tidbits

need a laugh? then check out cinncinnatti's basketball roster for a few chuckles. its good to see that there's a little reverse discrimination and that they've got their token jew in there.

i saw that dick vitale made his way into the nba. sickening. how long has he been rewinding those 3 catch phrases. god.

but by far the funniest thing i've come across in a while....

Notes on COCAN

Eurosport has been showing way too much African Cup of Nations and not enough of the Australian Open as I would like, so I thought I might as well give you my 2 cents on the African lot...

first of all what concerns us, ALGERIA- they look to be a limited, but very competent side. egypt's retarded stepdaughter if you like. There is a huge gap and contrast between the styles of the North African teams and the rest, and Algeria are no exception. They're a conservative, defensive minded, counter-attacking side. (sound familiar?) I still cant figure out how they beat Egypt, but they were able to stave them off when it counted, so they shouldn't be underestimated. That being said, they were atrocious in their first game, their best player looks like its their left back, portsmouth's belhadj, they dont have any real playmakers on the ball, and they only scored 1 goal in the group stage which was enough to limp through. they should lose to the ivory coast today, but you never know with them. and just a side note their goalless draw with angola, was probably the most sorry excuse of a football match you'll ever see.

maybe its just this competition, but EGYPT look far and away like the team best equipped to handle international football. they defend well as a unit, and they have the talent going forward. Momo Zidan is probably the best player on the continent (yeah i said it Essien), so we can count ourselves as lucky that it is algeria and not egypt we're facing.

as for the rest the usual african suspects, i just don't trust em. that means Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Nigeria. (ghana are missing too many players to be judged realistically in this tournament). Their defenses are seemingly capable of lapses at any given moment. Everyone wants to hop on the ivory coast's bandwagon, but any team with Eboue in its 11 isnt going to win a major tournament...ever. Nigeria too are a scary team. My man Odemwingue is disgusting, and should still be in france, or spain, but went to russia for the $. and obafemi martins is still the fastest man on this side of the Sahara, but its almost inexplicable this tendency these african teams have to lose their concentration, ball watch, and let whoever just waltz right through them will ultimately catch up to them and hold them back in a major tournament.

The same holds true for Cameroon,and Carlos kameni, who you figure is a legitimate keeper because he plays at Espanyol, has been guilty of some of the most outrageous keeping in the entire tournament so far. Dont trust em. Egypt to win, if not Angola, who have looked as good as anyone, and have a more (ahem) traditional keeper.
I like Egypt over Angola in the final.

how good is fabregas? (rhetorical)

what's that jussi?


Bolton weren't even all that bad in the doubleheader. And the Arsenal of the last two years wouldn't necessarily have grinded those two games out. But my oh my what a dynamic player young cesc has turned into. He's always been great on the ball, but especially lately he's been doing more "running" at people and even letting fly with his left foot from 25+, I can never remember him being more of an offensive threat. I say "running" because if you've watched fabregas at all, you'll have realized that everything he does seems to be with less-than-maximum effort, he's doing more jogging than anything.


But anyway, if we were to try and measure a footballers value, we'd have to acknowledge the ingrained subjectivity and even arbitrariness. I hate it when people come up with these lists of top 5 players in the world, because that is basically meaningless. But being the hypocrite that I am, last year, about this time, I ventured to say amongst my Partisan club-mates that no man means more to his club in the premiership than fabregas. I was met with a bunch of typical british responses subsequent to their clubs of RONALDO! and LAMPARD!, but none more adamant than the one inevitable liverpool supporter who started preaching the steven gerrard story to me like I'd never heard it before. Fair cases can be made for all these guys, and maybe even Danny Murphy, but I wonder if any of them would be in my camp after Fabregas' last month.

What is so crazy about Cesc is that he probably won't even be in Spain's starting XI in SA this summer. And he can't even really have any complaints. I'm all for country over club, but it is a bit odd that the best club player in the world won't even be in his country's XI? I think so, and I dare you to find me someone who is playing better than the Arsenal #4 right now. I still am unconvinced that Arsenal have the longevity to out-muscle Chelsea and United, but fuck it, Cesc has been superman this year, and if we keep winning games with Eduardos and Denilsons on the field, then why not?

DEREK JEETAH

isn't that the same guy?
you know the one, that bob kept on his tivo about to have a heart attack mid-derek jeter chant, screaming as if his life depended on it? looks like he doesn't take politics as seriously.

MWEENEE

Want to be an international footballer? then maybe you should move to zambia, cut up a cereal box, make a passport, and become their national team's goalie. (in all seriousness, a zambian passport is one of the most sought after of all the african passports, but that doesn't really concern us). what does concern us is this probably being the worst excuse of goalkeeping i've ever seen on television. I'm pretty sure i've seen Cao Chao but I know I've seen George Hawes make this save. Hell, Aaron Segel makes this save in his sleep, this is really buckneresque, fast forward to about 2:20 to see what I'm talking about.

Wow, mweene, wow.

landon's mexican lotto ad

never gets old

played my first game of floorball last week, (yeah, thats right, floorball) i couldnt help but be reminded of marek malik (czech), and probably the sickest goal i've ever seen. this was in like a 13-12 shootout or something crazy like that. and it was on one of the greater goalie's nicknames of all time olie the goalie.

we had a little mock shootout after the game and i tried to do something like this, lets just say it didnt come off

overdue music hunt

http://experimentaletc.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-2009-douglasdickel.html

http://bolachas.org/colleycs-top-25-of-the-year

http://bolachas.org/celtics-top-50-of-the-year

http://bolachas.org/2009-top-20-by-rufia-terno

and these three aren't even the half.

i've been off the music train for a while, so i figured i'd just wait until the end of 2009 rolled around for people's best of lists instead of sifting through endless blogs and vlogs and what nots.

all of these are rapidshare though, so i suggest having your itunes/myspace accompanying pages handy for quick sampling. so far i like the surrogates, and casiotone, the drums, port obrien, and the new phoenix isn't bad. who new that they were gonna be big when we saw them at acl in 2005 and they gave us that free itunes gift store card with a few free songs on it, (yeah that was phoenix)

THEISMAN

i dont know if any of yall ever got down on that FJM stuff, but if you do, and you know what i'm talking about then you'll appreciate me trying my hand at it here.
i dont watch many football games, but i found myself listening to an awful lot of what theisman had to say the other night in jets bengals, here are a few of the best:
on marvin lewis' decision to challenge a very dubious play that was never going to be overturned with 40 seconds left in the 1st quarter of a playoff game after he had already used and lost his first challenge:
"this is a good challenge right here. he's gonna lose it, but its still a good challenge"
thanks joe.
"What does it do to you when you don't have a kicker that can't make clutch field goals?"
and is there anything worse than watching the two line judges running like jackasses from the opposite pilons up the goaline looking at eachother all the while, waiting for the other one to throw his hands up in the air to signal the touchdown, just so he doesnt have to be the first one, even though everybody knows it was a touchdown like 10 seconds ago, and yes we have to wait for you to throw up your hands, like you are the authority here, you are the one actually scoring the touchdown and you want some approval? god i hate that.

insider baby

Oh the benefits it brings, like unparalleled US coverage, months before the world cup. I dont know if you all heard about this but that can't hurt.

Who is Jeff Cunningham, any relation to Randall? I'll take him over Eddie Johnson any day, even though the Eddie Johnson days are hopefully behind us, how the hell did he ever get on at Fulham?