The Hodgepodge 11-12-07

• One of the great debates in football for the last 5 years or so in the NFL has been who would you rather have has your quarterback, Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? Up to this year even being one of the biggest homers of all time, I would have said Peyton Manning is a better quarterback. I know, I know all of the people in Boston probably hate me for even writing that. But let me tell you this, I have changed. Manning's stats in the past used to be just gaudy to look at. He would have a season of 49 TD passes with just a handle of interceptions. Brady would have a season of 28 TD passes and 14 interceptions but his team would win. Brady was the better winner but Peyton was the better Quarterback. Take away Marvin Harrison, Dallas Clark and LT Tony Ugoh and Peyton Manning is struggling, and I mean struggling bad. Peyton threw 6 interceptions last night and didn't play well in the Colts Pats game either. No one is expected to play as well as normal with all of their options out but he still had Reggie Wayne and Joseph Addai. That is better then what Tom Brady had three years ago when he had Troy Brown and David Patten as his primary receivers and whoever they would stick in at Tailback. Even with that crap offense Tom Brady still didn't lose or throw 6 interception. Tom Brady won three championships and played at a Pro Bowl level. For this reason and for that reason alone, I now choose Tom Brady as the best quarterback of our generation.
• Thank God, Ohio State lost to Illinois this past weekend. If I had to watch Ohio State play in another National Championship and get blown out by a superior SEC team I would have just driven my car into on coming traffic. I get it, the play unbelievable defense but offensively they are just boring as shit. I mean honestly. They bore the living shit out of me.
  
• The Celtics are 5-0. Based on this they are projected to go 82-0. I know it doesn't sound too logical but the numbers don't lie. If they keep at this pace they will win every game and end up going 82-0. Personally I think they can do it. Lets hope so because Boston could really use a super dominant team right now.
  
• Dustin Pedroia just won the AL Rookie of the Year award. Congratulations Dustin you are now a cult hero in Boston. Your performance throughout the entire year and especially in the playoffs and World Series was absolutely amazing. We found out last week that Pedroia actually played the last two months of the season with a fractured bone in his wrist. In 2004 there was Schilling's bloody sock and for 2007 we have Pedroia's broken wrist.
• If you ever want to hear about the Best but most awkward dinner of all time involving Eric Wright and Ed Steinman, just ask. I'll be happy to share the story.
  

The Hodgepodge 11/1/07

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The Hodgepodge 6-18-07

The Hodge Podge 6-18-07

· So Wendy’s has decided to put out a triple cheeseburger for $1.99. This might happen to be the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. A TRIPLE MOTHERFUCKIN CHEESEBURGER!!!! I haven’t been this excited since the McDonald’s bag of cheeseburgers deal back when I was in middle school. However, I can see myself buying two of these f’n things for $4 and gain 25 pounds and require a minimum of quadruple bypass in the next four years.

· My past two trips to the Supermarket have been absolutely ridiculous. Trip one I pick up a bunch of stuff and went to checkout where my ATM card was declined for insufficient funds. Apparently if you put a check in an ATM on Friday night after the bank has closed you don’t get to access to that money until Monday morning. Well that didn’t help me. I had to call Momma Kaz for a credit card number and they punched it to the register and I could go on my way. The next trip I forgot to bring my ATM card, which I didn’t realize until I came to checkout again. Just awful awful experiences.

· The new Axe commercials with the “Boom Chicka Wahwah” might be my favorite commercials to come out this summer. The girl shaking her ass in the supermarket like Beyonce is just classic. The other one where a guy's girlfriend rips his father's clothes off is also hysterical.

· I hate interleague play in MLB. It makes no sense to have teams in the same division play different teams. Also in general the AL teams just beat the hell out of NL teams. It is stupid. Also it puts the AL teams at a severe disadvantage. In tonight’s game the Red Sox played the Braves but were without the services of Big Papi, their best player, because the game was held in Atlanta. If Atlanta was to play in Boston they would get to add an extra bat to the lineup and there would be no complaints. Fuck interleague play. Its ridiculous.

· If the band, Tainted Love ever comes anywhere near where you live you must go see them. Watching them perform on Friday night up in Redwood City was the highlight of the last couple of years. That’s right, I said years. For those of you not in the know, Tainted Love is an 80’s cover band that can literally play anything from the 80’s. They played an 3 hour set and it was amazing. A group of about 14 of us got hammered took the train to the show. They started off with Eye of the Tiger by Survivor then hit all the major classics including Journey, Eddie Money, The Outfield, Billy Idol, Pat Bennatar, etc. Honestly the most fun I have had in years.

The HodgePodge 4-4-07

· A few Notes from the Red Sox Opening Day Game: I watched the entire game from the first pitch to the last. First and forth most Curt Schilling looked like absolute crap. He looked overweight and extremely out of shape. For a guy that has made a career out of hitting his spots and overpowering hitters with a 95mph fastball and having a splitter that literally drops off the table he did neither in his opening day start. He looked pathetic out there. I can see why the Red Sox would name him the opening day starter (200 wins over his career) but he was just not ready. Their range at the middle infield by Lugo and Pedroia is just awful. Any groundball up the middle is going to be a base hit. Having that along with a centerfielder with a noodle for an arm in Crisp could cause a lot of problems defensively. All in all, I’m optimistic about the chances of the Sox this year.

· A few of you have gotten back to me about the 11^th member of my list of the Next 11 NBA players into the 61 best players in the NBA and it appears that the resounding favorite is Gary Payton. Also receiving votes were Reggie Miller, Tracy McGrady, and my personal favorite suggestion Dennis Rodman (Not a bad suggestion, you could definitely make an argument). Gary Payton’s career stats are 16.4ppg, 6.7apg, 4.0rpg, and 1.8spg (these have declined in the last couple of years due to his backup role with the Heat). A 9-time All-star nicknamed “The Glove” he was also one of the fiercest on the ball defender ever.

· Is it me or has South Park really been stepping it up this season? I mean honestly the last few episodes have had me laughing harder then I can remember in along time from watching South Park. The 24 spoof, the Head Lice episode, Naggers, and Easter Da Vinci Code special have been hysterical. Such high quality episodes. Good work Matt and Trey.

· As I have stated earlier this upcoming weekend is one of the greatest TV weekends because of the start of Entourage and the Sopranos but I almost forgot that The Ultimate Fighter 5 starts up tom. night and the Masters are this weekend as well. Even if you don’t like Golf you have to like the Masters due to the history around it. The music of that Masters alone should make you watch it. The Ultimate Fighter 5 starts off with the introduction of a new weight class (155lbs lightweights). I am so excited for this as well. It truly is one of my favorites shows. On the other hand, the UFC pay-per-view this upcoming Saturday appears to be on its face, very sub par. A main event of Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Sera should not be highlighting a pay-per-view. I’m setting the over/under line at 2 minutes to how long this fight will last. I dare you take the over.

· One of my new favorite things is when a college athlete decides to “do the right thing” and stay in school for an extra year and its end up costing them millions of dollars when they don’t get drafted as high as they were projected. Last year Joakim Noah would have been either then #1 or #2 draft pick because the draft was so weak. As of right now he has probably closer to #10 due to how stacked this draft is. Nick Fazekas wanted to return to school for his senior year to improve on his projected draft position as a late first/early second round draft pick. After this year he appears to be right at the same spot. So he returned to college and picked up a degree and lost about a million dollars in the process. The all-time leader in this category though is Matt Leinart. Two years ago Matt was the consensus #1 draft pick to go to the 49ers. He decided to stay in school and “win another national championship” and ended up getting drafted #10 by Arizona. He had already won a national championship and a Heisman trophy but he went back to school for another year with the potential to get hurt and never play in the NFL. Now I believe he went back because he was banging every hot Southern Cal Coed and if that is the case then I have less of a problem with it but loosing out on $20 million is a tough choice to make to bang some USC undergrads. To my readers out there, send in your choices for the “Matt Leinart ‘I should have left school” all-star team”.

As always you can email me your comments and questions at jkazanovicz@gmail.com.

The Hodgepodge 3-27-07

I really enjoy the show Jeopardy. It is the most basic of the game shows and I would like to think that it is the most classic of them all. My favorite category is generally the sports categories where I think I have run every one for the last year and a half. But my next favorite category is Hodgepodge. For those that don’t know what I mean it is a catch all category. It means they have these good questions but no common theme between them. Well with this blog I sometimes have these observations but no underlying theme between them. Just a few random thoughts that don’t have anything to do with each other. I will call these columns the “Hodgepodge”.

1) I have two pet peeves in this world: girls that wear miniskirts with Uggs boots and people that dress up their pets in human clothing. Lets look at these separately. A girl would wear a miniskirt if it is warm and they want to show some skin. A girl would wear Uggs boots if it was cold and they wanted comfortable footwear. How in the hell do these two go together? I mean honestly, do girls think this looks good because they look freaking ridiculous. This would be like a guy wearing a sleeveless tanktop with a scarf. I am pleading to my women readers (there are like two of them by count) to stop this immediately. I propose a bill to congress to make this illegal. The other one is people that dress their dogs or cats in clothes. Last time I checked most animals have fur therefore no need for a freaking sweater. Your dog looks like an idiot and you look like an idiot for making them dress that way. I’m guessing most dogs don’t like wearing these things either. Now I don’t talk to any dogs so I don’t really know this but I’m just guessing that they don’t want to wear these things. Honestly last year in San Diego over Christmas break I was visiting Marcia. We went to pick up dinner for her family and what do we see? A teenage girl wearing a miniskirt with Uggs on her feet walking her Pomeranian that was wearing a sweater. My head nearly exploded off my shoulders. Both of my pet peeves happening at the same time. I am not making this up people. Marcia was there you can ask her. I was near tears.

2) The officiating at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half of the Georgetown/UNC game was as bad as I have seen in years but it wasn’t bad going both ways. Every call was going in UNC’s favor. I haven’t seen something this lopsided since the Kermit Washington Rudy Tomjanovich Fight (or Tara Reid’s first boob job. I couldn’t decide which joke to go with so I went with both of them). This is the game to get to the Final Four and the officials almost put Georgetown into a hole that they couldn’t get out of. Luckily Roy Williams forgot he had timeouts and Georgetown was able to pull it out.

3) In Marcia’s most recent blog post she mentioned that I had tried to sabotage her bracket both this year and last year. While in both years she has asked for my opinion and I have given it to her it has been a coincidence that it has turned out to be really bad advice. In my defense Florida has always choked in the tournament. Every year they got beat by someone who should have beaten them. This year she read me her original Final Four and I told her that I thought there were too many top seeds there. I told her she would probably want to mix it up. She did and now she is pissed when all the top seeds make it far. I apologize. These are not intentional sabotages. I still stick with my original opinions. She’s just a stupid girl that I am trying to help when it comes to sports.

4) Has anyone ever actually seen or been to a Sonic fast food restaurant? I see these commercials all the time but have never seen one of these establishments. I drove from Boston to California going through many states and seeing probably every fastfood joint on the planet except for a freaking Sonic. I am starting to think they don’t actually exist kind of like the original moon landing.