In a normal week, I come up with five to ten ideas before ultimately deciding which one to explore in-depth for the weekly J-Borhood feature. Most of these ideas lack the depth to satisfy the cultured, worldly appetites of the J-Borhood faithful and thus, never see the light of day. In order to give these ideas their ten minutes of fame, I’d like to introduce a new feature on the J-Borhood…
THE MIXED PLATE!
Approximately once every blue moon (translation: whenever I’m too lazy to write a feature length article), we’ll kick off our shoes, let our hair down and enjoy a sampling of the muddled musings that meander through my mind.
No depth. No culture. Just bite sized samples to satiate the soul. Think of it as toilet reading for the mercurial sports fan.
Enjoy!
Why are the Patriots so good? Because of June Jones of course…
I learned a lot of things in the aftermath of the Patriots victory over the Colts:
- No other team in the NFL has the talent to compete against the Colts and the Patriots
- Randy Moss is the best receiver in the NFL
- Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are human, but only if you pressure them. If you can’t generate consistent pressure, turn of the lights, the party’s over. (It was not a fluke that Brady struggled in the first half when Freeney and Mathis put a clinic on the Patriots offensive line; nor was it a fluke that Manning struggled in the fourth quarter when Belicheck’s varied blitz package confused the Colts front five.)
- Bill Belicheck learned offensive football from June Jones
That’s right. The best coach in modern football learned his offense from the coach of the Hawaii Warriors.
Back when June Jones was the coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Bill Belicheck invited the Falcons to practice his Cleveland Browns for two weeks before the season started every year. The reason? “Because he couldn't stop us, and he kind of always wanted to know and watch how we did things,” said Jones.
If you didn’t believe June Jones was an amazing football coach yet, believe it now.
Check out the full story here: UH's Jones says Pat's offense looks Warrior-like
Steve Phillips is a moron
Granted, this isn’t exactly news. I’m not going out on limb when I claim that the general manager who gave up two of the top five young players in baseball (Jose Reyes and David Wright) for a crapulous Jose Cruz Jr. and grandfatherly Roberto Alomar and swapped Scott Kazmir for Victor “my best pitch is a meatball” Zambrano is a fool. It’s like saying that Isaiah Thomas is a mediocre GM, George W. Bush is a subpar orator, or Custer was a poor general. But, this Tuesday on Sportscenter, his idiocy reached new heights. When asked about how the Dodgers, who have needs at third base, center field and starting pitcher, should rebuild their team in the offseason, Phillips gave these suggestions:
- Sign Alex Rodriguez or trade for Miguel Cabrera to play third base
- Move Juan Pierre to left field and sign Andruw Jones or Torii Hunter for center field
- Trade for Johan Santana
I think my IQ dropped ten points by the time he finished talking. On the bright side, I realized that I’m overqualified to be a baseball analyst for ESPN.
Soul Vibration rocks my world
Check out the best band you’ve never heard of. I’ll let them explain themselves in their own words:
“We don't play emo, we don't spend hours putting on make-up before shows, we don't have journals of our feelings, we don't play downstrokes for every song, we don't have techno breakdowns, we don't have pretentiously long song titles, we don't fake british accents, we don't get knocked out by bottles thrown at us on stage, and we don't dress in clothes that none of our fans can afford, and for none of this do we apologize. We believe in extended guitar solos, drummers with more cymbals than he has fingers, bass playing that doesn't just double the guitar, and singing with all your heart and soul. We're Soul Vibration.
Live Love...Love Life...Play Music”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Listen to the music of Soul Vibration here: http://www.myspace.com/EnjoySoulVibration
The word of the day is…multifarious?
Who says that jocks are dumb? These days, keeping up with the modern advancements in college football requires a PHD in astrophysics, an MD with a specialization in infectious diseases, a law degree, graduate study in mathematics, business savvy and, apparently, a Nobel laureate quality vocabulary. The computer system that provides the rankings used to calculate College Football’s BCS rankings is run by a group of intellectuals whom the Honolulu Advertiser describes as, you guessed it, multifarious.
I consider myself a fairly loquacious scholar, possessor of an above average lexicon and, while at times wordy, poignantly verbose. But, multifarious? I don’t have any idea what to do with something that is farious, let alone many times over. I guess that’s the price of doing business in the multibillion dollar industry of College Football. If that trend continues I’ll need a graduate degree in jargon just to keep up.
Read the full article here: Multifarious mix runs BCS computers
The Big Ten is a sub par conference…in Division I-AA!
So far this year, the Michigan Wolverine football team lost to Division I-AA Appalachian State, the Minnesota football team lost to Division I-AA North Dakota State, the Michigan State basketball team lost to Division I-AA Grand Valley State and the Ohio State basketball team, last year’s NCAA runner-up, lost to Findlay. (That’s right, Findlay. No word if that’s Finday U, Findlay State or Findlay Tech.)
For those keeping score at home, that’s Division I-AA 4, Big Ten 0.
Does anyone really believe that Ohio State is the best football team in the country?
You heard it here first, Ohio State is going to get trounced in the national championship game for the second year in a row.
A sterling endorsement for the Hawaii educational system
Responding to a recent report that seven Hawaii public schools were classified as “dropout factories”, for having graduation rates below 60%, the state Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen issued a statement saying “Hawaii ninth-graders tend to fall behind and inflate freshman enrollment. So comparing the number of freshman and seniors at any given year to determine dropout and graduation rates is misleading.”
That makes sense. The Department of Education isn’t to blame, we just have terrible teachers.
Real classy, Greg.
Read the full story here: 7 Oahu schools ‘dropout factories’
David Stern crawls out from under a rock…
Last week, David Stern issued a statement chastising the Knicks for mismanagement, in light of their recent sexual harassment scandal. In addition, Stern declared that the holocaust was a display of poor judgment, cigarettes are detrimental to your health and the world is round.
Read the full article here: David Stern criticizes the Knicks for bad management
Further proof that Colt Brennan is the man
If you needed any more proof that Colt Brennan is a stud, check out his latest blog entry for the New York times. Rather than wasting time self-aggrandizing, Brennan takes the opportunity to extol his wide receivers. Truly, a class act.
Read the full article here: Brennan and the Dread Heads
Eric Andre is the funniest comedian you’ve never heard of…
Much like with Soul Vibration, I’ll let Eric Andre do the talking.
Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, dolphin beats shark
In case you needed another reason why dolphins are the coolest animals ever, check out this story about a pod of dolphins that saved a surfer from a Great White Shark. In honor of their undeniable awesomeatude (that’s right, awsomeatude, pronounced awe-summa-tude), I hereby declare dolphins to be the official animal of the J-Borhood.
[Special note to my family: Don’t worry. Sophie (my dog) is the official pet of the J-Borhood. A much more prestigious title. Just don’t tell the dolphins that…]
Read the full article here: Dolphins rescue surfer from shark
That about wraps it up for the inaugural J-Borhood mixed plate, all rights reserved (Not really, but it sounds more pretentious that way). For those keeping score at home, we covered football, baseball, basketball, Colt Brennan, music, comedy, sharks, dolphins and the Hawaiian educational system. Some would call it crazy, I’d just call it another day in the J-Borhood.
Ciao!
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