DOWN WITH PANTS!

See that little button on the top of the page that says "Next Blog", click it I dare you....It will lead you to some pretty scary places on the web. Not that DOWN WITH PANTS! is that great either, read long enough and I'm sure you can find a hundred or so posts that could make this list. Anyway, here are five snipets of the horror that you can find by hitting the "Next Blog" button...

1. Kelleigh's Life in a Page - "Sunday, after work, I went to lunch at Panda King. I missed church because of work, but all we needed was Pastor John and we could have broken out in another service during lunch."

2. Bangs and a Ponytail - "sadly enough, weezer makes me think of vance, who walked by on friday (oh friday - so hilarious). I didn't recognise him...they stopped and briefly chatted, i was bemused but cool. but f that, back to weezer..."

3. Om Improvement : Steady, Comfy, Happy, Yoga. - "Nothing prepared me for the adventure that was teaching yoga and making all of my life part of yoga. There are many things I have learnt since I started on this path. Not the least are the simplicity of yoga's message and the profundity of the consequences of choosing to live in this simple way."

4. My Life Is A Hollow Grave - "i usually play music. And so happened my Dad came in. I was listening to Simple Plan's new album : "Still Not Getting Any" ...Then he started to say that the lyrics were too negative and started "lecturing" me? Bleagh...Then he thinks i will follow the song..."

5. TastyFOOD - "only cool people can like taking back sunday and theres only a few people who are cool. everyone else is posing and needs to get a life and new band. k thx."

I am currently locked into a battle with my roommate. I'm sitting on one side of the wall listening to the Rushmore Soundtrack (Genius!) while she sits on the other side listening to Jack Johnson (is it on repeat or do all the songs sound exactly the same way.....booooorrrrring?). I guess it could be worse, Jack Johnson is so soft he is easily drowned out.

MONDAY UPDATE....First, the good news. The Huskies moved up to 14th in the AP poll and Nate Robinson was named the Pac-10 player of the week. The bad news is that Brandon Roy will miss four to six weeks with a tear in the meniscus of his right knee. He will have surgery on Tuesday.

The Washington Husky basketball team looked very impressive playing three straight games against quality opponents winning the Great Alaska Shootout on Saturday night. They beat Utah on Thursday night78-71, then took down Oklahoma 96-91 on Friday and closed out the tournament beating #19 Alabama 79-76 on Saturday night in the championship game.

Nate Robinson was incredible showing the athleticism and game changing abilities that make him so dangerous. He scored 29 points against Utah, 19 against Oklahoma and 16 against Alabama. His scoring was down a bit against Alabama but he stepped up when he needed to taking over the game in the final ten minutes. What was great to see was how the crowd in Anchorage warmed up to him throughout the tournament. In the championship game, even on TV, you could sense that everytime he touched the ball the crowd sat up and started buzzing. He has a star quality about him that trickles down throughout the entire team. Just his presence on the floor makes this team better even when he isn't playing his best.

The only bad news to come out of the tournament is that Brandon Roy suffered a hyper-extended knee in the Oklahoma game and will be further evaluated on Monday. The ESPN analysts made it sound like it could be pretty bad and that the Huskies were not optimistic. They speculated that he may miss as much as two months. I actually think that missing Roy for a month or so wouldn't hurt the Huskies too much. They have a ton of talent in the backcourt that can fill in for him. Robinson, Tre Simmons and Will Conroy will just have to step it up like they did against Alabama on Saturday. It will also give players like Joel Smith and Jamaal Williams the opportunity to play a little bit more in some big games and help them develop an even deeper bench for when Roy returns. Just as long as he's back for Pac-10 play, I think the Huskies will be fine.

The Huskies take on Gonzaga, who got murdered by Illinois today (the Zags didn't look terrible, Illinois just looked like the best team in the country), on Wednesday night in Spokane. The game will be televised on FSN. Their next home game is against Eastern Washington on Sunday. If anybody who reads this has an extra ticket please let me know. It is the only game I couldn't get tickets for that I wanted to go to. You'll probably see me outside of Hec Ed with a finger in the air asking everybody if they have one extra ticket.

Death? and I just got back from seeing the incomparable Taj Mahal play at Jazz Alley in Seattle. He put on an incredible show as always and it was a lot of fun even though we got stuck in the very back of the balcony and had to keep moving to see around this scruffy looking dude who was sitting on the railing in front of us. If you are going to Jazz Alley make sure you get there relatively early so you don't get stuck in the bankhead in the balcony.

Anyway, enough trashing on Jazz Alley (it is a great place to see a show as long as you are not up there). I actually am not a huge fan of the blues. Usually when you see blues shows you normally get those paint by numbers artists where every song seems to be the same thing, everything is played the same way with a couple of mixed up lyrics. It just always seems that for such a free-form and once dangerous genre it sure can be bland and repetitive lacking in any feeling. This amazes me when I hear it because the blues is supposed to be all about soul and feeling and yet, even when you hear some of the so-called greats (there sure are a ton of so-called greats in blues, ever been to a blues festival?) they seem to lack that feeling.

What I love about Taj is that he doesn't do anything by the book. Sure the backbeat and structure is the same but the way he solos is so different sounding than anyone else. If you broke him down technically you would cringe. He doesn't play the right notes, he is off rhythm a lot, he is all over the place. But he plays it with such soul and with such feeling that it absolutely works. It's what makes him unique among blues musicians and why I enjoy him where others bore me.

Today I made a quick jaunt (five hours) to Spokane for the night and after dining at the incredible Spokane institution, The Onion, I picked up Spokane's weekly entertainment magazine, The Pacific Northwest Inlander. In The Inlander there is one of the all time greatest music reviews for the Yanni show at the Spokane Arena which, sadly, we missed. The following is a quick snippet. Enjoy!

"...With grandiose, windswept arrangements and fabulous flowing locks to match, Grecian heartthrob Yanni reels off one swooshy album after another, vacillating between the romantic, the melodramatic and the heroic with the dexterity of Danielle Steele. His live performances are massive spectacles of light, sound, misty watercolor memories and fog. While the Spokane Arena might be a step or two down from the Taj Mahal....it certainly should be more than capable of containing - even elevating to dizzying new heights - the supernatural, otherworldly majesty that is Yanni..."

It wasn't pretty, but they got the job done. The Washington Huskies didn't look particularly good last night beating Seattle Pacific 89-71 but they were missing four of their top players and were forced to play their deep bench for quite a bit of the game. Brandon Roy scored 23 points and Nate Robinson added 22. Freshman Joel Smith had 15 points in his first collegiate game.

I was most impressed with Smith. In his first two games he has looked very impressive on both sides of the ball. Offensively he has a decent outside game and shoots very well from just inside the three point line and he is explosive around the basket. Early in the second half he received a pass just outside the key and drove and exploded into the air for a dunk that surprised everybody in the building. He didn't look like he was anywhere near being able to dunk the ball but all of a sudden, there he was.

I was also impressed with Seattle Pacific. Not only am I a big husky fan but I've always really enjoyed going to small college games. Growing up in Olympia we had some outstanding NAIA teams at Saint Martin's and it was there that I started to love college basketball. So around here we have the Huskies obviously and then the crosstown rivalry between Division II Seattle Pacific and Seattle University. Anyway, Seattle Pacific looked pretty good despite losing by 18 points. They have an incredible guard in Jordan Lee who scored 22 points including six three pointers and a solid big man in Jason Chivers who added 17 points. They look like they'll be pretty tough in GNWAC play this year.

Washington travels to Anchorage next week for the Great Alaska Shootout. They play Utah on Thanksgiving Night at 7:00 PM. The game may or may not be on ESPN2 as I cannot find confirmation that it will be. They then face either High Point or Oklahoma in the second round on Friday and the final round is on Saturday.

Today while looking at a chart of abbreviations of Canadian provinces I noticed a province I hadn't heard of before, Nunavut. Of course being American means you can be totally oblivious and ignorant of other countries so it's easy to understand why I missed this new province. Anyway, it peaked my interest and I feel like I should share what I learned.



Nunavut was formed in 1999 breaking away from the Northwest Territories as part of a settlement of Inuit land claims for this major Inuit homeland. The territory stretches from Manitoba to Greenland and the North Pole and is comprised mainly of islands in the Artic Ocean and the mouth of Hudson's Bay.

As of 2001 Nunavut's population stood at 29,000 in 26 communities (this is one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world). Nunavut's population is about 85% Inuit and according to the government's website, "...government, business and day-to-day life are shaped by Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, the traditional knowledge, values and wisdom of Nunavut's founding people." Signs are written in both English and the Inuit language, Inuktitut.


Nunavut flag and logo...

None of Nunavut's 26 communities are connected by road or rail and are only accessible by plane or boat making the territory very expensive to live or visit. The climate is very harsh with most of the country being as far north as Alaska and much of it above the arctic circle. There is an abundance of wildlife including caribou, whales and bears that makes Nunavut popular with hunters and fishermen and nature lovers in general. It's also becoming a popular tourist destination because of the native population's cultural activities.

For more information on Nunavut, visit their page on Yahoo Travel, Nunavut Tourism, and the Government of Nunavut website.

Please bear with me today as I am trying to implement a new template but I haven't ironed out all of the kinks yet so it may look pretty bad. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!