyone, folks.

For baseball fans everywhere, it should be no surprise who brings motivation this Monday!

I bring you David Freese!

Freeser has had an amazing postseason for the Cardinals. He finished his NLCS and World Series MVP performance with a .397 average, 5 homers and 21 RBI. One of those 5 homers came as a walk-off blast to center  in Game 6 to finally give the Cardinals a 10-9 victory over the Rangers in 11 innings.

Yes, the young man from Lafayette High is taking it all in stride as he sits on top of the world  in the Gateway City and Cardinal Nation.

Cardinal Nation, of course, just hopes for more celebrations….

And, most importantly David… Keep smiling!

Miranda Remaklus is a contributor to The Pulse and Aaron Miles’ Fastball. She’s also senior reporter for Aerys Offsides. And she has a major crush on Freeser if you can’t tell! Follow her on Twitter, @missmiranda. 

On Thursday October 27th, Madison Square Garden finally reopened its doors to hockey fans after major renovations forced the New York Rangers to play their first seven games on the road. The updates to the lower bowl are part of multi-year updates being done in the NHL and NBA off-seasons, while the New York Liberty played their WNBA games in nearby New Jersey.

Extensive work in this phase began in April, and the lower areas of the arena have practically been gutted and re-done completely. Some of the features of the “new” Garden are updated locker rooms, concourse areas, retractable seats for NBA games (whenever those may start up again!), and the new architecture I’m most excited about: catwalks above the ice so fans can watch the action overhead. Lord knows I can’t afford season tickets, but I feel better about my vantage point when you throw the word “catwalk” in there.

While the overhaul is being touted as a “transformation”, Madison Square Garden is no stranger to complete upheaval, and is certainly old enough to need some facelifts. The current location is also known as “MSG IV”, and opened in 1968 after historic Pennsylvania Station was demolished in favor of moving the rails to below the city.  It’s the oldest active sports facility in the New York metro area, but the previous Gardens were pretty impressive too. The first two were located at Madison Square (hence the name, of course), but the latter two were moved farther uptown to 49th street and 31st streets respectively.

We’ve previously looked at this Garden’s more memorable moments. This week, let’s flashback to the first three versions of the World’s Most Famous Arena:

MSG I, circa 1876

MSG II, circa 1890

MSG III, circa 1940

Typically when we evaluate an athlete on Twitter, we do so by taking a wide variety of his or her tweets and rating them. Today we’re changing it up.

This is a conversation that was had last night by Phoenix Coyotes forward Paul Bissonnette, or BizNasty as he’s known, and Chicago Blackhawks forward Daniel Carcillo, or CarBomb. These two quite literally made me laugh out loud with this exchange.

You’re welcome.

Ann is the Senior St Louis Blues Reporter at You’re My Boys, Blues. You can follow her on Twitter @annabelle151. It’s recommended to be ready for CAPS ATTACKS and tweets about BACON if you do so.

Have you always wanted a NBA championship ring but aren’t 7 feet tall with the ability to play ball? Well here’s your chance to cash in on someone else’s glory days! Dr. J (or Julius Erving for the non-NBA fan) is auctioning off his 1983 championship ring as well as other sports memorbilia from his career. There are other sports-related items up for bid, such as the red shorts Muhammed Ali wrore during ’The Fight of the Century” and the last bat Lou Gehrig hit a home run with. The bidding will be online from October 28th to November 19th via SCP Auctions.

This, ladies and gents, is another unfortunate case wherein an outstanding athelete has to sell his legacy in order to stay out of financial ruin. Julius invested in a golf course in 2009, owes a tad bit of money (over 200k) and is now being sued. It’s not confirmed the problems with money are the reason for the auction, but one is allowed to assume how they will.

So now that you’re frothing at the mouth for this ring, let me tell you that the minimum bid is $25,000. Yes. $25,000 for a single ring. Makes me want to see how much I’d get for my class ring (probably $1).

In the end, I hope it works out well for him and some superfan has the dough and the heart to buy the ring and give it back to him. Only time will tell!

I know this is taking us back, oh, fifteen years or so, but a recent conversation with a friend reminded me of this movie. You’re welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D70cPxYHb0

Am I the only one who highly doubts Shaq knows what “avaricious” means? No? Ok then.

Another week has come and gone on the shiny floor over at Dancing With The Stars, and another soldier has fallen. Before we get to the voting capabilities of America, let’s review the hour full of suspense shall we?

J.R. & Karina’s Quickstep was a brilliant choice for the encore performance to start the show off. And to follow it up with a performance from Kristin Chenoweth? ABC might just make a fan out of me yet!

As if to prove wrong my prediction from yesterday, Ricki Lake and J.R. Martinez did not end up in the bottom two, which only served raised my hopes of seeing Chaz finally go home. Instead of finding out right away, we were treated to another awesome performance from Corbin Bleu. I may just be in love with the Broadway-ness of everything . We’ll see if I still love the show this much next week.

There was also a group of small kids dancing with Lacey and Mark. A-DOR-A-BLE.

Maks apologized… sorta kinda… and just in case we didn’t remember what happened yesterday and were confused about what Maks was apologizing for, it was re-aired.

Yep, still super awkward.

But I’ll take the awkward because…

CHEESE AND RICE, CHAZ FINALLY WENT HOME.

Broadway week truly was the best idea ever. Ever.

Good-night!

If you missed Dancing With The Stars last night, you missed one of the best group numbers I’ve ever laid witness to on this show.

You also missed Broadway week with performances from Kristin Chenoweth’s amazeballs voice that she must have had surgically implanted in her, as well as the cast of Sister Act – no, not Whoopie… the Broadway cast. If you want to see Whoopie come over to my house, I have Sister Act on VHS. Bring your VCR.

Just as I was about to give the producers a lecture about not granting dear Carson some sort of stay of execution strictly for his jazz hands and the pure entertainment value he’d bring to Broadway week, he popped up on my screen and was announced as the creative director of the group number! I may or may not have let out an audible yelp. May or may not have. Well played ABC, well played.

But let’s get to the competitive dancing shall we?

The Good:

• J.R. Martinez & Karina – In which Carrie Anne said “Fosse would be proud”. She wasn’t kidding, J.R.’s footwork was incredible. It helps that they were also dancing to music from the best musical ever. Chicago!
• Ricki Lake & Derek – The judges seemed to think they were as amazing as J.R. was, but from the screen at home they were a little out of sync during some portions of their dance, thus, not as amazing. And then Brooke with the hyphenated last names basically called Ricki fat while they waited for their scores. That was a nice touch.
• Nancy Grace & Tristan – This is the first dance of theirs I’ve liked all season. Go Nancy!
• Honorable mention to every team that incorporated choreography from the musical that their music came from into their dance.

The Not Good:

• Hope Solo & Maks – I love Hope. We all love Hope. But we’re amongst friends here right? Right? I’m gonna say this and then we’re never going to bring this up again. It looked like Hope was wandering around the dance floor with an afghan on waiting for the music to stop so she could get back to reading her book while wondering why Maks was dancing about.
• Rob Kardashian & Cheryl – It wasn’t terrible… Rob just didn’t seem to have even half as much energy as Cheryl did. To be quite frank, I’ve seen better from Rob. And is Khloe getting paid by ABC to yell things from the audience each week? Can somebody check the contracts and get back to me? Super annoying.
• David Arquette & Kym- Why is Kym always with the David’s? Other than being confused by the fact that David looked to be performing in the same suit he wore to dinner earlier in the night, which didn’t seem to have anything to do with their dance, I agree with the judges assessment of their performance being “rough around the edges”.
• Honorable mention to Maks for lashing out at the judges for giving Hope a negative review. I happen to agree with him, but that was awkward even for those of us watching from home.

The Bad:

• Chaz Bono & Lacey – I’m gonna need for Lacey not to wear seizure inducing pants in rehearsal anymore. These two are also the only couple who didn’t do a lift in the group dance. That didn’t go unnoticed. On the up side, Chaz’s footwork has gotten better?

Tune in tonight at 9pm for the results show where if the past is any sign of the future Ricki and J.R. will end up in the bottom two and everyone will pretend to be shocked like they didn’t spend all of last nigh voting for Chaz.

Blackhawks Magazine is a funny publication — it’s like a legitimate sports rag had a baby with “Tiger Beat.” Articles about the Blackhawks’ history and scouting the rookie class co-mingle with ridiculousness like John Scott playing Dear Abby and giving out advice (not kidding) or learning about Snarples, which is apparently some sort of Canadian card game with confusing rules (also not kidding).

Every time there’s a new issue, I have to go pick one up. It would be my Blackhawks guilty pleasure if I were capable of feeling guilt over something pleasurable.

The Blackhawks were asked to fill out their yearly questionnaires, and their answers appear in the magazine (along with a picture of them modeling the latest in Blackhawks attire, of course). This year, they asked the players what their “pump-up jam” is. Here are most of their answers. (None of them said “Pump Up The Jam,” which makes me a little disappointed.)

» Continue reading “Tune In Tuesday: The Blackhawks’ Pump-Up Jams”