If you are ordained, you are expected by society to be different, to be a better person and to have a higher moral center in which others take refuge in.
As of July 31, 2010, I am an ordained minister. I filled out a form online, read through a few FAQs, and was subsequently granted ordination by the Universal Life Church of Seattle.
I know what you’re thinking. And the answer is no. I’m not what you would call very religious. In fact, I try to avoid the topic of religion since it tends to be rather divisive amongst different groups of people. That said, religion is still very important to many folks, and that is something we can all respect.
Whether you happen to be a believer or not, one thing is clear: we need to shake things up a bit around here. I’ve decided to do that by taking the necessary steps to get God on our side. In the process, I’ve chosen to make the goal of my ordained ministry this: To assist in the overall welfare of our local sports teams, both collegiate and professional, while also presiding over marriages when asked to do so by willing partners in the sacred union of two souls. In essence, I’ve decided to help our teams find the way. And also wed people. But that’s a side practice.
I don’t like Don Wakamatsu all that much. I think he’s too passive, he lets the team run itself, and when things start to spiral out of control (as things have had a tendency to do this year) he has no way of reeling the troops back in before they go AWOL.
That said, I really don’t like the way the Mariners organization has continually thrown Wakamatsu under the bus lately.
Wak might not be the right man to lead this ballclub, but he doesn’t need to get screwed by his bosses day after day, either. It’s one thing to suck at your job. It’s another thing to suck at your job and blame someone else.
Between Wakamatsu, general manager Jack Zduriencik, team president Chuck Armstrong, and CEO Howard Lincoln, all four of these men currently suck at their respective jobs. Three of those men — Zduriencik, Armstrong, and Lincoln — are using their authority to make Wakamatsu the scapegoat for their collective failure. That’s f**ked up.
Two teams in my keeper fantasy football league (the infamous Pearce Fantasy League, of which my team, the Compton Honkies, finished dead last a year ago) pulled off a six-player trade that looks like this:
I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is yes. Chris Henry is dead.
A few years ago, there was this great commercial that everyone loved. I remember it well. It featured a dude sitting there in his den, right in front of his computer, when suddenly he clicked a button and the computer spoke to him and said, “You’ve reached the end of the internet. Please go back.”
Now before I get to my main point, allow me to digress here for a minute. Think about how much freaky sh*t that guy had to watch to reach the end of the internet. I mean, even pre-YouTube and whatnot, there were a lot of videos on the web that no normal human being should ever see. This guy, apparently, watched all those videos and more. And on top of that, can you fathom the amount of money he dropped on porno subscriptions? We’re probably talking millions of dollars here, if not billions. How did he afford it? How did he tolerate the weird sites? I don’t know, man. Sounds like there’s something seriously wrong with this dude. Whatever he’s selling, I’m not buying.
Because we don’t watch enough of the news anymore. And these 11 folks need our attention. They demand it. They crave it. It’s why they’re on TV.
11. Andrea Nakano, KING 5 News
Andrea is the newest kid on the block when it comes to the local TV sportscaster scene. She’s been tasked with filling the shoes of the now-departed Lisa Gangel (Kerney), which is akin to handing David Pauley a baseball and asking him to take over for Cliff Lee.
To say that Andrea has a lot of pressure on her shoulders would be an understatement at this point. However, she seems to be fitting into the role nicely so far and has yet to run off and marry one of our local professional athletes. Good for her.
10. Jen Mueller, Fox Sports Northwest
Jen Mueller spent nearly two years living in the shadow of Nicole Zaloumis’s cleavage. As soon as Nicole and her funbags left town, it was time for Jen to shine.
People bug me all the time to write about the Storm. Not a lot of people. Just enough people to get under my skin a bit. I always tell them they don’t want me to write about the Storm, because I’ll tell it like it is, and not like they want it to be. And yet they persist. So I figure it’s time.
First of all, I figure most of you care so little about the Storm that you won’t even read this post. I understand that. Hence, I can reveal even my deepest, darkest secrets here and it won’t matter. You’ll never find out. Maybe at some point farther down this page, that will happen. I don’t know yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But enough stalling. Let’s talk about the Seattle Storm.
As it turns out, they’re the best team in basketball right now. Not just women’s basketball. All basketball. No one else happens to be playing, hence they have earned the title kind of by default. Even still, that’s no small feat.
Tune in to the Ian Furness Show on sports radio 950 KJR AM Wednesday afternoon at 2:15 to join Ian, Chris Fetters of Dawgman.com, Ryan Divish of the Tacoma News-Tribune, and myself as we discuss blogging, new media, and other fun stuff.
We’ll all be in studio together (so it won’t sound like static-y crap, because let’s face it, we all hate that), plus you can stream the feed live through your computer by going to 950KJR.com.
It’ll be an absolute blast. I hear we’re hiring strippers, KY Jelly wrestling matches will undoubtedly ensue, and by the end of the afternoon we should all be kickin’ it to Notorious B.I.G. as we sit mellowed out sipping on Purple Drank. In the immortal words of Biggie Smalls, it’s all good, baby, bab-ay.
Don’t miss it. You’ll seriously regret it if you do. Seriously.
Something tells me life would be better if Michael Pineda and Dustin Ackley were playing for the Mariners right now. I don’t really have any justification for this. Heck, I don’t even know what Pineda looks like. I do, however, know that Ackley is a scrawny white boy from North Carolina, which would generally register a reading of absolute zero on my gaydar (it’s an electronic device…you buy it at Staples).
Here’s the thing, though. Everyone is talking about this unlikely tandem like they’re the love spawn of Zeus and Jennifer Aniston or something. Fact is, I know my minor leaguers. But unless they come bearing the reputation of a guy like Stephen Strasburg, they mean very little to me. Which is why up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t really give a damn about Pineda, de facto ace of the Tacoma Rainiers, nor his sidekick at second base, Ackley.
This is absolute blasphemy to some of you. I get that. Don’t freak out. To many of you, Pineda is hung like Greg Oden and Ackley is the second coming of Jack PerconteJeff Schaefer Bret Boone. There are those folks who cling to these guys’ nuts like a bad rash. I understand. I’m not trying to cramp your zest.
If you happened to be driving on Sand Point Way in the University District on Sunday evening between the hours of, say, 7:00 and 9:00 PM, you may have seen a group of people playing baseball on the open fields directly across the street from Burgermaster and Safeway. There were three of us: a batter, a pitcher, and one outfielder running for his life, attempting to shag more balls than a Heidi Fleiss wannabe.
Of our group, only one person had played baseball in the past five years. That would be Danny (who now goes by Dan, but whatever), a former member of the USC club baseball team, one of few Trojans not currently affected by athletic scandal. For the rest of us — myself and Ben, two ex-intramural softball players who collaborated on multiple championships during our time at the University of Washington — baseball was a distant memory, a game we played in high school some seven years ago.
In fact, the three of us were once teammates on the Bellevue High School varsity baseball team, each members of the Class of 2003, and each friends since before most of our female classmates had boobs. We go back a long way, to say the least.
A while back, I had the bright idea of posting a singles ad for a friend of mine who couldn’t get a date on the front page of Seattle Sportsnet. What better place to showcase a local sports fan than to other local sports fans, right?
Ultimately, that ad never went up at the behest of the friend, but such endorsements are something I’ve been pondering for a while now.
You may have noticed that I haven’t been pimping too many products lately. Frankly, I’ve been turning down a good deal of potential advertisers due to a number of different reasons. I don’t like the products they hawk, I don’t like their approach with me, and I don’t like the weak sauce money they’re offering up. I appreciate the sponsors I do have and have had, but that’s not to say that I’m willing to sell out for anyone or anything. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. I’d rather not have to worry about selling out to anyone, just so I can run this website with all the vigilante badassness of a true renegade.
Which brings me back to the singles ad I had contemplated for a friend.
The song is entitled Verano Azul. The artist is a man by the name of Juan Magan.
I’ve been wondering about this tune for a while now. Every time I hear it played at Safeco Field, I get a little excited inside. Like hearing the ice cream man come rolling down your street or something.
So I asked the M’s themselves about the song (via Twitter, @TheRealMariners) and they gave me the answer I was looking for. Check it out…
There’s a lot of venom here. Read at your own risk. On with the list…
11. Chone Figgins’ Unwillingness To Swing The Bat
If you’ve ever seen the epic film that is Black Sheep, you may recall a scene in the movie where David Spade’s character and Chris Farley’s character are playing checkers in a cabin in the backwoods of our great state of Washington. After defeating Farley’s character for the umpteenth time, Spade exclaims, “This is great! I never win at checkers.” An irate Farley then retorts, “Well it’s kinda easy to win when you NEVER MOVE YOUR BACK ROW!”
Farley’s reaction more or less mirrors my angst over Chone Figgins’ complete disregard for swinging the bat. The guy seems like he’d rather do anything besides hit a baseball. God forbid he take a hack up there. He might actually put the ball in play. And then what? Chaos would undoubtedly ensue.
Today was a great day. Spent all morning and afternoon at a beautiful home on the Puget Sound waterfront for a company meeting, then capped off the evening with a heartfelt discussion of the Sonics while on a ferry back from Bainbridge Island.
For those of you who know me, you know I speak passionately. Nothing, however, stokes my fire quite like the topic of our beloved Seattle Supersonics. Nothing. Everything about the Sonics gets me worked up into an absolute frenzy. Over the course of a five-minute conversation on my favorite basketball team, I will typically run the gamut of emotions. From mad, to happy, to angry, to sad, to nostalgic, to excited, to everything in between. It’s rare that you will find such a mercurial topic for verbal interaction.
If you are ordained, you are expected by society to be different, to be a better person and to have a higher moral center in which others take refuge in.
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