A live collection of timely thoughts on the Washington-Washington State basketball game.
7:02 p.m. – Kick off the game with an Ernesto sighting. He’s wearing a green tie, but you know he’s secretly rooting for Venoy. Kevin Calabro on the play-by-play. Sweet.
7:04 p.m. – “I think he’s gonna score 12 points on 7-for-38 shooting.” –my friend Jameson on Klay Thompson’s performance tonight. Do the math…
7:08 p.m. – That “No Means No” sign is clever…
7:09 p.m. – DeAngelo Casto with the first bucket for Wazzu. You know he’s coming back for his senior year…
I stood in the aisle at Fred Meyer and surveyed the boxes in front of me. Five-hundred, one-thousand, fifteen-hundred, two-thousand. The number was critical. Too many and she’d never finish. Too few and it wouldn’t be a challenge.
There were images of buildings and landscapes and works of art. I needed something bright. She was 86 years old. Her vision wasn’t what it used to be. The brighter the better, I reasoned.
There was a beach scene. Fifteen-hundred pieces. A snapshot taken under palm trees in Hawaii. The sun lit up the photograph. This would work. I grabbed the box off the shelf and went to pay.
***
When I was about eight or nine years old, I was cleaning my room one afternoon and got frustrated. I couldn’t move my toy box. It was too heavy and no matter how hard I tried to lift it or drag it across the room, I just wasn’t having any luck.
I’m 17 years old at the time, sitting at McDonald’s late one night with two friends and my little brother, Cameron. Like a lot of kids our age on a Friday evening, we’re bored. We’ve just finished playing basketball, we’re hungry, and we’ve got nowhere to go. So we’re just sitting here kickin’ it.
We’re at a table by the window when my buddy Albie starts messing with his keys. His car is parked in the lot, maybe fifty yards from where we’re sitting. He presses the electronic lock button a couple times. The lights flash as the horn beeps. I notice a passerby a few feet away look around startled at the sound of the horn.
This is second baseman Adam Kennedy. Not Adam Kennedy’s dad or Adam Kennedy’s much older brother. Nope. This is a professional athlete. Adam F**kin’ Kennedy.
This less-than-flattering mugshot was taken shortly after Kennedy was arrested for driving under the influence on Wednesday night.
Keep in mind that Kennedy is 35 years of age and signed to a non-guaranteed minor league deal by your Seattle Mariners. That said, if he was Dominican, we’d need validation of his birth certificate to ensure that the one-time top prospect is not, in fact, 50 or older.
Look, let’s face it. We all make mistakes. Kennedy’s appears to be neglecting minoxidil.
*Note: Original link was broken and cut off the podcast three-quarters of the way through. The link has since been updated and is now fully working.
You may be wondering why we’ve entitled this episode XII.5. Well, interestingly enough, Karate Emergency Episode XII was lost in production, a result of the radio station we record from being torn down before our very eyes (seriously). Because it would not be accurate to give this episode the title of XII or XIII, we split the difference and got all weird on you. Enjoy that.
Topics this week include the usual grumpiness, Jay Cutler versus Twitter, Husky Basketball (including the RTR movement) and the Pac-10 Player of the Year race, a good deal of random tangents on random subjects, and the news to close the show. We also drop the second installment of our Twitter follower shout-out, so tune in to see if you happen to be this week’s lucky winner!
Back in 2006, I was a medical redshirt freshman at the University of Washington (code for, I was in my third of six years as an undergrad). I was in this public speaking class and we were tasked with persuading others to agree with us on a compelling argument of our choosing. At the time, there was quite a bit of hubbub over the Supersonics and their tenancy at soon-to-be-obsolete Key Arena. As an avid sports fan, choosing to discuss this topic made perfect sense to me. The crux of my argument was simple: the citizens of Seattle needed to help generate funding for a new (or renovated) Key Arena based on all the revenue the building — with the Sonics as the primary lessee — brought in.
I don’t like Ben Roethlisberger. I think he’s a dick and has a disproportionately chubby face. He also accosts females and he’s never lost to the Seahawks, so f**k that guy.
I don’t like the Pittsburgh Steelers. They annoy me. I don’t hate them, as some Seattleites do, but I certainly wouldn’t mind watching them get attacked by piranhas, either.
I don’t like the Green Bay Packers. They do nothing for me. Aaron Rodgers is ho hum, James Starks is the next Domanick Davis, and every time Greg Jennings has been on my fantasy team he’s sucked balls. Blah.
Basically, what all this boils down to for me is an extreme rooting interest in this year’s Super Bowl ads. Go commercials! I’m rooting for you. Don’t let me down.
Ah, Twitter. If this little social networking website has done anything over the past couple years, it’s proven to us that high-profile athletes are almost real people, too.
Back in the day, our favorite athletes were enigmatic badasses that patrolled the playing surface and never said much more than a few words to the press. Now, though, those same athletes are staking their reputations on a keyboard and 140-character quips of intelligence (or, in many cases, a lack thereof).
No one ever said the internet was easy. In fact, some of us even fail at it. Athletes are no exception.
That’s why we present to you a list of the Top 11 Ways That Athletes Fail Twitter. Because success is so overrated.
Whether you “get” Twitter or not, you’ll enjoy this.
This is a three-day glance at the Twitter account of one Derrick Williams (@bigdthatsme23), power forward for the University of Arizona (men’s) basketball team.
Beginning on Tuesday, January 18th, Williams began Tweeting smack talk towards the University of Washington in snippets of 140 characters or less.
By the evening of Thursday, January 20th, Williams had humbly devoured all of his characters (i.e. eaten his words) after the Huskies defeated the Wildcats by a score of 85-68.
Join us on this journey as we witness the progression of Williams’ epic fail.
Sometimes I have these pop culture references that I’d like to work into sports-related articles but can’t. I don’t want these references to go to waste, however. So here’s one that I’ve been holding onto for a while now. It’s about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These are legitimate questions we should be asking ourselves. Don’t think I’m not being serious. Anyway, here goes:
How did Donatello end up with a stick? Leonardo got a sword. Michelangelo got nunchucks. Raphael got two glorified trident knives (called “sai,” according to Wikipedia). Donatello, on the other hand? He got a stick.
Now technically, Donatello’s weapon was a bo staff. I don’t know what that means really. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, as well. But whatever. It’s irrelevant. We all know what he was carrying and it was a stick. When I was maybe five years old, I would pick up big walking sticks and pretend I was Donatello. I mean, no one was gonna hand me a sword or nunchucks or two “sai.” So I had to settle for Donatello’s weapon. Which could easily be found after a wind storm.
You know Brendan Sherrer. He’s the Husky men’s basketball team’s “Human Victory Cigar.” Makes sense, right?
(That’s a rhetorical question. It does make sense. I don’t really want to explain what it means. If you don’t know, feel free to Google the term.)
In correspondence with Sherrer’s aptly unique nickname (which isn’t so unique in that it was originally bestowed upon the inimitable Zane Potter over seven years ago, but whatever…we recycle in this town), my friends have dubbed fellow Husky walk-on Antoine Hosley the “Human Victory Blunt.” Makes sense, right? Yeah, my friends are characters.
Please take some time to visit the websites of the two charities I have listed on the left sidebar ( <—– that left) and donate some money.
I know what you’re thinking. In this economy (the all-time greatest saying of the 2010s), donating money is rough. But look at it this way. You’re probably wasting a ton of money on bad decisions already. So why not spare a little for a good cause and fill your heart with gladness instead of regret? And you know what those bad decisions are. We don’t need to list them. But you know. And they’re pretty bad.
Frankly, I don’t want your money. I would just blow it on the same bad decisions you’ve been blowing it on. Which is why instead of giving money to Seattle Sportsnet, I want you to give it to the Ashley Aven Foundation or the Robert Vasen Foundation. It’s as simple as that.
You know the book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie"? If you gave Brandon League a cookie, he'd smash it against his forehead for no reason. 29 minutes ago
I wondered why Magglio Ordonez was trending, then I saw he was announcing his retirement. Now I'm hoping Brandon League will trend... 32 minutes ago
*Does not count adult movies. RT @TheMattHolt I saw my 3rd movie this year. That's a new record! 35 minutes ago
A live collection of timely thoughts on the Washington-Washington State basketball game.
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