#because this is the greatest Chandler Moment ever <3<3<3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[scottishaccentsareawesome]

(Hangman and Rooster are hoping to adopt a woman's baby after it is born, but she is still unsure) Hangman(to the adoptive mother, about Rooster):...Listen, I love my husband more than anything in this world. And it kills me that I can't give him a baby myself. I really want a kid. And when that day comes, I think I'd be a good dad - but my husband, he's already there. He's a father, without a child...Please. (A couple minutes later, Hangman comes into the room where Rooster's waiting) Hangman(to Rooster):...You still want that baby? (Rooster hugs him)

[pbwsports]

The all-time starting five for every NBA Western Conference team

What if the Splash Bros. had Wilt Chamberlain playing center? How many titles would the Lakers have won if Magic Johnson was running the break with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal? Imagine Hakeem Olajuwon and James Hardenteaming up in Clutch City.

We asked our NBA writers to come up with an all-time starting five for every current NBA franchise, along with one additional blast from the past. Only a player's contributions during his time with that franchise were considered. (So, no, LeBron James doesn't crack the Lakers' all-time list ... yet.)

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In this era of "positionless" basketball, traditional positions don't matter quite as much as they used to, so we allowed some flexibility in choosing a lineup -- but you won't see teams with four centers or three point guards. The idea was to dive into each team's history and create a group that could at least potentially share the floor together.

We rolled out the Eastern Conference on Wednesday. Here is the Western Conference:

Dallas Mavericks

G: Derek Harper G: Jason Terry G: Rolando Blackman F: Mark Aguirre F: Dirk Nowitzki

Terry joins Nowitzki as the only players on both of the Mavs' Finals teams and was the second-leading scorer on both squads. There's a reason Harper and Blackman, the backcourt for some good teams that just couldn't get past the Showtime Lakers, have their numbers in the American Airlines Center rafters. Aguirre's jersey probably won't ever be retired in Dallas because of his bitter departure, but you can't dismiss his 24.6 points per game in eight seasons with the Mavs.

The toughest cuts: Michael Finley and Jason Kidd, one of whom helped a young German kid find his way in the NBA and the other who helped Nowitzki finally deliver a title to Dallas.

-- Tim MacMahon

Denver Nuggets

G: Fat Lever G: David Thompson F: Alex English F: Carmelo Anthony C: Dikembe Mutombo

You're probably asking yourself the same question I debated for roughly 48 hours: Wait, no Nikola Jokic? There's a good chance Jokic eventually becomes the greatest player in franchise history, but he's just 25 years old.

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Mutombo, on the other hand, is a Hall of Famer and produced probably the most iconic image in franchise history, celebrating the historic upset of the top-seeded Seattle SuperSonics in the 1994 playoffs. Mutombo is the defensive anchor behind a pure scoring lineup that could outgun just about anybody.

English, Anthony and Thompson all averaged better than 20 points a game for their careers, but at their peaks were pushing 30 PPG. Add in a floor general like Lafayette "Fat" Lever to pull the strings, and it could work. Between Fat, Melo and Dikembe, the Nuggets can outname just about anybody, too.

-- Royce Young

Golden State Warriors

G: Stephen Curry G: Klay Thompson F: Kevin Durant F: Draymond Green C: Wilt Chamberlain

Adding Chamberlain to the Durant-era Warriors teams that won back-to-back titles would just be unfair. Can you even imagine how dominant that team would be? Curry, Thompson, Durant and Green already have won titles together -- and now they have one of the greatest big men of all time to drop the ball to down low? Unbelievable. The defense is great, the offense is otherworldly.

It's tough leaving Hall of Famers Rick Barry and Chris Mullin out of this group, but who would come out? Curry and Thompson form the best shooting backcourt of all time. Durant is one of the best players of his generation and Green provides the defensive intensity and glue that has propelled them for years -- plus those four already have played together. There is no stopping this team. A juggernaut for the ages.

-- Nick Friedell

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Houston Rockets

G: James Harden G: Calvin Murphy F: Tracy McGrady F: Rudy Tomjanovich C: Hakeem Olajuwon

Apologies to Hall of Fame big men Elvin Hayes, Moses Malone and Yao Ming, but it's hard to get one center in the Houston lineup these days. Of course, there's no debate about the candidacy of Olajuwon, who remains the best player in franchise history, even after Harden's run of historic offensive production.

Harden is 22 points away from passing Murphy for second on the Rockets' career scoring list, so for now the flamboyant, 5-foot-9 Murphy continues to be the only player who ranks among the franchise's top two in points and assists.

Rudy T is best remembered as the Clutch City-era coach and for the brutal punch that interrupted his playing career, but he earned his spot here with five All-Star appearances during a career spent entirely in a Rockets uniform.

-- MacMahon

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LA Clippers

G: Chris Paul F: Kawhi Leonard F: Blake Griffin F: Elton Brand C: Bob McAdoo

Paul and Griffin authored the greatest and most exciting era in Clippers basketball with Lob City. Paul spent six seasons with the Clips, was first-team All-NBA three times and led the league in assists twice during that span. Griffin was Rookie of the Year, a five-time All-Star and the exciting, above-the-rim player the franchise sorely needed.

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Brand spent seven seasons with the team and made both of his All-Star appearances as a Clipper. McAdoo started his Hall of Fame career when the franchise was in Buffalo, where he led the league in scoring three straight seasons and was MVP in 1974-75.

Leonard is just 51 games into his Clippers tenure, but his elite production already puts him on this roster. Averaging 26.9 points, 7.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists, a healthy Leonard can further validate this choice if he can get the Clippers to the conference finals for the first time.

-- Ohm Youngmisuk

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Los Angeles Lakers

G: Magic Johnson G: Jerry West G: Kobe Bryant F: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar C: Shaquille O'Neal

Four of these picks were no-brainers. Johnson (fifth in career assists) teamed up with Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's career scoring leader, to win five championships. Bryant (fourth all time in scoring) paired with O'Neal (eighth in scoring) to win three.

The fifth pick was harder. Is it Elgin Baylor, the greatest small forward in franchise history? Or how about LeBron James, the greatest small forward in NBA history? How about James Worthy, who teamed up with Magic and Kareem and won a Finals MVP?

Ultimately, the pick is West. Baylor never won a ring. James hasn't been a Laker long enough. Worthy would have to play the 4 and you already have Shaq and the Captain on the blocks. The Logo brings shooting and toughness and leadership, and he is extremely important to the franchise as a whole for his post-playing days in the front office.

-- Dave McMenamin

Memphis Grizzlies

G: Mike Conley G: Tony Allen F: Shareef Abdur-Rahim F: Zach Randolph C: Marc Gasol

The question with the Grizzlies: Who should be the final player to fill out a lineup that features the Grit 'n' Grind mainstays called the Core Four? (I'd make a joke about Chandler Parsons' max contract, but I want to be welcomed back to Memphis.)

Based purely on merit, Pau Gasol would be the pick, but he doesn't fit alongside his brother Marc at center and Randolph at power forward. So we will go with Abdur-Rahim, who was a really good player for some really bad teams in Vancouver, averaging 20.8 points and 8.2 rebounds per game over five seasons in which the Grizzlies went a combined 86-292.

-- MacMahon

Minnesota Timberwolves

G: Ricky Rubio G: Sam Cassell F: Kevin Garnett F: Kevin Love C: Karl-Anthony Towns

The three best players in franchise history just all happen to be big men: Garnett, Love and Towns. Garnett is the franchise leader in points, rebounds, steals, assists and blocks; he's the only player in NBA history to lead a team in all five categories. Towns (22.7 points, 11.8 rebounds in 358 games) and Love (19.2 points, 12.2 rebounds in 364 games) each put up monster numbers, even though playoff success never came.

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(Side note: Towns is only 14 3-pointers away from becoming the franchise's all-time leader. Seriously.)

Rubio trails only Garnett in franchise history in steals and assists. Since Wally Szczerbiak and Andrew Wiggins were primarily listed as small forwards, the other guard spot goes to Cassell, who played only two years in Minnesota but had a career year and was a second-team All-NBA selection in 2003-04.

-- Andrew Lopez

New Orleans Pelicans

G: Chris Paul G: Jrue Holiday F: Jamal Mashburn F: David West C: Anthony Davis

(Just a reminder: The Pelicans' franchise history starts in 2002, when the team moved from Charlotte to New Orleans. Anything before that belongs to Charlotte, even though it's the same franchise. Got it? Cool, let's move on.)

First, the locks: Davis, Paul, Holiday and West. Now once you get to the wing ... oof. This spot came down to four players -- Mashburn, Peja Stojakovic, Eric Gordon and, yes, Brandon Ingram.

Mashburn, in the franchise's first season in New Orleans in 2002-03, made the All-Star team and was a third-team All-NBA selection. The Pelicans didn't get another All-Star selection from a wing player until this year, when Ingram made it. But with only 56 games under his belt, Ingram falls off this list. Gordon's time in New Orleans always seemed underwhelming. Stojakovic was a key cog on the 2007-08 team that won a franchise-best 56 games, but he struggled with injuries.

Mashburn was limited to 101 games for New Orleans, but his impact in Year 1 was unmistakable and he still sits second on the team's career scoring average list (21.5), behind only Davis.

-- Lopez

Oklahoma City Thunder

G: Russell Westbrook G: James Harden F: Kevin Durant F: Paul George F: Serge Ibaka

There's an irony to the Thunder's all-time starting five, because it features their best sixth man. The baggage of Harden's role looms large, whether he wanted to come off the bench, whether starting impacted his contract negotiations and ultimately facilitated the breakup of one of the greatest organically built superteams ever. That's a lot to unpack.

Hindsight and what-ifs aside, the Thunder's all-time group can stand with almost any in NBA history, and most certainly is among the most stout in the past 20 years. The Thunder have been around for just 12 years and boast a remarkable cupboard of talent: three MVPs (Durant, Westbrook, Harden) and piles of All-NBA and All-Star nods. Maybe one of the best examples of how deep they are is in showcasing who didn't make the cut: Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul. Not a bad bench.

-- Young

Phoenix Suns

G: Steve Nash G: Kevin Johnson F: Walter Davis F: Charles Barkley C: Amar'e Stoudemire

No Shawn Marion? No Paul Westphal? No Alvan Adams? No Larry Nance? No Jason Kidd? You can make a solid starting five from the next group of Phoenix legends.

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The franchise's two MVP winners, Nash and Barkley, were locks. Westphal split time as a point guard and shooting guard during his six seasons, but we give the nod at the other guard spot to Johnson, who spent 12 years in Phoenix, and had three consecutive 20-point, 10-assist seasons and five All-NBA nods.

Davis vs. Marion was a tough battle. Both made a pair of All-NBA teams (two second-teams for Davis compared to two third-teams for Marion), but Davis gets the edge as the franchise's leading scorer. At center, Stoudemire stands supreme as his four All-NBA honors best Adams' longevity.

-- Lopez

Portland Trail Blazers

G: Damian Lillard G: Clyde Drexler G: Brandon Roy F: LaMarcus Aldridge C: Bill Walton

As with any conversation about Blazers history, their starting five comes with plenty of introspective sighing and deep what-iffing. Injuries to Walton and Roy abbreviated what would've been legendary Portland careers. But at their best versions, Walton was a transcendent big man with unique skills, and Roy was a gifted scorer with a knack for the moment.

Drexler is a Hall of Famer who led Portland to its best sustained run of success in franchise history. Aldridge is one of the dominant scoring big men of his era, and Lillard will likely go down as the franchise's all-time best. The Blazers are haunted by history and a compulsion to live in the anguish of what could've been, but there is also a beauty to their all-time five. It represents who they are, and forever, what they might've been.

-- Young

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Sacramento Kings

G: Oscar Robertson G: Tiny Archibald F: Peja Stojakovic F: Chris Webber C: Jerry Lucas

A Hall of Fame backcourt of Robertson and Archibald knocks Kings great Mitch Richmond out of one of the two guard spots. Lucas, another Hall of Famer, averaged 19.6 points and 19.1 rebounds in six seasons with the Cincinnati Royals. He gets the center position.

For the forwards, we look at two Kings from the early 2000s, when Sacramento was a perennial playoff team. Stojakovic is still the franchise's leader in 3-pointers made, and Webber averaged 23.5 points, 10.6 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.5 blocks in 377 career games in Sacramento.

It feels weird not to have DeMarcus Cousins on the all-time Kings squad, but when you look back at the franchise's history -- which dates back to the Rochester Royals and their first year in the NBA in 1949 -- it becomes clearer why he doesn't make the cut.

-- Lopez

San Antonio Spurs

G: Tony Parker G: Manu Ginobili F: George Gervin F: Tim Duncan C: David Robinson

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It took about as long as the average Gregg Popovich sideline interview to come up with this squad. These were all easy decisions, considering each player's combination of greatness and longevity with the Spurs. (Kawhi Leonard would have been in strong consideration if not for the lack of the latter.)

Duncan and Robinson are on the short list of MVPs who played their entire careers for one franchise. Ginobili and Parker were essential parts of a dynasty. Gervin was a must-see superstar whose presence made sure that pro basketball stuck in small-market San Antonio.

-- MacMahon

Seattle SuperSonics

G: Gary Payton G: Gus Williams F: Detlef Schrempf F: Shawn Kemp C: Jack Sikma

Payton, Kemp and Sikma, the three players to make at least five All-Star appearances in Sonics uniforms, are the three certain selections here. At the other guard spot, there are strong cases for Fred Brown (who's second in career scoring) and Ray Allen (a four-time All-Star in Seattle), but Gus Williams' key role in the Sonics' 1979 championship and pair of All-NBA picks give him the nod.

Spencer Haywood reached greater heights and Rashard Lewis had more longevity, but with the last spot I'm going with Schrempf, whose versatile and efficient game was ahead of its time in the 1990s.

-- Kevin Pelton

Utah Jazz

G: John Stockton G: Pete Maravich F: Adrian Dantley F: Karl Malone C: Rudy Gobert

The Jazz's arena is located at the intersection of Stockton and Malone, with statues of the legends prominently featured out front, so we figured those guys should make the cut. Dantley was a historically elite scorer for the Jazz, averaging 29.6 points on 56.2% shooting and winning a pair of NBA scoring titles during his seven-season tenure in Utah.

Gobert gets the nod over fellow dominant defensive anchor Mark Eaton because he's a far superior offensive player and rebounder. It was difficult not to include Darrell Griffith, aka "Dr. Dunkenstein," but Pistol Pete was too productive (25.7 points and 5.7 assists per game) with the New Orleans Jazz to be left out. Source - ESPN

[malexfan10]

Malex thoughts

I was watching some old episodes of Dawson's Creek and it made me want to get some thoughts out. I watched a lot of TV shows growing up. For me, the couples I liked were either ones I casually rooted for or on the rare occasion, a couple took me by such surprise that I became extremely emotionally invested. Malex is the latter.

I've been a fan of Captain Swan (OUAT), Stydia (Teen Wolf), Kurt & Blaine (Glee), Buffy & Angel and lots more. The rare pairings I've been completely lost on, I can name on one hand. Pacey & Joey (my first OTP), Chandler & Monica and Malex. I'd say Destiel on Supernatural too but with them, everything is subtext. I don't think the writers will have the guts to go there, not even with the show ending.

With PJ, I love how they started as antagonists, became really great friends, and then fell in love. For me, PJ vs DJ was incomparable. DJ brought out the worst in each other (my opinion) while PJ showed each other what love was supposed to be. The only thing I hated about DC was the constant back & forth between the two pairings. It lasted until the final moment when you realized PJ was endgame (one of my fears for Malex). I hated that but I was a kid so it didn't bother me as much as it would now.

I loved Chandler & Monica because they started out as friends who fell in love, got married and had all the moments in between before adopting a set of twins. I loved their story because it showed their entire journey. True, the show was a comedy but their story didn't end in season 5 when they started dating. Their story just began.

It's hard understanding writers who feel that only the journey matters. Of course it does. The journey is important. It's what makes you root for a couple but the destination and what happens after is important too. It makes you continue rooting for them, seeing all that angst and pain amounting to something substantial in the end.

So as much as I loved PJ, the fact that they kept us guessing until the last 5 minutes before we realized who she chose was too much. The long, drawn out, multi-season, will they/won't they storytelling style is one I'll never be a fan of.

Which leads me to Malex.

They were two broken boys, both brought up under horrible circumstances, who found the missing piece of themselves in each other. When Alex gave Michael a warm and safe place to stay, it was probably the first act of true kindness Michael had ever experienced and it was made by a boy whose pain and suffering mirrored his own. How incredibly heartbreaking but beautiful is that? That initial bond, that "cosmic" connection stood the test of time. Separated for 10 years and it felt like no time had passed at all.

That first moment in the pilot episode outside his Airstream, you could feel the tension. I remember reading interpretations of that scene. People thought Malex were cold and angry with one another "probably over a girl". Are you kidding me? That tension could only be romantic. But that first kiss at the reunion was when I hopped on the Malex Forever train. One stop only. Endgame.

They set them up so amazingly in the first three episodes. The angst was there but you could also feel the deep love between them. They weren't shown as two guys who had a fling back in high school and then crossed paths again 10 years later, said what the hell and hooked up again. No, they were shown as soulmates. Their level of connection even scared and confused them but they both knew it existed. Their love was pure and true and rare.

With all their history and with so many odds already stacked against them, the writers deciding to throw in a triangle just because they could and doing it in such a rushed and messy way really made me scratch my head.

Carina said she loved the triangle on DC. I honestly think she was the only one. That show was incredibly divided, DJ vs PJ. But as much as I hated the constant back and forth, I'll give the DC writers some credit. Joey's feelings for both were fully touched on. I saw her romantic feelings for Pacey more profound and her feelings for Dawson as true friendship (just my opinion), but both sides were shown in depth.

The problem with Roswell? Where did those feelings come from between M&M? They shared a moment when Maria cried and I took that as the start of a wonderful friendship. I was obviously wrong. They hooked up in the desert. OK I hated it but they were two single people and Maria didn't know about Alex so I accepted. All of a sudden, the feelings were real and Maria was conflicted because of how strong her feelings were. Michael chose to be with Maria because he needed something fresh and new and according to the wonderful Vlamis, someone he also had strong feelings for (still hate that last interview LOL).

I understand where Michael was coming from a little better, as much as I hate it and hate how he went about it by leaving Alex just waiting. He'd been through so much trauma and Max and Isobel kept telling him to stop looking to the past (which, really Max? If someone told you that about Liz, would you listen?? But he died so he gets a pass). But as far as Maria's feelings are concerned, I feel like I missed something.

Between episodes 9 and 10, did the M&M feelings bloom overnight from flirty banter to crush to "OMG this is love"? Was their moment in the desert that mind-blowing that the weirdness of episode 11 happened? I don't get it.

The one thing going against M&M is that Malex is overwhelmingly loved and has been embraced by fans and critics alike.

One critic said it best when they reviewed the finale (Vulture).

"I was intrigued by the possibility of Michael/Maria at first, but the love triangle has been so rushed — with so little time spent on Maria’s developing feelings for Michael — that it’s ended up just making her look terrible. We know from Maria’s conversation with Liz that she hasn’t even spoken to Alex about the situation because she feels too guilty, and so having her accept Michael with open arms is such an odd note. Sure, she doesn’t know Alex is waiting for Michael right at the same moment, but she does know that he’s been in love with Michael for a decade."

And therein lies the problem. A lifelong friendship ruined over a guy (unless Carina makes Alex give his blessing next season which would really make me scream) to push forward a pairing that had little development and makes Maria look bad. One side of the triangle is Michael's soulmate and the other side is the friend with sudden feelings. Not the best character development which is sad because we know how awesome Maria can be and as mad as I am with her, her character that I enjoyed until episode 10 and the actress deserve better. But instead of being original, the writers chose the path always taken. They chose to use her as the odd end of a triangle where, unless they want everyone to hate the show, she will likely be the one forced out so Malex can eventually reunite and for what? Drama?

Season 1 started out really strong and it still had a lot of strong moments in the latter episodes (end scene of episode 9 between Malex, Liz & Jenna being kickass in episode 11, all of episode 12 - my fave of the season, Kyle's confrontation with Jesse etc).

But honestly, I feel like the inclusion of this triangle (amongst other reveals like Noah as the 4th alien) somewhat brought the story down. The writing for M&M felt OOC and was messily done.

Only in recent years have LGBT pairings started becoming more mainstream, given better development and importance in the overall story. With Malex, they have the potential of making Michael and Alex one of the greatest love stories on TV. As much as I love the show, I'm not saying Roswell is on the same level as Breaking Bad or The Sopranos etc. But from all the pairings on the show, Malex is the most profound and has the potential to go down as one of the best on TV. To overcome everything they've been through and still choose each other and their love would be the ultimate happy ending because unlike most male/female pairings that go through mostly regular angst, being two males in a small town, Malex have a whole other level of obstacles to face. That doesn't even include their personal history, the fact that Michael is an alien or that Alex's father is the cause of so much pain between them. Or the fact that Alex is a disabled war veteran. I mean, there is so much amazing points to their story. They are the OTP of OTPs.

But so far, it feels like the triangle is the only major roadblock the writers want to concentrate on and that's the biggest mistake of all.

Season 2 hasn't aired yet. We don't know how little (🤞) or how long (😢) M&M will last. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes and hope that Twitter Carina is not the same as Season 2 showrunner Carina.

But for me, Malex will always be each other's endgame. That's what I saw in the first 3 episodes. That's what I saw in the flashbacks. That's what I saw in Caulfield. Try and convince me differently, show. You'll fail.

❤

[madelinecoffee]

this is a lot sorry lmao, but for the ask game: 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 40, 55, 62, 69, 94, 95, 98 😊

(yes send me all of them Esther)

12. name of your favorite playlist?I trry to name them something witty or the current thought in my head, for the longest while my fave was titled “What the Fuck Am I Doing?” right now I just have one named playlist that I listen to the most

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?At a table on my laptop with my headphones on so I don't have to hear annoying sounds aka all the sounds 

21. obsession from childhood?I was really, and still kind of am, obsessed with fairies and mythical creatures 

22. role model?Right now I have 2 people I aspire to be like, my mom and the teen librarian I work with named Claire 

23. strange habits?This is really hard for me to answer because I’m sure I have some, but like ???? I can’t think of anything that’s super weird that I do 

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?When I was at college (uni) we had this obsession with a white squirrel. When I was touring to see if it was where I wanted to I heard the legend. There were 3 white squirrels(they had red eyes and white fur) but one by one they got picked off by nature. A biology class saw a hawk take one away, one fell into the river and one just disappeared. But we always thought they were a legend until my senior year when there was a white squirrel seeing it was one of the greatest moments of my life. 

55. favorite fairy tale?Disney wise I love Beauty and the Beast (the oringial) and Tangled, traditionally I love Cinderella and there’s this one I don't know the name of about coughing up jewels and her sister coughs up snake. 

62. seven characters you relate to?Ben Wyatt, Riley Matthews, Bella Swan, Violet from the book All the Bright Places, Jessica Day,  Chandler Bing, and Lucas Friar 

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned?A lot of your heat is lost through your feet or your head 

94. favorite season?Autumn 100%

95. favorite app on your phone?I’ve been obsessed with the Harry Potter Mystery game

98. favorite historical era?I’m bad with dates but I find the time period of the greasers and the socs 

weird asks that say a lot

[agentargus]

//Ages back, @spookylilmoonpie asked for more information about Dante and Murmur. Started on some lore but I’ll post a small part of it here now:

Audio transcribed and translated from the Italian (with exceptions where necessary) by [REDACTED]. Timestamp states place the recording took place at 3:33 PM on the 10th of January [DATE REDACTED]

“This is Father Dominic Lawrence, acting chaplain of the St. Olympius Residential School , documenting on behalf of Repubblica Dei Lupi. The day is the tenth of January, Feast of St. Peter Orseolo. Optional Christmas vacation ended one week prior to this day. As the students of St. Olympius have returned to school for spring sememster, they have begun reporting strange happenings—well, stranger than usual—concerning two students enrolled on the fourth of December, Feast of St. Giovanni Calabria. The following interview is to be conducted with the older brother. Mother Superior currently records her questioning of the younger sister in the parish hall...”

Transcriber’s note: Father Lawrence now opens the door, the creaking of which can be heard on the original recording.

Good afternoon, son.”

“Good afternoon, Father Lawrence.”

“Please sit down and help yourself to the cookies.”

“Thank you.”

“What is your name, son?”

“Dante Feliciano Argenti.”

“And how old are you.”

“I don’t know. Mother says I’m roughly three years older than Giu-Giu—my sister, but Mother doesn’t like talking about it.”

“How old do you think you are.”

“Most of the people in my class are fourteen or fifteen—except Estella. She just turned 3049 years old yesterday. I told her she didn’t look a day over 2000, but I don’t think she understood that I was joking...”

“Sister Madalberta claims you’ve been sleepwalking.”

“If I have, I don’t remember.”

“Then you don’t remember the things you said to little Francesco?”

“That he could have my marbles because I’d already lost them in the figurative sense?”

“No, though that was very kind of you and he’s very thankful. I mean when he found you sleepwalking out of the dormitory and tried to wake you up...Dante, you told him that a thousand centipedes waited for him in hell, that they would crawl beneath his eyelids while he slept and...”

“I didn’t say that! I promise, I didn’t say that. Centipedes wouldn’t even go to hell anyway, they’re perfectly nice creatures...”

“Yes, the boy was quite sure that it wasn’t you, even if the words came out of your mouth. Didn’t have your energy, he said. You know he’s an empath, yes?”

“Is that like a psychic?”

“Sort of...”

“I really should apologize to him, if only for the bad things he’s probably seen in my head.”

“Tell me about the bad things in your head...”

“I don’t think you really want to hear them, Father. Mother says I think exactly the way she expects from a teenage boy...”

“You’re probably right, let me rephrase: tell me about the bad thing in your head that isn’t you. Tell me about the thing that hurt your mother.”

“Why would you want to know about him? I’d call him a turd, but I don’t hate toilets so much that I would force him upon them.”

“Have another cookie, Dante.”

“Thank you. Mother never let me have seconds.”

“Why do you hate him?”

“Because hurt my mother, obviously. He would have hurt my sister if he’d had the chance...”

“Did he ever speak to you?”

“Only in my nightmares...can I go now? Please?”

“Did he pretend to be your friend.”

“No, he pretended to be me...”

“What do you mean?”

“I grew up in a haunted mental institution, Father. I would like to think I’m well-versed in the difference between the voices that exist within one’s own mind and those that belong to outside forces, between madness and malus, if you will...”

“...but...”

“...There were no voices in my head at all, at least, none I could distinguish from my own thoughts. Do I have to talk about this?”

“Just explain a little more...”

“I had bad thoughts. I still do. Everyone does, I think. I want to think it’s normal. Sometimes, I’d have very vivid night terrors where I...where acted on those bad thoughts. I wanted to be good, I couldn’t be good all the time, but I tried. Every bad thought would be locked away somewhere, and my nightmares would feed on them, the way eating soy beans or chicken can feed a growing tumor with the hormones but are harmless if you don’t have a tumor. I think I was fighting myself too hard to realize that I was also fighting something else.”

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

“Yes, exactly. I thought it was just my guilty conscience and nothing more, which made me feel all the more helpless to fight back. Guilt isn’t productive, Signore Pantalone told me when he rescued Giu-Giu and me. It traps you so that you become convinced you can’t do better, and if you think you can’t do better, you don’t. I think the bad thing that lives inside me was waiting until I stopped trying to do better, until I couldn’t tell the difference between my nightmares and reality...and now, I guess he can’t tell the difference either if he wakes up when I’m asleep.”

“How would you feel if I put you to sleep so that I could talk to him?”

“I thought you were maybe trying to put me to sleep right now, but sedatives don’t work on me. Why else do you think I’ve been eating the cookies even though I’m pretty sure you drugged them?”

“You’re a smart boy.”

“Thank you. You didn’t have to lie to me, you know. Bearing false witness is a sin, father.”

“I never lied to you, son...”

“A sin of omission is still a sin. You think I’m stupid. Everyone thinks I’m stupid. I was trying to be polite, but trying just made me look like an idiot...”

“I didn’t drug the cookies, Dante. I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t want to put you to sleep, I wanted to make you angry, because being angry makes you feel guilty, and when you feel guilty, you want to disappear...”

“And nothing can stop me...”

*muffled static*

Transcriber’s note: at this moment, the radio in Father Dominic’s office appears to have been switched on. The song “Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler plays in the background of the following conversation:

“˙˙˙lɹƎ ɟo ǝʞnD ǝʞnD ǝʞnD lɹƎ ɟo ǝʞnD ǝʞnD ǝʞnD”

“Dante?”

“Dante’s inferno...”

“Who are you?”

“Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht? Den Erlenkönig mit Kron' und Schweif?"

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the Duke of Erl, I sing, come and I’ll show you the Erl King.”

“What is your purpose?”

“I’m gonna love you ¿sɹǝʌoɔ ɹnoʎ ɹǝpun ɹǝɥ ɟo ʞuᴉɥʇ noʎ ʍouʞ poƃ ɹnoʎ sǝoD ¿ɹǝɥʇɐɟ 'ɹǝɥ ǝʌol noʎ ʍouʞ ǝɥs sǝoD ‘cause I’m the Duke of Erl.”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s nighttime. Time to sing a lullaby.”

“Why didn’t you manifest sooner?”

“I’m always there when good little boys are sleeping. Are you thinking of Sister Claire while you’re sleeping? Mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt. Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch' ich Gewalt. Come on, let me hold you, darlin’...”

Transcriber’s note: According to Father Lawrence, this lull in the conversation occurs when he unplugs the radio, though the song keeps playing.

“Why did you manifest when he was awake?”

“ʞɐǝʍllᴉʇssǝɥsǝlᴉɥʍǝʇuɐpʎqɐqǝɥʇllᴉʞ ˙ǝʇuɐp 'ʎqɐq ǝɥʇ ǝʇɐɥ ʇ’uop 'ǝʇuɐp 'ʎqɐq ǝɥʇ ǝʞɐʍ ʇ’uop ˙ʎqɐq ǝɥʇ ǝʞɐʍ ʇ’uop sʎɐs ɹǝɥʇoW. Dante says don’t wake the baby, mother, don’t hurt the baby mother, don’t hurt the baby. In seinen Armen das Kind war tot...”

“Tell me your name.”

“I’m the lɹƎ ɟo ǝʞnD ǝʞnD ǝʞnD lɹƎ ɟo ǝʞnD ǝʞnD ǝʞnDoh yeah yeah yeah yeah...”

“I-in the name of the Father, I command you, tell me your name...”

“Aaaaaaa-I’m the lord of the night, master those spirits who cannot rest, Duke and earl and duke and earl and...”

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy S-Spirit, I command you, tell me your name.”

“...Murmurmurmurmurmurder you in your sleep, while you’ve got your pants down and you’re thinking of Sister Claire...”

“Shut up!”

“That wasn’t very nice, Father. Have you been a bad boy? Good little boys must go to bed. Bad little boys must stay there. Never waking up again. In his arms, the child lay dead...”

“In Jesus’s name, once more, your name.”

“No.”

“Your name...”

“No.”

[several seconds of unintelligible static]

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven...”[more static] “The power of Christ compels you, tell me your name!”

“...Murmur.”

“Murmur, go back to hell.”

“Already there. Nothing can stop me...”

“I command you, in Jesus’s name, go back!”

“Dante’s inferno. Dante’s hell. Don’t hurt the baby, mother! Over and over again...”

“Go back!”

“Hell is home. Dante is home. Dante is hell. Can’t kill the baby, it’s okay to hurt the baby, Dante, she won’t die.”

“Go back!”

“People who cannot die cannot go to hell. People who cannot die are already in hell. Hell is where the the good little boys go to bed.”

“Murmur, I command you, go back to hell!”

“Daylight is fire. Fire is hell. It’s nighttime. Dante is daylight. Daylight is hell. I am in hell. We’ll walk through my dukedom and a paradise we’ll share...”

“The sun is rising, Murmur, go back to sleep...”

“Duke Duke Duke Duke of Erl Duke Duke Duke of Erl Duke...is everything alright, Father? You look like you’ve seen a ghost...literally.”

Transcriber’s note: the recording ends here.

[secretcinema3]

Ten Thoughts Inspired By: A Bout de Souffle

1. Before I ever saw the film I saw this poster. As soon as I laid eyes on it I knew I had to see the film. It radiated cool energy. And that title. At once a declaration of the film’s style and the viewer’s response to it. A promise and a boast. Stylish. Sexy. Breathless. But its original title, A Bout de Souffle, translates as Out Of Breath. That’s a B-movie title, slang for death, like Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Consider if they’d used that as the English title instead. Would the film have attained such a cool reputation? Just imagine it on the poster. Stylish. Sexy. Out Of Breath. Suddenly it’s not so much an intimation of awed wonder as middle-aged decline. My younger self probably wouldn’t have been so impressed, but so what? Does it matter? A title’s just a title, after all, a way of identifying one film from another. Sure, mostly, but it’s not always that simple. Consider these titles for example: Stranger Than Paradise. Some Like It Hot. White Heat. Touch of Evil. Now each of these could, at a push, describe what happens in their respective films, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on when we read them. They’re not merely labels, they’re suggestive, free-floating, haikus of compressed mood. Yes, a good title can define a film, capture its essence, but it can also add to it, deepen it, complicate it. It’s a chemical reaction. Just think of the mysterious, symbiotic relationship we have with names and they have with us. Do they shape us, do we grow into them? If you don’t believe this then consider these possible alternative titles for the films above; Losers. TransAmerica. Mother Love. The Mexican. Does it make a difference? It’s hard to say, but this much is clear, the anonymous translator tasked with finding an English version for A Bout de Souffle clearly thought so.

2. The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. – Francois Truffaut

The famous dedication is to Monogram Pictures. Monogram were a poverty row studio specialising in cheap genre flicks, serials and westerns. So what was the attraction for serious French cinephiles like Truffaut and Godard? Well, for starters, because they were largely ignored they were an undiscovered continent, ripe for reappraisal. They often relied on genre conventions, offering rich ground for theorising, for detecting encoded meanings, hidden ideas, themes build up across a body of work. Also because they had less to lose they could show the seemier side of existence more freely than bigger studio productions, the kind of exploitation subjects considered beneath proper art. Some French critics saw passed all that bourgeois respectability, understood that the life of a petty thief could be as worthy of great art as the noblest king, that an absence of craft or style might represent a film’s psychological meaning, its hard indifference to the lies of romance. They understood serious artists could exist outside the mainstream, might find the fertile confines of genre more to their liking, might prefer playful indifference to highbrow pretension. But even the worst of these films taught them about innocent enjoyment, the pleasure of transformation, how much easier it was to bring the moves, clothes and dialogue into your life when they were ritualised, repeated, how cliches spoke to the yearnings inside ordinary people. By dedicating his film to Monogram Godard was sticking two fingers up at the industry, rejecting its middlebrow concerns with craft and rules, aligning himself with the outsiders, the dreamers, with those great American values of outrage, adventure and play. This is a game, he’s telling us. We’re playing here. So can you.

3. The famous opening line is: I’m an asshole, a provocation from the start, followed by a close up of a scantily clad girl on the front of a newspaper, lowered to reveal our hero, Michel, hat over his eyes, puffing on an enormous cigarette. He’s cool, but posing too, a kid playing dress-up. Then he runs the side of his thumb across his lips. It’s a signal. To us. Thumb across lips. That’s all it takes. Your Bogie. Your life is a movie. It’s hard to appreciate now the impact of this message. A Bout de Souffle was one of the first films to acknowledge people’s desire for movie grace in their lives, wanting their everyday existence transfigured by it, blessed with purpose and shape, ordinary personas imbued with unified glamour. You don’t need to be famous, a star. The magic isn’t out there somewhere, owned by producers, studios, agents, fans. It’s in you now, once you’ve seen the film, it’s yours, a gift, not a privilege. This is what cinema is, the democratisation of play. It’s an evolutionary tool, teaching poor regional kids moves and gestures to help them escape impoverished lives, to face the twin terrors of adolescence and neighbourhood streets. After all, when you live in a non-verbal environment knowing how to stand on corners with cool indifference is a vital art. This is another thing the film is already telling us. The street is a movie set too.

4. We first see Patricia ambling down the Champ-Elysees in her flat shoes, sweetly calling ‘New York Herald Tribune!‘ She’s played by Jean Seberg, proof that nationality is a notional concept at best. She’s supposed to be the American chick but comes across, in her clothes, her manner, her cropped hair, as ineffably French. It’s hard to imagine any other contemporary American actress playing the part, actually American but spiritually in tune with the Frenchness of the whole enterprise. (The film too is at once American in its conventions and French in its style and ideas.) It was that way from the start. Her screen debut was as Saint Joan (1957), hand-picked from 18,000 hopefuls by Otto Preminger. It was Preminger again who brought her to France the following year to play the spoiled Celine in Bonjour Tristesse. The same year she married film director Francois Moreuil. By the time of A Bout de Souffle they were divorced and she’d taken up with French author Romain Gary, marrying him in 1962. Was it fate or inclination that drew her to the French and them to her? Or was it the hair? The gamine prettiness? Whatever it was, it went on, until her tragic, mysterious death in 1979, found dead in her car on the same Parisienne streets she’d watched Belmondo play dead on all those years before, back when they were all young enough to think of death as a romantic game, something to be bargained with.

5. Leaving Patricia behind Michel passes a poster for a film called Ten Seconds To Hell (1959), its tagline proclaiming ‘Live dangerously till the end!’ It’s a lovely moment, not just for the renegade cheek of using the poster without permission, but for the serendipity of it being there in the first place, articulating the film’s key theme – defying death. (You know you’re in the zone when the world starts to speak to you like this, send you secret messages, when you see connections everywhere, when you start to believe there’s no such thing as a coincidence, that luck, in fact, is just fate in disguise).

6. Once you accept the rule of death thou shalt not kill is an easily and naturally obeyed commandment. But when a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes, that of giving it. This is one of the most profound feelings in those men who enjoy killing. – Ernest Hemingway, ‘Death in the Afternoon’

‘It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained,’ Hegel wrote, somehow defining the essence of A Bout de Souffle over a century before it was made. The spirit of the film may be its exhilarating sense of freedom, it’s jazzy liberation from social, artistic and cinematic conventions, but it’s also obsessed with death, from its title to its conclusion. Or rather, with invoking it in order to feel more alive. If the taking of life could, as Hemingway suggests, ward off your own death, than so could acting it out. In this sense, the film is as ritualistic as a bullfight, a bloodless rebellion against death. Just as ancient Greek rites evolved into formalised drama, the death of a tragic hero offered to the gods rather than the sacrifice of a goat, so too with cinema. It may be a game, Godard suggests, but it isn’t frivolous. It’s as serious as any religion, as vital to our happiness as freedom itself. It was a message that hit the new decade like a Molotov cocktail, starting a creative blaze that lasted twenty years and engulfed the old Hollywood studio system in its wake.

7. ‘What is your greatest ambition?’ Patricia asks the novelist (played by director Jean-Pierre Melville) at the kind of pretentious press conference only the French would have. ‘To become immortal‘, he replies, looking straight into the camera, ‘and then to die‘. It’s a joke, a contradiction. He might as well have said his ambition was ‘to wake and then to dream’. It’s an impossibility, mutually exclusive states, waking/dreaming, immortality/death. Except, of course, there is one place where the impossible can happen. When we watch a film, especially in the dark of a cinema, what else are we doing but dreaming while still awake? And when we watch the great stars of the silver screen like James Cagney, Bette Davis or Steve McQueen, what else are we doing but watching the dead walk again, forever alive in their films, made immortal by them?

8. Which is what Bogart represents in the film, not just a role model but an icon of immortality. Dead only three years when A Bout de Souffle was made, already he’s becoming a cult, his moves, clothes and dialogue remembered, repeated and fetishised. But why Bogie? What was it about him that so obsessed the French? Maybe he was, in some way, more French than other Hollywood stars, more ironic, fatalistic, ugly? Maybe the characters he played, men with secrets, with shadowy pasts, were more in keeping with a nation haunted by defeat, collaboration and existential dread? Whatever it was it went deep, just think of the hats and coats in Melville’s own films like Le Samourai.

Of course, the Bogart of The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Big Sleep was also the coolest man on the planet, a dream of tough grace under pressure. He crystallised the essence of cool long before Brando and Dean turned up, a man’s cool, not a grumpy adolescent’s, someone who’s lived, seen things, been betrayed by events, by his own heart, hides his honour like a dirty secret. But we know it’s there, we know he does care, does know which side is right, he just won’t be played for a sap any more. Being a man, he seems to say, is a moral act. If you don’t know how to read people, if you don’t know when to keep quiet, if you don’t understand that sometimes cynicism is just the truth no one wants to hear, then you deserve what you get, you leave yourself wide open, cannon fodder for con men, Nazis and certain kinds of women.

9. Then there’s the lovely extended scene in Patricia’s apartment. She arrives home to find Michel in her bed. What follows is spontaneity, calculation and natural light, cultural allusions everywhere. She poses before a poster of Renoir’s Mlle Irene Cahen d’Anvers and asks who’s the prettier. He caresses her bum and asks can he piss in her sink. She washes her feet and tell him she’s pregnant. He sits beneath a Picasso figure wearing a mask. She quotes from The Wild Palms by William Faulkner: ‘Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.’ Michel says he’d choose nothing. ‘Grief‘, he adds, ‘is a compromise‘. They talk, flirt, test each other and eventually make love, fumbling under the covers like kids, not sure what their parents really do under there. The claim that capturing Seberg’s beauty on film matches Renoir’s achievement on canvass is hardly worth noting now. But it’s a reminder of a time before the triumph of popular culture when film was considered an upstart medium, devoid of true craft, a nickelodeon distraction for immigrant hordes and over-excited housewives, not something to be taken seriously as high art. This was the fight Godard, Truffaut and the rest of the Cahiers du Cinéma critics were waging in the late 50s, rescuing great artists like Hitchcock and Hawks from the neglect this pompous snobbery had consigned them to.

And what about Michel’s claim that grief is a compromise? Is it an existential statement, like Beckett’s ‘every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness‘, or is he just trying to sound cool. Is he suggesting that emotions are a refuge, a refusal to accept the truth? It’s an interesting idea in an age when personal grief has become everyday currency. Would Bogie give in to grief, cry and wail, take to his bed, sell his story to the tabloids? No, he wouldn’t. He’d take it inside him, order a drink, light a cigarette, another lesson learned, another test passed. The cigarette is vital of course. Just consider how important they were in all this. Michel smokes non-stop throughout the film. Even his dying breath is a puff of smoke. Can you imagine a time when smoking was this cool? When things weren’t ghosted by consequences, by health warnings, when people drank at work and smoked in cinemas, weren’t constantly fretting about their health, short-changing their youth for a few extra years at the end? When looking cool now was more important than being alive then? It’s all about how you look, y’see, masks, uniforms, encoded signs, the transformative power of objects and faces. ‘The mystery of the world is in the visible, not the invisible,’ as Oscar Wilde rightly pointed out. Open your eyes (and dream). We’re being movie stars here. They’re immortal. They never die of cancer or liver failure.

10. ‘The film of tomorrow will be an act of love...’ – Truffaut

Above all it’s a film about love, love of cinema, love of life through cinema. There really was no difference to these young men. Cinema was life. Watching a beautiful woman and capturing her on film was the same thing to them. It was very chauvinistic, of course, but very romantic too (essentially the same thing). Romance has no time for feminist aspirations. It wants to be taken out of this crappy world, wants to idealise, heighten, improve. It’s foolish, a youthful folly, but where would we be without it? For a few brief years, as the world woke up from it’s post-war slumber, a handful of young men believed that cinema was the new language of happiness and truth. A Bout de Souffle bottled that moment. It’s a time machine. The spirit and energy of that moment can be revisited every time you watch it. You could even say it’s immortal. Or to put it another way: Devil in the Flesh. Rififi. And God Created Woman. Scarface. A Bout de Souffle. The best film around.

[auburnfamilynews]

Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports

The Tigers return their top 4 linebackers from 2019 and signed a loaded class this past recruiting cycle. Could this be the best unit in the SEC?

“Doesn’t matter we aren’t having a season!!!”

Yo, we get it. Things are pretty shaky right now with all these out of conference games being cancelled. Confidence is quickly dwindling that there will even be a college football season this year and that sucks.

But until that decision is actually made, we are going to soldier on as if a season of some sort still happens this fall.

And if a season does happen, one unit Auburn fans are going to have a lot of fun watching is the linebackers. Travis Williams took over as Auburn’s linebackers coach in 2016 and immediately turned a unit that had been a consistent weakness in Auburn’s defense to a consistent strength. 2020 might be the best bunch to date.

KJ Britt, Chandler Wooten, Zakoby McClain and Owen Pappoe are all back. Auburn signed three blue chip prospects in the 2020 class. This unit is going to be VERY good. But will it be the best?

The Auburn football sages here at the Temple of College & Magnolia are here to dispense their wisdom once again on why Auburn will or won’t have the best linebacker corps in all of the SEC this season.

AUNerd

This one is legitimately tough for me. There are 3 strong contenders for this honor in my opinion: Alabama, Auburn and Georgia. The Crimson Tide’s backers struggled at times last fall but that’s because by the of the season they were starting two true freshman. They are a year older and now they return Dylan Moses who missed all of last season with an injury. He’s been consistently mocked by experts to be a 1st round draft pick next spring.

But I would rank them 3rd at the moment. Auburn returns their outstanding foursome this fall. KJ Britt is unquestionably the best run stopping backer in the country and with some improvements in coverage could challenge Moses for that top spot in the 2021 NFL Draft class. Owen Pappoe started every game despite being a true freshman and is poised for a monster sophomore season. At times, I thought Zakoby McClain was the best linebacker on the field last fall while Chandler Wooten is a leader who can play all three positions in Auburn’s scheme.

The homer in me wants to go Auburn but if I am being honest, I think heading into the fall I would give Georgia the nod. Monty Rice is a beast and is back to lead this nasty UGA defense once again. Tae Crowder is gone but will be replaced by Nakobe Dean who graded out the highest of all freshman linebackers per PFF. Former blue chips Quay Walker, Trezman Marshall and Channing Tindall serve as backups while Azeez Ojulari has a chance to be a breakout pass rusher off the edge.

I love Auburn’s group but I am going to give just the ever so slightest of nods to the Dawgs and then take a very long shower.

Verdict: No

Jack Condon

I can’t believe Nerd chose not to #BarnHard above, but it’s alright. I’ll get us rolling in the right direction. While you may be looking at the raw talent and recruiting rankings of some other linebacker groups in the SEC, there are some intangibles that only come with time that fall in Auburn’s favor.

Nerd went through some of the superlatives with Britt, Pappoe, McClain, and Wooten, and while they’re not as highly-regarded as some of the studs in Athens or Tuscaloosa, the group itself will be better. With K.J. Britt as an undoubted leader in the middle, Auburn’s group won’t be in the wrong mindset or positioning at all. We’ve now seen the fireworks from a player like Zakoby “Mac Jones is my favorite player” McClain, and Owen Pappoe learned a ton from being in the rotation as a freshman.

I think one of the most important benefits for Auburn this season will be the “minister of culture” attitude that it seems like Chandler Wooten has taken on. With all of the recent events around the country, he appeared to shoulder the outward vocal responsibility for the team, and he did so in a mature and eloquent manner. Having someone like that in the room will only make the other linebackers strive for greatness.

Plus, you’ve got the added positive that they’ve all played together for an entire year now. Yeah, Alabama’s got Dylan Moses, but they lost Anfernee Jennings and Terrell Lewis. Georgia’s got some fantastic young guys as well, but both teams are going to be going through the growing pains of meshing as a unit. This season especially, that’s going to be even more difficult to do than ever. No spring practice, and possibly less fall practice. That’s why Auburn has the edge this season.

Verdict: Yes

Will McLaughlin

Nerd and Jack have already hit on basically every point I would have made here. K.J. Britt did a tremendous job filling the role left by Deshaun Davis the prior before. I’m excited to see what Britt does for an encore and the continued emergence of Owen Pappoe. With no spring practice and an experienced group coming back across the board, I will choose to Barn Hard to answer this question!

Verdict: Yes

Josh Black

They will but they won’t get the credit for it. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better collection of linebackers based on talent and experience than K.J. Britt, Owen Pappoe, Chandler Wooten, and Zakoby McClain. What Travis Williams has done in restoring the pride of the Auburn linebackers is inspiring. K.J. Britt is one of the most sound tacklers Auburn has had in a decade and matches it with a toughness and ability to lay the wood that we weren’t used to seeing 4 years ago.

But you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere outside of this here website that will agree with Auburn’s linebackers being the best in 2020, and the reason is because of the lack of experience in front of and behind them. I could easily see Georgia’s group getting the nod this year with all that they return defensively. Shoot of Alabama’s group ever stays healthy they’ll be a sexier pick.

Bottom line, go ahead and get ready to be called a homer this fall for believing in the Auburn linebacking corp. But also be prepared to be right.

Verdict: Yes

James Jones

Short answer: Yes, because they had it last year and didn’t lose anyone.

Long answer: The only question here is whether or not Derrick Brown and Marlon Davidson made that much of a difference for Britt and company. We know they were great, but were they so great that they made the men behind him look like all conference players? I don’t think that gives this group enough credit. KJ Britt is a potential first round draft pick. Owen Pappoe is the perfect linebacker for the way football is played today. Chandler Wooten made the most of his chances, and he would be a star on other teams. Zackoby McClain only made the kind of play that kids dream about in their backyards*. This is the most talent Auburn has had at linebacker since 2003, which included one of the greatest linebackers in Auburn history in Karlos Dansby, an incredibly smart and agile Dontarrious Thomas in the middle, and the one man in common with both groups: Travis Williams.

Verdict: Yes

*-I was a kid during the Pat Dye era. To heck with offense, I wanted to be a linebacker

DrewMac

I am really happy I am right after my good buddy James Jones, especially with that line of being an Dye-hard Auburn man. Everyone above me has made some solid points and pretty much everything I had thought up to say. The only thing missing is that ZacKoby McClain is from Valdosta, GA and if you want football players, you get real ones in South Georgia. Auburn is EXTREMELY solid at the linebacker position which they have got to be since we lose two men on the front along with Nick Coe. Are they the best in the conference though? Maybe? Here’s the thing though, get me in the conversation of being the best and that’s all I can really ask for, because being in the conversation, leads to this...

HOW DID THIS JUST HAPPEN!???!?!?! pic.twitter.com/lyJ2tkj465

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) November 30, 2019

Verdict: Uh-huh

Ryan Sterritt

I’ll be honest, I haven’t done my homework this offseason. I haven’t bought my Athlon and Lindy’s, and I haven’t been looking at other team’s depth charts, unless that team is Arizona State in my NCAA 14 dynasty. But you see, I’ve painted myself into a bit of a corner.

Instead, I’m going to lean on Auburn’s returning sack leader to have an even bigger year and put himself in position to be Auburn’s first 1st round draft pick at linebacker since Takeo Spikes.

Yeah, that quote was me in last week’s roundtable, predicting KJ Britt to lead Auburn in sacks and become a first round draft pick. I’m going to double down on my love for KJ Britt, especially when he’s being paired with @TheFreak.

Verdict: Yes

You’ve heard our sage advice, now it’s your turn. Will Auburn have the best linebacker corps in the SEC this season?

War Eagle

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2020/7/13/21320690/c-m-roundtable-will-auburn-have-the-best-linebacker-corps-in-the-sec

[swiftlymoniquesblog]

As I look back on today, I can’t help but smile. Today marks the one year anniversary of when I met #SebastianStan. I will never forget how excited I was to meet him and how utterly satisfied I was from that weekend. I drove over 6 hours up to Tulsa, Oklahoma just to spend one day with this man and it was the greatest decision ever. I made sure to have gotten VIP tickets so I’d be one of the first people to meet him that Saturday. Even though it was a LOT of money, it was WORTH IT! I remember waking up that Saturday morning, barely getting much sleep the night before, and preparing myself both physically and mentally, to meet the nicest little cinnamon bun ever. When I arrived at the venue, there were already tons of fans there, queuing up to get their goodie bags and their VIP passes.  Once I received my bag with a free poster of Sebastian, my passes for the photo op and the autograph session, I stood in line alone, and the excitement only grew from there. The amount of fans who were waiting outside the conference room to go in for the panel, was more than I had ever expected. There were two girls who stood behind me, talking about how excited they were for the day and I turned to talk to them too. Little did I know, they would be the one’s I’d spend the entire day with and would be there to help me with my fangirling. The panel started around 11am and when Sebastian took the stage, I was in awe of his presence. Something about him, instantly drew me to him, and I hadn’t even met him yet! The first thing he said to us, after saying hello, was “I made it to Tulsa! This is where Chandler got in trouble!” Everyone cheered and I laughed at the Friends reference. I regret not standing up and yelling, “I UNDERSTOOD THAT REFERENCE” like Captain America, but I was too nervous. For my first Comic Con, I wanted to behave. The questions from the interviewer and the fans were really amazing and I’ll never forget the girl who got a hug from Sebastian because she was so nervous to talk to him. He ran off the stage and up the aisle, right by me and my friends, picked her up, and hugged/spun her around. I’ll also never forget what he said to my Dad. My Dad was on his phone, playing Solitaire, and before Sebastian made his way back to the stage, he saw my Dad playing on his phone, said “That’s what I’d be doing right now.” And the entire audience broke out laughing! For me however, I was hyperventilating because he was talking to my Dad and was standing right next to me. After the panel, one of my new friends had the first VIP group to meet Sebastian, so she had to go get in line. However, my other friends and I walked around, checking out the booths and everything Wizard World had to offer. There were a LOT of different comic books, and photos and paintings from different comic book characters and those from Marvel & DC. We all were having a great time, until it was our turn to queue up for the second autograph session. Once again, we stood in line, waiting for Sebastian to come back from his lunch break. We were told we could take picture or videos of Sebastian but when he was signing autographs, we had to put our phones away. Now I’ll share the video I took in a second post, but let's get back to Seb. When my friend and I approached the table, we both smiled and asked him how he was. It was a bit awkward because we didn’t know what to say and he is very focused when he’s signing but he was still so nice when he talked. It was my turn to meet him and after he signed my picture, I told him I had a present for him. I picked up the MASSIVE Marvel gift bag that had red, white, and blue tissue paper (for Captain America of course) and when I set the bag on the table, Sebastian’s eyes grew really wide and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He didn’t entirely open the gift bad, but he moved the paper around to see what was inside. I had made a collage for him, of his most recognizable characters he’s ever played, but his reaction wasn’t what I was expecting. He said, “oh no, no more pictures of me please.” I was kinda hurt hearing him say that because it took a lot of time and money for me to make that collage but I told him the best thing I could think of. “Well I made this for you because I’m really proud of you and I want you to be proud of yourself.” I explained. And at that moment, when he looked at me and smiled, said thank you, I knew he was okay with it. I also had to make sure to tell him about the 3 page letter I wrote for him that was at the bottom of the bag and he said he’d look for it. We said our goodbyes and that we’d see him shortly and he smiled as we walked away. Both my friend and I were freaking out because we got to actually talk to Sebastian Stan and we got his autograph! We had more time to kill before we had to be back for our photo with him so again, we went around, looking at all the booths the vendors had to offer. The whole day, I met more and more fans who all loved Sebastian just as much as I did and we all became fast friends. When it was finally time for photos, we were all exhausted from the day and just wanted it to be over. From 9:00 in the morning, we had one thing after another going on. As soon as we stood up to prepare to meet him again, my heart was racing; I was so excited to see him again. I walked up to him, smiled and said hi, I asked if he could hug me from behind for the picture and he said sure. Later I was told by my friends who were watching us together, they said Sebastian had hesitated where to put his arms because it seemed like he didn’t wanna hit my boobs; a total gentlemen. I waited for my friends to take their pictures and then we all picked our printed pictures up. We made sure to get something to put the photo op picture and the autographed picture in before we left. It was around 5pm when we all had met Sebastian and were ready to call it a day. We said our goodbyes and exchanged Facebooks and said we’d keep in touch. When I got back to my hotel room with my Dad, I was on such a high that all I could do was look at my picture with Sebastian and be totally in love. Sebastian was the nicest man I have ever met and the way he interacted with all of us, was truly extraordinary. So on this one year anniversary, I say thank you to Sebastian for coming out to meet us. Thank you for flying from New York, to Atlanta for a layover, then to Tulsa and getting there at 4am. Thank you for giving us your all even though we knew you were exhausted. Thank you for all your hard work as an actor and as a human being. I can’t ever put into words what you mean to me but I will try to tell you and show you everyday for the rest of my life and I can’t wait to be reunited again one day. I love you to the moon and back my Romanian Prince

Xoxo

Monique

[philiprolz]

CHOOSE YOUR FRANCHISE By Philip Rolz  Nov 7, 2017 

I was lucky enough to go to a couple of Orlando Magic games back in the 90′s and 2000′s and fell in love. But living almost 2,000 miles away from the nearest NBA city made it hard for me to really root for a team, a city, a franchise. But like a drunken, low self esteem college girl with daddy issues I gave myself to the first one that wooed me... a Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway led expansion team in Florida. I’ve stuck with them ever since. 

But it got me thinking, how do you choose a team? Are some teams more likely to be a fan favorite than others? What’s their fan-ability? Before I make my case I gotta tell you what I took into consideration making this list: how cool or uncool the city is, how good-looking their uniforms are, GM decisions over the years, iconic players, fan base, the culture of the organization, overall success or lack there of, team history. OK, here’s my list:

Atlanta Hawks

You can’t NOT love a place people refer to as “The dirty south”, I mean it sounds fun and rappers made it cool to root for Atlanta based teams (specially the Hawks and Falcons).

Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb were the first real iconic players that put the Hawks on the map with their amazing athletic abilities. The rivalry with Jordan and the Bulls was real (both in real games and in dunk contests at All-Star Weekends) and people noticed them. They were fun to watch. 

Ever since the “Dominique era” the franchise has been kind of a letdown though. Always underachieving and kinda disappearing in the clutch. 2014-2015 was a clear example of a roster that made a lot of noise but crapped their pants when it got real in the playoffs.  

Currently they’re probably one on the top teams looking to tank this season to get a franchise defining rookie in this apparent “loaded” draft, so the Hawks aren’t really a team you root for this year but they have been fun to watch largely in part of high flying young players like John Collins and Taurean Prince.

Fan-ability: B-

  Boston Celtics

The Celtics are one of the most successful franchises in sports. Their fan base is extremely loyal, somewhat violent and friggin’ loud. They might be responsible for starting the whole “superteams” trend some seem to hate, but when it comes down to it, it’s just good management and recruiting. Then there’s the legendary Celtic players from oldies Bill Russell and Larry Bird to not so oldies Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. These guys are deified by the hardcore Boston fans and man have they come through with epic playoff performances and hard nosed triumphs.  Nowadays they seem to expect a LOT from the young roster GM Danny Ainge put together majestically and guess what? They are they fun to watch. Kyrie Irving has the most insane handles in the league and I haven’t seen a small guard finish as efficiently in the paint since Tony Parker’s best days. The Celtics are also very similar to the Spurs when it comes to drafting well which is a big thing for fans looking for franchises to root for when there’s youth and potential. Will Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown be the NBA’s next studs? Will Markelle Fultz be a complete bust? (therefore making the Celtics even smarter)  The Celtics are NBA Elite and that makes them either really loved or really hated.  Fan-ability: B+

Brooklyn Nets

Brooklyn, New York. Home of everything cool in the world, right? Wrong! The Brooklyn Nets seem to be a forced fed team (notice the cheesy SI cover above) completely divorced with the whole swagger of this New York borough. Nobody wants to be associated with failure, and the Nets have been failures in so many ways during the last years it’s embarrassing. They basically gave away all their draft picks, they over-hyped a Deron Williams that was arguably one of the biggest free agent busts of all time. Their iconic players? Dr J? Jason Kidd? Kerry Kittles (just kidding)? Kinda feels weird picking guys who did play for the Nets, just not the Brooklyn Nets. I feel bad for them though, playing in one of the biggest markets in the country and not being known for enticing big name free agents, not even with Jay-Z helping them out for a little while. I’m pretty certain HOVA wanted out before the stink rubbed off on him.  They haven’t drafted well, they’re not fun to watch, they’ve become synonymous with losing. The only good thing they have going for them is the fact that Brooklyn is a tourist destination and there’s a chance some tourist will buy a Nets ticket before a Knicks ticket.

Fan-ability: D+

Charlotte Hornets

Remember those big flashy Starter Jackets with the Charlotte Hornets logo plastered all over them? Those were the days! The Hornets used to be good and/or fun. An Alonzo Mourning team alongside Larry “Grandmama” Johnson, Muggsy Bogues and Steph Curry’s dad (who apparently could shoot very well, too) was a fun thing to watch.

Several years later it all went straight to hell with the Bobcats. Let’s face it, when you think of the Bobcats you think of a bunch of scrubs and Adam Morrison. Good God!

Now they’re back to being the Hornets, although, they’re still not that fun. They don’t have Zo they have Dwight Howard, one of the least likeable players out there. They don’t have LJ, they have Frank Kaminsky (crickets chirping). They don’t have Muggsy they have Kemba Walker... ok that’s better. And instead of Dell Curry they have a rookie who I��m really rooting for: Malik Monk.

They’re ok. They’re not super exciting but they have some star power. Hopefully this year the young guards can do some damage down the stretch and maybe be a sneaky team in the playoffs.

Fan-ability: B+

Chicago Bulls

You think Bulls, you think MJ, his Airness, the G.O.A.T.

For younger fans you think D.Rose being drafted by his hometown team and making them a force to be reckoned with in the East and dethroning the King with a 2010-2011 MVP award.

But it’s 2017 now. The face of the franchise is a blonde kid from Finland named Lauri Markkanen and the face of Nikola Mirotic was obliterated by fellow teammate Bobby Portis. Well maybe not obliterated, but I hear it was a heck of a knockout.

It really doesn’t matter how bad GM Gar Foreman and owner Jerry Reinsdorf have been, because what Michael Jordan did for the NBA he did for this NBA franchise as well. Fans crave for the second coming of Michael and until that day comes (I’m pretty sure it’ll never happen) the first thing you’ll think of when you see a red Bulls jersey is #23.

Fan-ability: A-

Cleveland Cavaliers

I’ve never been to Cleveland. I don’t think I’ll ever go there. Not really a bucket list destination.  But I have to admit, LeBron James made Cleveland relevant since the day he was drafted by his hometown team. He was the chosen one entering the league and did not disappoint. He carried a really weak team to an NBA Finals versus a really strong San Antonio Spurs team (and lost). Took his talents to South Beach making everybody in the league feel sorry for the Cavs. As soon as he ditched Miami to go back to “The Land” they were legit once more. LBJ is no MJ however. Some people seem to dislike his demeanor, question his clutch gene and doubt his leadership. He is a little whiny sometimes. Yet no one has denied that LeBron is still the best player on the planet and has been for the better part of his career. I mean it feel like its been 30 straight NBA Finals for him.  He’s great. He made Cleveland great. Even if he leaves this upcoming season, Cleveland should be forever grateful for everything King James has done. And because people enjoy experiencing greatness the Cavaliers are a fan favorite. (Me personally, not really a fan) Fan-ability: A

Dallas Mavericks

A lanky slow-ish blonde forward from Würzburg, Germany made the Dallas Mavericks NBA champions against, non other than, the chosen one (or as Skip Bayless likes to call him “the frozen one”). But aside from being lany, kinda slow and uh... blonde, Dirk Nowitzki is one of the top 20 greatest players of all time, one of my personal favorite players and proud owner of one of the sweetest fade away jumpers ever. 2010-2011 was the Mavericks championship season and man was it a well constructed team that no matter if you love or hate outspoken owner Mark Cuban, you gotta hand it to him. Combining veteran leaders like Jason Kidd and Jason Terry with defensive anchor Tyson Chandler and freaks of nature like Shawn Marion was the recipe for success under the brilliant mind of one of the most underrated coaches, Rick Carlisle. You felt glad they were champions. It wasn’t a “super team” but it was really really good and they were underdogs against a Miami team that promised not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, etc. championships. After the ‘chip they remained relevant until maybe last season. Dirk is rapidly aging and this really seems like it’s gonna be his last season. To be honest I’ve stopped watching Mavericks games because this is not the Dirk I want to remember. I do watch a lot of highlights though, mostly because of rookie Dennis Smith, Jr. Holy cow! That kid looks like he was made with the same stuff Russell Westbrook was made from. DSJr is another rookie I’m really rooting for, specially because he’s in great hands with old man Dirk to guide him and Rick Carlisle to coach him and get the best out of him. It’s a winning franchise in a hip warm weather city, with a wild celebrity owner, an iconic international player and champion, with a lot of young talent. Nuff said. Fan-ability: A-

Denver Nuggets

I think the Nuggets’ greatest moment in franchise history was the improbable win against the #1 seeded Sonics in 1994. Big whoop. There were other highlights in franchise history like drafing Melo (who later demanded a trade outta there). They did have Allen Iverson on their team, but then they traded him to Detroit because he wasn’t the 76ers Allen Iverson of old.    And this is the part where I want to talk about Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. He was a muslim player (duh!) and was unbelievably good. But he was a muslim. Many compare his game to Steph Curry’s. But he was a muslim. He had crazy handles, the highest basketball IQ and one sweet jumpshot. But he was a muslim, and he started the whole Colin Kaepernick thing where he protested during anthems. Oh boy. Can you imagine a guy named Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf protesting in front of thousands of proud americans back in the 90′s? Yeah, that was the end of that. It’s really sad to wonder how good he would’ve been. At least Ice Cube gave him a shot in the BIG3. Anyway, back to the Denver Nuggets franchise comprised of young exciting talent but not a clear cut superstar. Nikola Jokic is really entertaining but is enough to make the Nuggets relevant? Millsap just joined them, but let’s face it he’s a really good boring player. Garry Harris was supposed to have a breakout year and it’s still early but he’s been a little too quiet for my taste. Jamal Murray, Emmanuel Mudiay seem a long way from being relevant and Kenneth Faried hasn’t been traded after 1,864,227 times it’s been rumored. The biggest indicator the Nuggets are in trouble is the fact that their own fans don’t show up as they finished last in attendance last season. Yikes! Fan-ability: F

Detroit Pistons

Personally I can’t really talk about the Bad Boy Pistons from the 80′s because I didn’t really get into the NBA until a little later. But from what I’ve heard and read, I really dig it. An uber-defensive team that wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. Hard nosed defenders, clutch shooting, trash talking and an iconic coach kinda sound like... hey! The 2004 champion Pistons! The comparison just goes to show that a culture within a franchise can go a long way.  The 2004 Pistons were tough, smart and had the winning mentality that I’m sure legendary coach Larry Brown implemented in the locker room. Big Ben was scary big even though he wasn’t as tall as your traditional center. ‘Sheed was a bad man with a sick jumper and a f*ck you attitude. Rip and Chauncey were the smart and offensively skilled guard combo. Okur, Tayshaun and McDyess played their roles just right. To this day I can’t believe they beat Kobe, Shaq and another “superteam”.  The Pistons of 2017 however lack some of that old school attitude. It’s well coached (shout out to Stan Van G) but no very well managed (sorry Stan Van G). Drummond is a huge piece of human who can block shots, dunk over anyone and has kind of improved the free throw issues of the past. Reggie Jackson seems to be a conflictive dude lacking the leadership of a Chauncey Billups. Tobias Harris who’s good but would’ve been better in a different era. Today’s NBA doesn’t really work for a guy like him. It’s not a roster you can nip and tuck and turn into a legitimate force in the NBA, to me it feels like it’s either this group of guys to maybe get past the first round of the playoffs or blow it all up and tank away to get younger and better. Can we send Avery Bradley to the Celtics, please?  Overall, it’s a city with a lot of heart and a franchise with a lot of history but right now who knows what they are? Fan-ability: B-

Golden State Warriors

My first memory of the Golden State Warriors is Chris Mullin’s hair and short shorts. Tim Hardaway’s crossovers. Latrell Sprewell’s angry two handed dunks (also angry head coach chokings) and an underachieving Chris Webber. But that’s all in the past. Even the good stuff like the Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson Warriors that made a lot of noise in the 2006 playoffs. That’s all irrelevant now because things changed in the bay area. Mark Jackson started coaching a young group of really promising guys and started a style of play that later Steve Kerr, who replaced him as head coach, perfected and made history. I don’t need to talk about how good Steph Curry is and how he revolutionized the game or how good of a shooter/defender/heat check guy Klay is. Or how Draymond is the new villain and best defender in the NBA or how Durant made this team virtually invincible... because everybody knows it. The only thing that worried me was if I would ever get bored of this team; short answer: NO. Again, people like greatness and the bar set by these basketball juggernauts is so high it’s become ridiculous. People call them “bandwagon fans” but it’s really just a matter of wanting to feel part of something as special as this group of future hall of famers... that and they’re totally bandwagon fans. Bandwagon fan-bility: A+

Houston Rockets

Probably not gonna be on the same page as a lot of people here but I’ve always found Rockets players kind of douchey. Maybe not the championship Rockets Olajuwon, Drexler, Horry or Cassell. More like Steve Francis, the worst version of Dwight Howard, and now James Harden AND Chris Paul. Yes, I said it. James Harden is a douchebag. He gets a lot of points, has become an elite point guard but his game isn’t really that exciting... and he’s a whiny flopper. 

They have a lot of history and a bunch of iconic players but ever since the championship years in the mid 90′s we haven’t gotten a dominant conference shifting team. Today’s roster is a poor man’s Golden State Warriors and they’ll eventually find out (the hard way) that in a 7 game series you won’t outshoot or outscore the Dubs. OK, I’ve really bashed the Rockets here, but don’t get me wrong I have to give credit where credit is due: James Harden is an MVP caliber player and Chris Paul is the point God but nobody likes ‘em. Fan-ability: C

Indiana Pacers

Back in the day the Pacers of Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Rik Smits, Derrick McKey and Antonio & Dale Davis were for real. They had shooting, rebounding, star power, coaching ...they had it all! It’s a shame that Michael Jordan and the Kobe/Shaq combo never let Reggie and the Pacers win a championship. A decade later the Pacers found themselves with a very strong group of talented players that made LeBron and the Heatles a little nervous. Paul George the emerging superstar along Lance Stephenson, Roy Hibbert and company were battling LeBron down to the last second but eventually falling short. Paul George broke his leg got better and basically told everyone in Indiana to go screw themselves because he would leave them for his hometown Lakers. Now he’s in OKC as a rental and Indiana has highly motivated Victor Oladipo (fan favorite in Indiana) Arvydas Sabonis’ son and what’s left of Lance Stephenson. They should be tanking this year but they’re not in large part because of phenom Myles Turner and a rejuvenated Thad Young. So, what are they? Good? Mediocre? Bad? At this point, we don’t really know.  It’s a small market team with no real superstar anymore and a lot of young talent that could either shine or implode. Fan-ability: D

L.A. Clippers

CP3 leaving means the Clippers are now terrible, right? Nope. Point Blake is for real, DeAndre looks like he’s having fun again and all the role players seem engaged. Oh! And this guy with the scruffy beard is their 30 year old rookie point guard who’s soooo fun to watch. What about the history of the franchise? Well, it’s no pretty. The Clippers were synonymous with failure for a long time. They were terrible at attracting free agents, terrible at drafting (i.e. Michael Olowakandi) until they put together what would become Lob City. It was fun but not very successful.  Los Angeles is sexy and cool but you don’t really think Clippers, you think Lakers, even when the Clippers have clearly been the better basketball team for the last 3 or 4 years now. With the Lakers making a comeback it’s becoming more obvious that the the Clippers should just move north and become the beloved Seattle Sonics.  Fan-ability: C+

L.A. Lakers

Showtime is back in L.A.! Not particularly because of their style of play but because of all the buzz the young players have caused and the circus surrounding Lonzo Ball, who in his first month playing in the NBA looks... different from what Lavar promised. It’s okay, nobody really expected Lonzo to be better than LeBron, Steph and God in his first games. The bottom line is Lonzo not bad and could become really good! Ingram is looking pretty good (just needs an extra 50 lbs) and I’m predicting he could become a Greek Freak type of superstar. But enough about the Baby Lakers, who we know are gonna be alright eventually, let’s talk about the incredibly successful franchise throughout the years. Ugh! Can’t believe I just said something nice about the Lakers. Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and of course Kobe Bryant are one of the biggest names in the history of the league and they’re all Lakers (shout out to Nick Van Exel, one of my favorite players ever). I was blessed to witness the early 2000′s reign of Shaq and Kobe (even though I kept thinking what would’ve happened if Shaq stayed in Orlando) and their epic battles with the Spurs.  Let’s face it, the Lakers are the Yankees of basketball. People love the city of Los Angeles and they root for what the Lakers were and what they could eventually become once again. Fan-ability: A+

Memphis Grizzlies

They’ve come a long way from those Vancouver days when their best player was Bryant “Big Country” Reeves. They established a culture of hard work reminiscent of the city they play for. They created “Grit and Grind” and should be very proud of it. The history of the franchise is a little iffy since they were really bad for a really long time (normal for an expansion team in small markets).  Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, Tony Allen and Z-Bo put the league on notice and transformed a joke of a franchise to a legitimate contender. The roster has been almost completely revamped but Gasol and Conley are keeping the “Grit and Grind” very much alive. For how long? Only time will tell (hopefully as long as possible). Fan-ability: C+

Miami Heat

Fun fact: Did you know the Miami Heat won a championship without LeBron James? Yup!  Here’s another one for you: Did you know the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks hated each other and had a bunch of epic playoff battles back in the 90′s and early 2000′s? Hell yeah! My point is Miami has had a lot history before the LeBron and Heatles “superteam” nonsense. Pat Riley is largely responsible for all of it. And this post LeBron phase hasn’t been as terrible as you’d expect because this well oiled machine of a franchise keeps drafting, signing and getting all the right pieces to be contenders in a very weak Eastern Conference. They’re still a couple of moves away from being the top dogs so don’t be surprised if they make some moves during this season or once the season is over. The city of Miami is fun and sexy and so are the Heat fans. As long as Pat Riley is there they’re gonna be relevant and in the conversation. Fan-ability: B+

New Orleans Pelicans

As Tony Montana famously once said: “Manny, look at the pelican fly. Come on, pelican!” refering to some flamingos he was watching on TV. I kind of feel that way when I’m watching these guys play... I think I’m watching two of the best big men in the game along with some decent role players but I’m really just watching a franchise with no idea of what they’ll do when they inevitably lose both their big men (AD & Boogie) and return to being bad (worse). My second thing about this franchise: how are we supposed to root for a team called the Pelicans?! Wait... their arena is called the “Smoothie King Center”? OK, I’m done.

Weird to not root for a team that has 2 of the top 15 players in the league. Fan-ability: F 

New York Knicks

New York IS basketball. When you walk around this magnificent city you breathe basketball. Some of the best street ballers are New Yorkers. Yet, the Knicks haven’t been as great as Knicks fan expect them to be (not in the last 3 or 4 seasons anyway). Owner James Dolan is not exactly a fan favorite, Phil Jackson left without accomplishing what he was hired to accomplish, Charles Oakley has been banned from MSG (yes, the former Knicks legend) and the Melo-drama of last year(s) was quite frankly very annoying. So yeah, it’s been pretty brutal. It’s seems like a very long time because their last championship was in 1973 but there have been some really interesting, talented and semi-successful Knicks teams since Bernard King’s epic finals performance. One of the most sought after rookies landed in MSG and had a really good career (Patrick Ewing) and the aforementioned Charles Oakley along with John Starks, Anthony Mason and Doug Christie among others were talented, feisty, tough and relentless enough to reach the finals against a really loaded Rockets team. Then there’s Van Gundy’s squad with Ewing, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell, Larry Johnson and Marcus Camby who played the role of the underdog from day 1 until they reached the finals which they once again lost, this time against a dynastic Spurs. As of today the Knicks, minus Carmelo Anthony, have been quite surprising and own of the most precious assets in basketball: a unicorn. Kristaps Porzingis has won the heart of every single Knicks fan because of the dog in him, something very important to a city that values hard work. His stellar numbers and the potential of becoming a very unique type of player (hence the nickname “unicorn”) might be that x-factor that brings the championship back to the mecca. All they have to do is be patient, avoid the drama (hard to do with the New York media) and draft well... let’s hope Frankie Smokes is the perfect compliment to KP’s amazing talent. Oh, and please pray to the basketball gods... no injuries, please! Fan-ability: A-

Oklahoma City Thunder

You know what helps building a fan base when your not the coolest city in the world? Superstars! Oklahoma City has had some of the biggest names in the NBA play for them: Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Serge Ibaka. More unbelievable? They played together! Just goes to show what a great GM (Sam Presti) and great scouts will do to a franchise. Even with all these amazing atheletes on their team they really never got to win it all. KD and Russ were an unbelievable duo but many wondered if they didn’t really compliment eachother... maybe KD needed more of a playmaker, maybe Russ needed more of a role player and shine on his own. Well KD left to join the ridiculously talented Dubs (and won the title) and Russ won the MVP averaging a triple double.  Now they have even more star power adding hoodie Melo and Paul George to the mix and hoping this trio will knock down the reign of the all mighty Warriors (highly unlikely).  Superstars aside, OKC really has had an uphill battle developing a fan base in such a small market and have done so beautifully.  Fan-ability: B+

Orlando Magic

Whoa! This is hard for me. I’m probably gonna bash the franchise I first loved (and still do for some strange reason). My best memories as a kid are in Orlando when me and my whole family went to Disney World, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, so I’m a little bias. Imagine a kid from Guatemala city going to a basketball game in a jam packed arena where Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway put on a show. Done deal! I’m a Magic fan for life.  Orlando somehow managed to lose Shaq by lowballing him in an almost  offensive way comparing him to other players in the league and criticizing his rebounding and defense in an attempt to “negotiate” a deal that wouldn’t mean breaking the bank for Shaq. But guess what? For Shaq, you DO break the bank and by not doing so they broke the heart of every Orlando Magic fan. So Shaq left and it took a long time to recover. 13 years later Dwight Howard somehow managed to go to an NBA Finals with a very weird and well coached Magic team that seemed content to just get there, and let’s face it, didn’t really have a shot against the Lakers.  Then, Rob Hennigan happened. Bad draft picks, horrible free agent signings and head scratching trades were the norm under this guy. Even though he’s still no longer with the team the stench of his horrible decisions still linger over the very bizarre roster today’s Magic have assembled. Granted the beginning of this season has been a very pleasant surprise many people feel it’s just a phase in which a lot of “bad teams” started hot and will eventually fall back down to earth. I’m just trying to believe they might snatch the East’s 8th spot and finally be back in the playoff picture, but... why? Shouldn’t they just tank and hope to get ANOTHER draft pick? Who knows? All I know is Aaron Gordon is finally playing some decent basketball and I have really high expectations from rookie Jonathan Isaac and might eventually become a steal in the draft.  Fan-ability: D

Philadelphia 76ers

Oh God! The Process. The day they win a championship I’ll tolerate the Process. I feel awful for the Philly fans that had to endure such a long run of shameless, utter failure while being the laughing stock of the whole league. Having the commissioner actually getting involved in the team’s plan to continue sucking has got to be embarrassing. But 76ers fans have shown they always trusted the process and are now celebrating as if Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are the next best thing since sliced bread, but I have to remind every Sixer fan once in a while that they drafted Michael Carter-Williams and traded him for nothing, Nerlens Noel and traded him for nothing and Jahlil Okafor, who’ll be traded for nothing... so let’s not get too excited just yet. We still have to find out what Markelle Fultz becomes. The level of incompetence they endured for so long actually made us all root for them making them the most lovable underdog in history and thus captivating a new fan base of people rooting for the eternal losers to finally get a break. They used to be good though. Real good. Mostly because they had Allen Iverson, the best pound for pound player ever. Those A.I. teams were surrounded by a bunch of scrubs, role players and stiffs that watched “The Answer” in awe as he dismantled every opponent they faced. The team had a superstar and a lot of heart that would eventually take the finals against another almost invincible Lakers team, that for a second, crapped their pants when Allen Iverson tore them apart in Game 1. Eventually L.A. won 4 straight and the series was over. Philadelphia was praised for valiantly battling a star studded team with a minuscule scorer along with a bunch of unknowns (so yeah, they’ve always been the lovable underdogs). In a very “Rocky” way, Philadelphia always seems to be forced against the ropes and fighting back the best way they can.  Fan-ability: B

Phoenix Suns

It’s hard to imagine a time where the Phoenix Suns were a great Western Conference team. They were. My first memories of good Suns teams was the Barkley, KJ and Majerle led team. Then there’s the Nash-Stoudemire era where the battles against their Western Conference nemesis were pretty epic. It’s seems like its been forever since the glory days for the Suns. They had a nice little run not long ago with a trio of guards that are really good (Eric Bledsoe, Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas) but seemed like they handled it very poorly only ending the very brief run with some questionable GM decisions. Overall the Suns are franchise that hasn’t really clicked and found a clear path to becoming a fun team to watch. The Suns are very young and do have a great-to-be shooting guard in Devin Booker, but they’re probably 4 years from being competitive again and some young players like Bender, Marquese Chriss and Josh Jackson have to prove their worth in the next upcoming seasons. Trading Bledsoe seems like it could be a fresh start and open up some very important playing time for the younger talent. So brace yourselves, it’s not gonna be pretty. Fan-ability: C-

Portland Trailblazers

Hispters rejoice! There’s no doubt that rooting for the Blazers is the cool thing to do since nobody really trusts their backcourt defense, bench or bother to give Dame Dolla (a.k.a. Damien Lillard) an All-Star nod.  CJ McCollum and Damien Lillard think they’re the best backcourt in the NBA and it’s a legitimate claim since they score at will against any and every defender. When it comes to clutch shooting... you know it’s Dame Time! I personally find the Blazers a really fun team to watch and when you think about it, it’s been the case for a very long time. Awesome Blazer players throughout the years: Clifford Robinson (headband included), Jerome Kersey, Rod Strickland, Arvydas Sabonis, Rasheed Wallace, Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge are just some of the names that made this cool-ass city much much cooler. They’ve been relevant but haven’t really won a championship but at least they’ve been to one. Even if they’ve lost more than they’ve won they are definitly a cool team. Fan-ability: B+

Sacramento Kings

Before owner Vivek Ranadivé thought Nik Stauskas was the next best thing, before they drafted every single big while having arguably the best center in the league in Boogie Cousins and confusing everybody with every single poor decision the Kings were exciting.

Can it be argued that Jason “White Chocolate” Williams was the most entertaining point guard of the last 25 years? I certainly think so. He put the Kings on the map along with a very productive Chris Webber, the shooter extraordinaire of Peja Stojakovic and a bunch of really good role players. They kind of underachieved but looking back on that team, they might have been a little too young and flashy. The only time they made the NBA Finals was unfortunately in the movie “How to lose a guy in 10 days”. They lost those fake finals to the Knicks, how about that?

They might be making a comeback, though. The fun team they used to be could once again excite us basketball fans with rookie phenom De'Aaron Fox, second year shooting guard Buddy Hield, big man Willy Cauley-Stein and the rest of the young core. After all the DeMarcus Cousins drama they dealt with I sincerely hope they find their way with this young squad and make the Kings games a must watch. Fan-ability: C

San Antonio Spurs

You know how some organizations are so good they become kind of annoying and after a while they stop being annoying again because you’re in awe of how well they do everything? That’s the San Antonio Spurs.

Only the Spurs can reach the playoffs a record setting 20 consecutive years (also the longest active playoff streak in any major North American sports league as of 2017) and keep drafting really good under the radar rookies, who eventually turn out to be really good. You can’t talk about the Spurs without talking about Tim Duncan or Gregg Popovich, and even though there have been a lot of other amazing Spurs players (David Robinson, Manu, Tony Parker, Sean Elliott, now Kawhi, etc.) it’s Pop and Timmy’s dynasty. And is it just me or was Gregg Popovich really unlikable back when we didn’t really know him? He seemed like a real a**hole but now people want him to be the next President.

They are an iconic dynasty that will be a trademark of greatness for years and years to come. Watching Timmy retire was hard, I can’t imagine what’ll be like when Pop calls it quits.

Fan-ability: A+

Toronto Raptors

All Star Weekends aren’t really important. I was always a fan of these long, flashy, ceremonious events, but not really. It’s like it’s supposed to happen and it’s kinda like the mid-season awards in a way but it’s definitely not a big deal. In the year 2000 (shout out to Conan) though, it mattered, mainly because of the Canada’s basketball ambassador unbelievable display of amazingness and athletic dunk display that became, and still is, the single best dunk contest in the history basketball. Vince Carter was “Air Canada” but eventually it became a messy divorce with the franchise and once again became a sub par team. Nowadays they a decent top 3 team in the Leastern Conference, but I don’t expect them to go further than the second round of the playoffs, even though Masai Ujiri managed to assemble a nice roster that inlcudes the Big Medium 3 of: Lowry, DeRozan and Ibaka. The Raptors have always been ok and cool to root for (they are the only non U.S. team in the league, and that might be a plus) and the list of iconic players is actually pretty decent: Vince, T-Mac, Damon “Mighty Mouse” Stoudamire, Marcus Camby and Skip to my Lou (Rafer Alston). The most notable Raptors fan nowadays is Toronto’s rapper Drake (see also: Nav Bhatia) which really boosts popularity for the franchise, even when we know LeBron will have his way with the Raps come playoff time. Fan-ability: B+

Utah Jazz

Ok, first things first... let me just say that the biggest oxymoron is this franchise’s name. Has there ever been actual jazz played in the Mormon state? (shout out to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the hilarious “Book of Mormon” musical) Now that I got that out of the way, let’s go ahead and analyze the franchise. They’ve been a really well coached team for the most part (Jerry Sloan and now Quin Snyder) and even when they’re lacking star power they seem to be that team you don’t want to face. They’re really good at drafting and developing young talent and that translates into really feisty hard working potential all-stars... that eventually leave via free agency, probably because Utah isn’t the sexiest place in the world. Deron Williams was on his way of becoming the best point guard in the league and almost overnight became an expendable bench player. Gordon Hayward was the big white hope but opted to join forces with his former Butler head coach in Boston and got injured 5 minutes into his Celtic debut... wait is this a “Leave Utah curse” theory? Nah. Hayward will be alright... I hope. The 90′s and 2000′s were different though, Utah was a star studded franchise always representing the west come playoff time mainly because of the one the best duos of all time: Karl Malone and John Stockton. Although they never got to win the championship they’ll always be remembered as a legit force in the league. As for now, let’s just hope Rudy Gobert keeps developing into the best dang Center in the league... he certainly has the potential. Rodney Hood (awesome name by the way) needs to become an offensive force and most importantly be consistent. Dante Exum sadly, hasn’t really lived up to the hype and I believe has reached his ceiling. They are what all Jazz teams are, gritty and tough. Fan-ability: C+

Washington Wizards

DC’s team is and has always been a conundrum. Wizards teams have been pretty good on paper but none of them, including a Michael Jordan led team, could really make them relevant (granted MJ was getting pretty old and wasn’t in the best shape). It seems the current team is the best the franchise has had in a long time, yet they’re not close to being a Conference favorite. Do the Wizards have big names? Yup, John Wall is in the prime of a stellar career. Bradley Beal has proven he can stay healthy and stay productive. Otto Porter got paid All-Star money and should become one for this team to really go further. Are they well coached? Debatable, but I believe Scott Brooks is a huge improvement over several of the last coaches in Washington. Now the big question is can they actually dethrone Cleveland? The other big question is whether this roster is built for the future like Boston is. Sadly, my answer for both these questions is no. They had their share of bad draft picks (Kwame Brown most notably), players gone bad (Gilbert Arenas, Juwan Howard) iconic players that never really transcended or carried the franchise (MJ, Chris Webber), but the bottom line is they’re a cool franchise to root for (used to be cooler when they were the “Bullets”) in a cool city. Hopefully one day they’ll become a legitimate championship contending team. Maybe if they figure out how to get Boogie Cousins that’ll happend sooner rather than later. Fan-ability: B-

[laraehrlich-blog]

Original content owned & copyrighted by Green Global Travel.

I was a voracious reader when I was growing up, typically reading two books a week on average.

My lower-middle class family didn’t have the money to do much in the way of traveling, outside of the occasional camping trip in North Georgia. Both my parents worked, and my dad worked multiple jobs to support his family of five.

The furthest we ever traveled was a trip to visit my godparents in Treasure Island and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

It was through Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, John Muir’s Our National Parks, and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s  that I developed a passion for the environment. Without them, who knows if I would’ve become the advocate for Jon Krakauer, Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux greatly influenced the way I did it.

But the first classic quote I remember having a significant impact on me came in the form of a Robert Frost poem: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” This idea influenced many of my choices, setting me on the path to becoming a full-time READ MORE: The Best Travel Books to Inspire A Love of Adventure

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about Adventure Travel

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1. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” –Marcel Proust

2. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” –Pat Conroy

3. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” –Freya Stark

4. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” –Mark Twain

5. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights. It is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” –Miriam Beard

6.  “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” –Paul Theroux

7. “One of the gladdest moments of human life, me thinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy.” –Sir Richard Burton

8.  “I travel around the world in a way that tries to open my mind and give me empathy and inspire me to come home and make this world a better place.” –READ MORE: Why Responsible Travel Matters (& Greenwashing Sucks)

About Adventure Travel

11.  “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” –Andre Gide

12.  “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” –Jawaharial Nehru

13. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” –H. Jackson Brown Jr.

14.  “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.” –Hans Christian Andersen

15.  “In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn

16.  “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.” –Paulo Coelho

17.  “Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a READ MORE: Water Wonders (A Father-Daughter Story of Adventure)

Travel

21.  “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” –Anonymous

22.  “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” –Helen Keller

23.  “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” –Saint Augustine

24.  “Travel brings power and love back into your life.” –Rumi

25.  “Only one who wanders finds new paths.” –Norwegian Proverb

26.  “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” –Lao Tzu

27.  “Make voyages! Attempt them… there’s nothing else.” –Tennesee Williams

28.  “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” –Anais Nin

29.  “Your feet will take you where your heart is.” –Irish proverb

30.  “Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.” –Roy T. Bennett

READ MORE: NatGeo’s Don George on Travel Writing & Blogging

Travel

31.  “To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a

36. “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children” –Chief Seattle

37. “We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.” –John Hope Franklin

38. “Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings.” –Hodding Carter

39. “When you travel with children you are giving something that can never be taken away… experience, exposure, and a way of life.” –Pamela T. Chandler

40. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” –Tim Cahill

READ MORE: 7 Important Life Lessons I Learned in the Galapagos Islands

Travel

41.  “The further I go, the closer to me I get.” –Roman Payne, The Wanderess

43 “I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition. They reach the summit last because they know God isn’t at the top waiting for them. He is down below helping his followers to understand that the view is glorious where ever you stand.” –Shannon L. Alder

44.  “A person susceptible to ‘wanderlust’ is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.” — Pico Iyer

45. “How will I know who I can become if I don’t give myself the chance to try new things, to push myself beyond my normal boundaries? Who might I be if I am away from the things that I currently use to define myself?” ― Eileen Cook, With Malice

46.  “Two roads diverged in a wood and I– I took the one less traveled by… And that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost

47. “To get away from one’s working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one’s self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.” – Charles Horton Cooley

48.  “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.” – Eudora Welty

49.  “Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.” — The Dhammapada

50.  “All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money, or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: In Search For The Great Perhaps

READ MORE: 45 Pieces of Advice I’d Include in a Letter to My Younger Self

Travel

51. “As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was about to happen.”—A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

52.  “Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

53.  “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

54.  “And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, in dimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” — Pico Iyer

55.  “The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” — Shirley MacLaine

56.  “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures.”– Lewis Carroll

57.  “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.” — Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

58. “What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with.” — Robert Brault

59.  “Love is the food of life, travel is dessert.” – Anonymous

60.  “To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.” — Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost)

READ MORE: Bret & Mary, A Story About Love (& How GGT Was Born)

Travel

61.  “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” -Alan Keightley

62.  “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a Ride!'” — Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)

63. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” – James Michener

64.  “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you.  No yesterdays on the road.” -William Least Heat Moon

65.  “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all the familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things– air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky– all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

66.  “READ MORE: The Country of Jordan, the Middle East & Our Culture of Fear

Travel

71.  “It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau

72.  “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

73.  “Not all those who wander are lost.” –J.R.R. Tolkien

74.  “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” –Neale Donald Walsch

75.  “Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footsteps on the moon.” – Paul Brandt

76.  “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

77.  “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the Universe.” –Anatole France

78.  “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” –St. Augustine

79.  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —H. Jackson Brown, Jr. in P.S. I Love You

80.  “I find the great thing in this world is not so much about where we stand, as in what direction we are moving… We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, – but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

READ MORE: The World’s Best Small Ship Cruises

Travel

81.  “Stop creating a life that you need a vacation from. Instead, move to where you want to live, do what you want to do, start what you want to start, and create the life you want today. This isn’t rehearsal, people. This is YOUR life.” –Dale Partridge

82.  “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” –Bill Bryson

83. “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.” ―Judith Thurman

84.  “Travel is the antidote to fear. It makes you see the similarities and differences that exist around the world, and it opens your eyes– and mind– to new and different approaches.” –Julia Cosgrove

85.  “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

86.  “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

87. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” —Christopher McCandless

88.  “Travel while you are young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.” — Anonymous

89. “If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” –READ MORE: How to Start a Travel Blog (& Build a Successful Business)

Travel

91. “Look deeper into John Muir, The Mountains of California

95.  “When the blood in your veins returns to the sea, and the earth in your bones returns to the ground, perhaps then you will remember that this land does not belong to you– it is YOU who belongs to this land.” –Native American proverb

96.  “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” –Cree Indian Proverb

97.   “I went to the

The post The 100 Best Travel to Spark Your Next Adventure appeared first on Green Global Travel.

[independentartistbuzz]

Indie 5-0: 5Qs with Vela Rosa

Vela Rosa oozes the musical musk of classic rock behemoths like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Kiss, Aerosmith, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band’s debut is chock full of brawny blues-riffs, trippy musical passages, meditative ballads, and ripping lead guitars. Vela Rosa’s debut album, Run In Colour, whiffs 1973 vintage rock n’ roll. You can just smell the arena potpourri of pot, patchouli, cigarettes, and cheap beer as the sprawling 14-song album blares through the speakers. If you close your eyes, you’d think this record is a lost artifact from the actual Dazed and Confused era, or you’d surmise this quartet is made of old rock n’ roll salts who have been playing music since the dawn of bell bottoms and El Camino pickups. We had the honor of catching up with the band for an exclusive interview which you can find below.

1. Congrats on your debut release. What has happened for the band since it came out last month? “We’ve gotten some great reviews since the release of the album, and our following has been increasing, which is a great feeling. We think that this album will prove to be a great selling point for booking bigger shows in the near future, and for meeting other bands and artists that will help elevate our understanding of this business. Under better circumstances we would have liked to play the album live in Edmonton and surrounding cities, or maybe even gotten some opening gigs with bigger bands passing through, but that has of course not been an option. We will be back at it soon, and we can’t wait.” -Wyatt “For the most part we’ve just been biding our time until the world gets back to a state where we can get back to jamming and playing live.” -Ben 2. We read all about the drama you went through while recording your album - what were the lessons you learned from it? “One of the biggest things to take away from some of the situations we found ourselves in is that it is just as important to trust the people you’re working with as it is to trust each member of the band. You could have the next “White Album”, but if the guy behind the board doesn’t trust your vision, or if you don’t trust their ability to bring your vision to life then it could all go wrong very fast. It was frustrating at times, but we did the best with what we had and we are very happy with how the album turned out in the end.” -Wyatt “I’ve learned that the more Pre-Studio prep you do is going to increase your chances of everything going as planned so it is essential for a successful project.” -Chandler “I think that we really learned that for our group of musical personalities and style of songwriting, the time and freedom to experiment in the studio is essential to creating music we’re happy with. It doesn’t matter if you know a song or part like the back of your hand, if you have a spur-of-the-moment idea while recording, it’s always good to pursue it. To do that, you gotta have an environment that allows you that freedom” -Ben 3. How does Edmonton influence your musicianship? “Edmonton is a great city to play live. The audiences have a high standard of showmanship that we need to meet or exceed every single night, because if we don’t, they would have no problems with leaving us to play in an empty room. These high expectations force us to aim higher for each performance, and really gives us something to focus on during practice. It’s great motivation for constant improvement, and there’s nothing more rewarding than winning the audience over and feeling the energy being projected back onto the stage.” -Wyatt   “I’d say it’s since it seems like there aren’t many bands like us in the area that we’ve had to be on our own backs to keep putting the hours in which is tricky when you don’t have a gauge to compare your progress to. I will say it has certainly helped us out in the long run though.” -Chandler “Something I really appreciate about the Edmonton music scene is it’s variety. Yeah we’re a rock group playing mostly with other rock groups, but very rarely do the bands on a bill sound (or look) anything alike. Being exposed to sounds which we wouldn’t have considered and seeing how other groups craft their visual aesthetic and stage personas is a great creative stimulant for us” -Ben 4. Now that the world is slightly more open will you guys be playing out live? “Of course! We can’t wait to turn the amps back on and re-acquaint ourselves with the great stages we’ve played, and to play many new stages for the first time! We’ve been in contact with some venues recently, and we’re hoping to be back on stage within the coming months.” -Wyatt “Absolutely, the whole point of being in a band is to play live-all the other stuff is really just tools to help us do it more often and in front of more people. For me, that is the number one motivator that keeps it fresh and exciting.” -Chandler “For sure! A few of our favourite venues to play have indicated that things’ll kick back into gear in the Fall, but hopefully we’ll be out on stage before the end of Summer!” -Ben “Playing live and in the band room is what makes it all worth it. It’s the ultimate experience, and it’s the whole reason we do this. It will be great to get back to playing the songs together again.” -Josh 5. What is your favorite track on your release and why? “I’d have to say “Hey Yeah!” is my #1. It was probably the most intimidating track to record as well. There is so much going on, especially in the jam near the end, that we weren’t sure if we could bring all of the pieces together. I’m glad we succeeded in that, because listening back, it has the sort of feeling like it was recorded live at the peak of the greatest show we’ve ever played. That’s what I love about it, the energy and attitude that is delivered from start to end.” -Wyatt

“‘Lookin’ For the Right Way’ has to be my favourite. It was experimental for us in general but more specifically for me as the drummer. I got to be more creative with auxiliary percussion and the song turned out better than I’d imagined which made that one very fulfilling and I’m excited to do more stuff like that. Also, I think the bridge into the solo is some of the best music we’ve made together.” -Chandler “My favourite track off the album is “Feel It”. I constructed the bass parts to leave me a lot of room to improvise, particularly in the jam which concludes the song, so it’s one of my favourites to play. The song as a whole is one of the most psychedelic and spacey sections of the album, and the production serves the mood perfectly. The layers of guitar ramp up in a subtle and atmospheric way that lets that rhythm section bring the song from a soft, moody valley to an intense peak before coming down again naturally. Similar to Hey Yeah, I’m ecstatic with how well the recording captures the energy of playing the song live” -Ben Listen in here: https://open.spotify.com/album/00MviunY3cAAJIFrWjTHDU

[recentanimenews]

Shield Hero Fans Cheer for Naofumi's Justice

  It's that time you've been waiting for, y'all! If you haven't watched this week's episode of The Rising of the Shield Hero, please shield your eyes from these spoilers!

  **SPOILERS AHEAD**

  This week's episode starts with the BEST TEAM (let's not forget that!), the Shield Hero team all rounded up. But all of this seems quite hazy... Is this a dream? Is this a vision of what's to come in the future? What exactly is going on here?

    Before we get any sort of answer, we're brought back to reality. Oh yeah, that's right, during the fight against the Pope, that nifty Blood Sacrifice skill Naofumi used kiiinda ended up roughing him up quite a bit, huh? After receiving top care from the royal family and having slept for 3 days, it also seems he's gotta take it easy for a whole month before he's in top shape again. Geez, that's some nasty damage! Thankfully, thanks to Fitoria (who DID warn him to not use the skill, but Naofumi was all like "Did y'all hear sumn...?), Raphtalia, Filo and Melty weren't affected by the curse.

    Our FIERCE QUEEN appears to greet Naofumi and assure that her saving him is what was obvious to do, after all, he's one of the four Cardinal Heroes who defends the world from the Waves of Catastrophe. But...wait a minute. Something isn't quite right here. If it that was the case, why was Naofumi so hated from the get-go? It just looks like anyone who would be summoned as the Shield Hero would be vilified no matter what! There's gotta be an explanation for this mess...

    It turns out that while the Queen was away taking part in an international forum to best strategize on how to fight the upcoming Waves, the plan to summon all four Cardinal Heroes in Melromarc had been set in motion by everyone's favorite King and Princess! The forum had decided that the major nations would EACH summon ONE hero to fight the Waves together in unity... so it's understandable that they'd be fuming about Melromarc getting all four heroes. The Queen was busy this whole time essenitally trying to put out fires and keep things amicably between the nations; she's had it rough this whole time!

    Alright, but what's the deal with the harsh treatment towards the Shield Hero? The King apparently hated the previous Shield Hero, so that hatred carried over to whoever would become the next Shield Hero. The Three Heroes Church saw a valuable opportunity and hurried to take advantage of the King. Meanwhile, being so obsessed with power, Malty even joined in to try and snatch the seat to power as quickly as she could! Yikes, this is quite the conondrum here... Things sure would have been different if Naofumi was summoned in another country!

  Finally, some good food

This doesn't mean that Naofumi is leaving empty-handed, oh no, far from it! The Queen declares that she'll not only clear his name, but that he'll be honored with the greatest award Melromarc has to offer and 500 gold pieces. CHA-CHING! After all that trouble Naofumi went through, it was about time, really!

    In addition to that... due to the King's and Malty's meddling, they are to be punished... but in what way? We don't really hear what the punishment is, but it sounds to be severe... The Shield Hero party will have to wait until the next day to find out when they attend the hearing to clear Naofumi's name. What...exactly is going to happen here?

  IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!

  We're in the dream world again, and OHMYGOD the King and Malty are going to be beheaded?! They're responsible for summoning the Cardinal Heroes without permission, and their orchestrations led to many deaths all over the world; they're criminals! Is this their fate?! Naofumi, even though he recognizes that they deserve to die for what they did, has some inner conflict as to whether this would be the right outcome or not.

    Finally, the day has finally come where the Shield Hero's name is cleared! The crowd outside was enormous as word spread about that there are some important announcements to be made. The other 3 Cardinal Heroes remain as clueless as ever as all they want to do is party right after defeating the Pope. Little do they know what lies in store for the day's announcements...

    Kicking off the event with a bang, it's time for the King's and Princess' trial! Hey, the other heroes wanted some excitement, right? They've definitely got some right here! The King goes on and on about how the Devil of the Shield brainwashed her too, but she snaps her fingers like Thanos, freezes him in place, and bluntly states there was obviously never an ability like that and that he should've known that fact. Our Queen isn't playing any games here!

    We all know how much of a liar Malty is, so getting a fair trial is going to be kinda hard with her bad habits. But mama knows best and the Queen places a temporary slave crest on Malty so that the truth will finally be in full display whether she likes it or not! 

    Bit by bit, the truth is spilled out to paint the King's and Malty's true colors. They colluded with the Church (even though the Church tried to eliminate the royal family) for their own agendas. Malty tried to assasinate Melty, and tried to pin it on the Shield Hero, just so she could be next in line to the throne. The King worked with the Church to summon all the Cardinal Heroes while the Queen was away. To thrwart the Shield Hero, Malty falsely accused him of an assault that never even happened in the first place. Of course, idiot hero Motoyasu refuses to believe this and he forms a slave pact with Malty to get the "real" truth out.

    Unfortunately for him, all she spews are lies one right after the other! He can't play hero for an obvious villain! It soon becomes clear that both the King and Princess only sought power for their own selfish reasons and caused grief and suffering to the nation all over. And so the Queen declares her verdict...

  Aultcray Melromarc XXXII and Malty Melromarc are GUILTY of high treason and conspiracy! They are to be stripped from their status... and sentenced to DEATH! 

    Here we are again... but this time, it isn't a dream. The crowd is desperate to see justice after some of their loved ones' blood was spilled due to the King and Princess' ravenous plot. Malty cries out to her darling Motoyasu, only to be rightfully ignored.

    ...And then the unthinkable happens: she calls out to Naofumi for HELP! WHAT?! EXCUSE YOU?! She's hollering and pleading at him to help her out of this! Wow... no shame... BUT! Notice how her slave crest doesn't go off? This is a genuine call for help here. Only Malty can beg the one she planned to kill so she can save her hide!

    Instead of their lives, Naofumi proposes that their names be stripped and...changed to names of his choosing to live under for the rest of their lives! And my goodness, they're truly unique names, wouldn't you say? I gotta say, there's something about the Queen making the official motions for their new names and saying those name VERY CLEARLY that's completely HILARIOUS! 

    Along with that motion, the Three Heroes Church is now abolished, and in its place will rise the Four Heroes Church as Melromarc's state religion. Now ALL Cardinal Heroes will be included, as they should have from the very beginning!

  Now with sweet justice being served, it's time to party, but we all know that isn't Naofumi's style. Even though he's not up for partying, he WILL work with Melromarc and all the other nations of the world to best fight the Waves, because they're the Four Cardinal Heroes and that's what they're supposed to do. This proclamation earns the admiration of his peers (not like he wanted that anyways!).

    BEST TEAM Shield Hero gets ready to set off, but with one less member; Melty is finally safely home after all the chaos she had to endure. While she huffs under her breath that she should've thanked the Queen, it's revealed that the Queen was going to offer her own life in exhange for the King's and Malty's if he hadn't stopped the execution. Had he seen right through her? Either way, things worked out for her favor, thankfully!

    The Shield Hero Team finally get the salute they deserved, but Naofumi reflects that he'd gained something far superior for being the Shield Hero. But what of the Waves? Don't forget about Glass! What dangers will come their way now that the Melromarc royal family drama is over and done with? We'll have to wait and see!

  But for now, let's check out what y'all thought of this amazing episode!

  mfw watching shield hero ep 21 pic.twitter.com/c8Y9a7znSv

— skepty (@skeptycally) May 29, 2019

    NEW SHIELD HERO IS THE BEST THING EVER

— ivX (@ivxmusic) May 29, 2019

  Was excited to see a certain someone die but I'll accept what the shield hero proposed@ShieldHeroEN pic.twitter.com/x4jLPduPog

— Chino (@El_chin007) May 29, 2019

  Naofumi: STOP Everyone: wut? naofumi: death is too good for them Ahhh, ok ???? #shieldhero pic.twitter.com/8qTyLuyGIB

— L3SIU (@L3SIU) May 29, 2019

  THE NEW SHIELD EPISODE MADE ME SCREAM !!! HFGDSSHHH

— the strongest hero. (@_infernopassion) May 29, 2019

  Not that I'm complaining, as we'll hopefully get answers to questions about the Waves and Curse Shield, but Shield Hero could've ended with this episode and I would've been mostly ok with it.

— Giant Bird Friend (@Tinytig) May 29, 2019

  Me knowing there will be only four more episodes of Shield hero ;-; pic.twitter.com/tvrBWqwYvb

— Rᴀᴘʜᴛᴀʟɪᴀ ♡ (@Raaphtalia) May 29, 2019

  Sweetest moment of the episode. Raphtalia being so happy that Naofumi will finally have his name cleared and people really see who he really is like she has ☺❤ #shieldhero pic.twitter.com/AhYl86bESD

— Chandler Ingram (@Chandler_Ingram) May 29, 2019

  A True Hero with a Heart of gold who forgives even the ones who betray him and impose false charges on the him Thats a True Hero the SHIELD HERO Ep21 the most satisfying episode till now. Our Hero Gains what he lost his Honor and Respect he truly deserved????????#shieldhero pic.twitter.com/y9ZWS7sZw0

— Sovik Pan???? (@sovikpan48) May 29, 2019

  Me: *Watches Rising of the Shield hero episode 21* Also me: pic.twitter.com/wZ4pWWWGMR

— ᏟᎽ℘ℛʉᏕ (@NewBarnabyP02) May 29, 2019

  The Rising of The Shield Hero is the best anime of 2019 so far Don’t @ me.????????‍♂️???????? pic.twitter.com/NGtut0o8z7

— Nomad ???????????? EDCLV???????????? (@Trav_Da_Savagee) May 29, 2019

Give some love to the official Shield Hero twitter and Facebook fan page where you can discuss the latest episode with fans every week! 

Watch The Rising of the Shield Hero on Crunchyroll

----

Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[junker-town]

99 of the best, weirdest, and funniest highlights from college football’s 2017 season

We had some gems.

With the 2017 college football season in the books, what better way to commemorate it with the best GIFs and videos from the season?

First, we start with you all, the fans.

The first Thursday night game of the season gave us this glorious middle finger/surrender cobra combo, from Indiana fans watching their team lose to Ohio State.

These unsuspecting Auburn fans got stuck in the hedges while attempting to celebrate the Tigers’ Iron Bowl win over Alabama.

LSU’s band began playing during a Florida Tom Petty tribute, and this Gator fan was not having it:

THE TERPS SHOWED UP FOR GAME DAY ( : @totalfratmove) http://pic.twitter.com/BKL9SJvFqA

— SB Nation (@SBNation) September 23, 2017

Down. go. the. goal. post #MissionPossible #BeAGovBeAChampion http://pic.twitter.com/5egzzA93B0

— Austin Peay Football (@AustinPeayFB) September 17, 2017

Stay until the end of this one:

Tennessee gets its own special section, because well, it was a hell of a season.

The Vols fired Butch Jones and hired Jeremy Pruitt, but the season had some, uh, highlights. First! The video that sums up the Florida-Tennessee rivalry, filled with deep-seated hatred and debauchery.

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I hate that we lost but at least our players don't represent our team like this. I love a rivalry but be classy about it EDIT: I know our fans have done questionable things. They shouldn't have peed on the tebow statue but I'm not saying this over and over again: players are supposed to be controlled by coaches and fans are not. This is a representation of the control Jim Mcelwain and staff has on its players. If this was a Tennessee player I would be embarrassed. Athletes are held to a higher standard.

Posted by Chandler Cox on Saturday, September 16, 2017

Vols fighting Vols, an annual tradition:

When someone tries to tell you that Butch Jones is actually a good coach http://pic.twitter.com/9fOLIwkCFb

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 30, 2017

And during Tennessee’s home game against LSU, its damn stadium decided to fall apart.

Football fans vs Wind in Neyland http://pic.twitter.com/XhiD3RXDXJ

— CFB Gif'er (@CFBgifer) November 19, 2017

In a nutshell:

Aaaand the Vols lost to Florida on a last-second pass, too.

The Vols also had a turnover trash can on their sideline, which gave us this missed celebration dunk:

Moving on! Some of the best sideline moments of the season

Florida Atlantic coach Lane Kiffin caught a football with one hand, and one of his players was blown away.

On a related Lane note:

Yep, that's a real life Lane Kiffin Train at FAU. Watch Kiffin and @FAU_Football take on Marshall tonight at 6 PM ET on CBS Sports Network! http://pic.twitter.com/lt3iEHfQdw

— CBS Sports Network (@CBSSportsNet) November 3, 2017

Kudos to USC’s cheerleaders, some of whom were extremely into the fighting going on behind them ...

... and some of whom just ignored it to keep right on cheering:

Mississippi State players dancing while their head coach is incensed is my aesthetic:

NSFW:

Look at Mark Richt’s ups!

Sour Patch Kids = game day fuel.

82-Year-old Lee Corso still got moves http://pic.twitter.com/LS3o9wjDKF

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) October 1, 2017

This reporter is lucky to still be breathing http://pic.twitter.com/k0RJcePc8n

— Barstool Sports (@barstooltweetss) September 1, 2017

Florida State’s 2017 season was incredibly weird, and this angry Jimbo Fisher GIF sums up the year pretty well:

Trouble in Paradise - Get back coach edition. #BetrayalOfTrust http://pic.twitter.com/TYlTSaXTCO

— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) October 1, 2017

Miami had the year’s most beloved turnover prop, but Kennesaw State had the most lovable ...

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The Kennesaw State Turnover Plank is the best trophy in football

This is the Kennesaw State Owls turnover plank, college football's BEST turnover trophy. The full story: http://ift.tt/2AKNefx

Posted by SB Nation College Football on Friday, November 17, 2017

... Texas A&M had the weirdest ...

.. and Wisconsin mocked Miami’s chain mercilessly in the Orange Bowl:

Put that chain on and rip it off! @BadgerFootball http://pic.twitter.com/b0IUL88pXW

— Trent Keitel (@TrentKeitel) December 31, 2017

"Turnover chain my f***in ass" - Paul Chryst http://pic.twitter.com/acd7wx3lxp

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) December 31, 2017

Refs greatest hits, 2017

When the mic’s broke:

DOINK!

These are just hilarious, and there’s no other way to categorize them, folks.

This extra point THAT WAS GOOD makes me laugh out loud every time.

best extra point ever? http://pic.twitter.com/L6xgtdB9Qi

— Dr. Saturday (@YahooDrSaturday) October 8, 2017

Have you ever seen a punter get sacked?

TFW the turf legit splits in the middle of the Big Ten Championship.

Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy and quarterback Mason Rudolph both went shirtless during a pep rally:

BYU’s mascot went viral for its dance moves, so Mississippi State’s accepted the challenge.

What did the five fingers say to the face?

Having some trouble on defense? Just throw a towel like UCLA did! (Yes, this could’ve been a penalty.)

A UCLA DL just threw a towel at a pass. Isn't that a penalty? http://pic.twitter.com/BdXtVV73CE

— Sam Spangler (@SamSpanglerKHON) September 9, 2017

Ohio state QB coach Ryan Day was caught digging for gold:

NC State poked fun at Louisville basketball’s FBI investigation pretty cleverly:

OK, onto more serious on-field matters here: Catches!

Awesome catch by player on football team you didn’t know existed alert: http://pic.twitter.com/elToudDNZQ

— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) September 1, 2017

Florida’s offensive highlight of the year, tbh:

http://pic.twitter.com/xi45yn8e4S

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) September 23, 2017

Wanna see a 6’2, 308-pound defensive lineman score a touchdown? Enter Da’Ron Payne:

Some running backs did merciless things to defenders this season, too.

Bolu Olorunfunmi! Just WOW. #UOvsUCLA@UCLAFootball with the lead. Watch: https://t.co/ZLABag9Ytt http://pic.twitter.com/8Xmi2PDINl

— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) October 21, 2017

Hawai'i is only down 14; still getting dragged http://pic.twitter.com/m5GnW046to

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) October 29, 2017

The Baker Mayfield experience

Baker Mayfield on his Johnny Manziel bullshit http://pic.twitter.com/BnTvhCaNiW

— 5th Year (@5thYear) November 18, 2017

Baker Mayfield plants the OU flag in the Ohio State logo at midfield http://pic.twitter.com/Ovas203PqP

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) September 10, 2017

There were some unfortunate moments, too.

This Boise State pick-six ended up being a Troy fumble that turned into a Boise touchback.

Fireworks and a celebration for an incomplete pass?!?! http://pic.twitter.com/bSjRAIVY7m

— CBS Sports Network (@CBSSportsNet) September 3, 2017

UConn hadn’t won in so long that its quarterback had to practice a kneeldown!

It's been awhile for UCONN http://pic.twitter.com/ndQD013k61

— Chris Hassel (@Hassel_Chris) September 1, 2017

Another summation of Florida State’s 2017 season:

One of Sam Darnold’s many turnovers, but this one wasn’t his fault!

Tackled into a damn marimba:

This dang 87-yard fumble gets its own section, because it was extra special.

This play resulted in a loss of almost 90 yards. HOW IS THIS EVEN REAL? http://pic.twitter.com/gsD9GulNaF

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) September 10, 2017

Animals made for some interesting moments this season, as always.

SQUIRREL TOUCHDOWN REPEAT: SQUIRREL TOUCHDOWN http://pic.twitter.com/IHFJdqEP6b

— FOX Sports South (@FOXSportsSouth) September 23, 2017

Ole Miss changed its sideline mascot from a Rebel to Landshark, and Auburn’s band wasted no time poking fun at them for it. A shark mascot is an animal, don’t @ me.

So the landshark did make an appearance at Auburn today. Or maybe Left Shark, possibly Right Shark. Anyway, Aubie is wearing the costume. http://pic.twitter.com/6pZ8MckOFD

— Tyler Greever (@Tyler_Greever) October 7, 2017

Double tap if touchdown rabbit should win the Heisman Comment if you miss touchdown squirrel from earlier this season

A post shared by FOX Sports (@foxsports) on Oct 14, 2017 at 10:18pm PDT

Big 12 fox back:

ASU's FG try is no good! We're scoreless after the Sun Devils' first drive. #WreckEm #WhatDoesTheFoxSay http://pic.twitter.com/5c5VMEt9s3

— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) September 17, 2017

More hilarity!

Michigan kicker Quinn Nordin had a crotch grab during the Outback Bowl against South Carolina. Yes — Michigan’s kicker!

When Kentucky double teams the punter all game...61 yard bomb topped off with a pancake http://pic.twitter.com/bG6bwdEbdP

— Johnny Townsend (@johnnytownsend1) September 25, 2017

Greatest flop ever tbh right here from NC State’s Bradley Chubb:

Chubb also blatantly spat on FSU’s logo ...

... and broke out the celebration of the year:

This guy is a treasure http://pic.twitter.com/V5UUw4tDXY

— Mark Armstrong (@ArmstrongABC11) November 11, 2017

That time Deontay Burnett celebrated a TD by shaking former USC quarterback Matt Leinart’s hand in the end zone.

Michigan QB John O��Korn randomly slipped or flopped (we don’t really know, either) unexpectedly on the sideline:

Breeland Speaks recovered a fumble, and says “hi.” http://pic.twitter.com/Ee4i7Pb0wM

— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) November 24, 2017

Boise State scored two touchdowns via this pirouette:

James Franklin after WINNING the Fiesta Bowl:

Iowa State-West Virginia was interrupted by LASERS briefly, and it was amazing.

Remember this moment between Boise and Oregon from 2009?

The two met in this year’s Las Vegas Bowl, and decided to recreate that moment, but the best part is that the Oregon player retaliated against the wrong Bronco.

Mike Leach is a national treasure, part 1,000.

Mike Leach. Goths. #Pac12AfterDark http://pic.twitter.com/cFpBLzpEMY

— Stephen Osentoski (@StephenToski) October 22, 2017

Mike Leach with the catch of the year http://pic.twitter.com/3GlGlkwXFW

— Jack McGuire (@JackMacCFB) November 26, 2017

There were some pretty awesome moments, too.

Here’s UCF star linebacker Shaquem Griffin, who has only one hand, battling for a Memphis fumble. He makes a ton of plays, but this one sums him up pretty well.

This is anything but a regular PAT. Jake Olson, blind since age 12, just snapped for the first time in a live game. https://t.co/amyHcFoVue

— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) September 3, 2017

Ever seen a walk-off pick-six hurdle? Here ya go!

What a finish! Alize Ward takes the interception back 67 yards as time expires to give @SFA_Football the win! #AxeEm #SCTop10 http://pic.twitter.com/0X0q8bR7Ng

— SFA Athletics (@SFA_Athletics) September 17, 2017

Crowd rocks to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” Very, very cool. http://pic.twitter.com/f93LTJl2fZ

— Thomas Goldkamp (@ThomasGoldkamp) October 7, 2017

Bowling Green got its first win of the season on this incredible play:

Wow. Brandon Harris picks up the fumble and takes it 99-yards for a @BG_Football TD! #AyZiggy #MACtion http://pic.twitter.com/pjfAiBK5p5

— #MACtion (@MACSports) October 7, 2017

Iowa started a new amazing tradition of waving the the nearby children’s hospital at the start of the fourth quarter:

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Iowa's "Kinnick Wave" is the best new college football tradition

Iowa's "Kinnick Wave" is the best new tradition in college football.

Posted by SB Nation College Football on Wednesday, September 20, 2017

And Alabama true freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa played hero and won the Tide the national championship over Georgia:

ESPN

Piesman Trophy finalists!

Brock Riggs from Heidelberg won it, thanks to this front-flip TD:

THEE Brock Riggs for #Piesman2017 @BergAthletics @BergFootball @SportsCenter @SBNation @Morgan_Moriarty @piesmantrophy http://pic.twitter.com/Df6YJKJSC8

— HeidelbergWHEI (@Berg_WHEI) November 16, 2017

The other finalists were St. Francis’ Louie Gartner:

What a play by Louie Gartner! 96-yard pick-six for the big guy! #RedFlash http://pic.twitter.com/H6LNfXBHKy

— Saint Francis U FB (@RedFlashFB) October 28, 2017

And Wyoming’s Carl Granderson:

And last but certainly not least ...

Our very own #FRYINNANNI achieved his lifelong goal of being the Outback Bowl Bloomin’ Onion mascot:

What else?

Add ‘em in the comments!

[trendingnewsb]

6 Famous TV Finales Everybody Gets Wrong

With the exception of those soap operas that will outlive our grandchildren, most TV shows eventually come to an end. Final episodes tend to be polarizing; you either love them, or you vow to spend the rest of your days destroying the bastards who created them. The thing is, if you look back at those episodes with a cool head, you might realize that the critical consensus had it all backwards. So before we all realize reality only exists within a snow globe, here are some alternate views on the most famous (and infamous) TV finales ever.

6

Breaking Bad — A Child-Poisoning Psycho Becomes A Superhero

Unless you had a relative who got half their face blown off in a senior living home explosion, chances are you loved Breaking Bad. As for the finale, the critics lapped it up like the blue stuff:

The last episode served to provide emotional closure for beloved protagonist Walter White — you know, that guy who poisons kids and casually watches women choke to death. Which raises a question: Do we want this guy to get a happy ending?

The ending works out so incredibly well for Walt that people have theorized that it’s a fantasy, or even that he’s dead and becomes a ghost (which would at least explain his ability to Patrick Swayze his way into people’s homes). The episode is basically nothing but Walt running through a checklist of shit he wants to do before he dies. It’s one wisecracking Morgan Freeman away from going full Bucket List. And we’re rooting for him the whole way, even when he scares the shit out of the ex-friends whom he (falsely) blames for his misfortunes.

Walt then visits Skyler — again, almost materializing out of thin air — and admits to her that he didn’t cook meth for his family. He did it because he “liked it.”

Which feels like a big moment, but it’s not really enough. Walt’s such a jerk that he can’t even muster an apology for years of lying and making his family the target of a murderous fried chicken restaurateur. For some reason, though, this is good enough for Skyler, who then lets Walt have a tender moment with their baby. You know, the one he once abducted. Even Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg couldn’t make this not creepy.

Then comes the show’s big moment: Walt has to save Jesse, which involves fighting Nazis. Even if you hate Walt, between him and Nazis … well, what kind of asshole would root for the Nazis? So Walt gets to be the badass hero in the end.

One reviewer at Salon points out that while the creators talked about the show as the “transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface,” Tony Montana actually got his comeuppance. Walt, on the other hand, gets to go out completely on his own terms. He’s practically smiling as he dies before the police can arrest him.

Walt martyrs himself and escapes punishment, which is a big problem if you think his transgressions were beyond the point of redemption. Of course, if you believe he then wakes up on the set of Malcolm In The Middle, a lot of these problems go away.

5

Friends — Ross Ruins Rachel’s Career, While Monica Wrecks Joey And Chandler’s Friendship

People seemingly loved the Friends finale, either because they thought it was a good capper to the beloved sitcom or because everything pre-Joey seems like goddamn Faulkner in comparison.

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The finale finds Rachel leaving New York for a dream fashion job in Paris, and Ross suddenly remembering that the only reason people ever liked him was that he was in love with her, so he asks her to stay with him. Ross never suggests he could go with her to Paris; he only wants Rachel to abandon this promising career opportunity and go back to unemployment. The finale wants us to root for Rachel to torpedo her professional life and stay with Ross, who treats her like garbage. To make matters worse, the reason they broke up in the first place was Ross’ crazed jealousy that she was working with a man. So Ross’ desire to have Rachel back romantically is also tied into his desire to have her reject her career ambitions — which, in case you didn’t realize, is fucking terrible.

In the end, she gives up the job for Ross, who’s such a piece of shit he can’t even go 30 seconds without making a joke about the time he cheated on her. Class act, that Ross.

Meanwhile, Monica and Chandler adopt twins and move away from the city … despite the fact that they both work in the city, all their friends live in the city, and they pay practically nothing in rent. In the episode’s most problematic bit of symbolism, the second half of the finale finds Chandler and Joey having to break open their Foosball table because a baby chick crawled inside. It seems the actors’ paychecks were so costly at this point that having a small bird crawl into some gaming equipment was the biggest setpiece they could afford.

They can’t break the table, because it’s a symbol of their years of friendship and youth. So Monica steps in and gleefully demolishes it.

So the message they’re sending here is that women and families will literally break apart your friendships. In the world of Friends, apparently you can’t get married, have kids, and retain your friendships from your 20s; you have to move far away and metaphorically destroy them. If they did a reunion show, it’d be Joey and Chandler awkwardly pretending they didn’t see each other at the mall.

4

Seinfeld — The Last Episode Is A Brilliant Existential Allegory

A lot of people really hated the Seinfeld finale, as evidenced by this moment from David Letterman’s own last episode in which Jerry Seinfeld’s soul seemingly breaks in half:

But unlike the rest of the series, the finale isn’t about nothing; it’s about death. They aren’t even subtle about it. The episode begins with the gang aboard a crashing plane, confronting their own mortality:

And from a meta perspective, these characters are about to die, because their show is ending. Then, at the last minute, the plane rights itself and lands in a small town straight out of The Twilight Zone. In keeping with the cosmic otherworldliness of this town, the four friends are immediately confronted with a moral quandary, a test: help a guy being mugged, or do nothing but make wise-ass comments. Being New Yorkers, they go for the latter.

The gang is then arrested and put on trial for failing to be “Good Samaritans” — meaning that the subject of the trial is the very worthiness of their souls. Interestingly, the judge’s name is Art Vandelay, George’s go-to pseudonym for his elaborate deceptions. This isn’t just a throwaway joke; it’s a sign that this trial isn’t a random bit of happenstance. It’s the Universe reflecting these characters’ moral ineptitude back at them. Their disregard for humanity has been made manifest and is here to judge them, and those who have been wronged throughout the show’s wacky adventures state their cases.

Like Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, Vandelay is judging the characters for their behavior throughout their televised lives. Aside from when How I Met Your Mother ended and caused viewers to abandon any belief in a higher power, how many sitcoms have dared to delve into existential themes like this? Some have even pointed to literary masterpieces such as Camus’ The Stranger and Kafka’s The Trial as possible influences on the ending.

But then, instead of passing peacefully into the metaphorical afterlife, the characters are found guilty and jailed in a kind of TV purgatory. In an amazingly depressing final note, the first line from the very first episode …

… becomes the (next-to) last line of the finale.

Meaning that these characters have exhausted the superficial manner by which they’ve led their lives. There’s nothing left. They will either need to begin a search for substantive meaning, or they are doomed to get caught in an endless spiral of empty repetition. And Newman’s probably the Devil or something. We’re still working on that.

3

Mad Men — The Final Scene Renders Don’s Journey Of Self-Discovery Pointless

Mad Men is undoubtedly one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and for sure the greatest TV show to feature a lawnmower running over a man’s foot at an office party. Critics loved the last episode almost as much as the Sterling Cooper gang loved guzzling whiskey and napping during work hours:

Rolling Stones

New Yorker

Chicago Sun TimesLawnmower Quarterly also gave it a glowing review, despite the “disappointing lack of lawnmowers.”

The finale finds Don Draper in the middle of an existential crisis. After conversations with his daughter, dying ex-wife, and best friend / former protegee don’t really evoke any meaningful change, Don gets dragged to a support group, where he ends up hugging it out with a random dude.

In the end, we see Don meditating on a hilltop … but then he smiles, either because he’s had a brilliant idea or he’s thinking about that time Pete Campbell fell down the stairs. It’s the former, since we then cut to the famous “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke” commercial:

The implication here is that Don took the goodwill and earnestness of the hippie movement that embraced him in a moment of need, then repackaged it as a way to sell brown sugar water — and this is supposed to be a good thing. At a speaking engagement days after the finale, the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, praised the Coke ad for its racial progressiveness, saying “it’s the best ad ever made, and it comes from a very good place.” They even handed out free Coke bottles to the audience, before presumably breaking into a singalong.

The problem is that Don’s flaws were always presented as a living embodiment of the duplicitous nature of advertising. He had all of the superficial components of a happy life, but was riddled with misery and vice. We loved watching Don Draper because he’s the victim of his own bullshit. The opening titles feature a figure helplessly plunging through an abyss of commercialism:

It always sort of seemed like if Don were to grow as a character, it would be accompanied by a rejection of the advertising industry. Instead, Don used a bunch of peace-loving hippies to help promote a corporation that would later dole out the largest settlement in a racial discrimination lawsuit, (allegedly) cause a drought in India, and get boycotted for (allegedly) hiring militias to murder people. So thanks a lot, Don Draper.

2

The Sopranos — Tony Didn’t Die, But Will Simply Be An Asshole Forever

It was one of the most talked-about endings of all time. Tony Soprano is in a diner with his family, when all of a sudden the image cuts to black. What happened? Was Tony killed? Did the cable go out? Did an extra accidentally wander in front of the camera?

But what if that final moment was about something else entirely? The black screen plays out for like ten seconds. Maybe this isn’t merely to mess with the audience. It’s communicating that Tony’s story isn’t necessarily over, but we’re not invited to watch anymore. It’s less about what happened to Tony, and more to do with why the show won’t have any audience anymore. Why is that?

Well, one of the most important structural elements people overlook when discussing the ending is Tony’s therapy. Tony’s journey with self-analysis is essentially what bookends the show. The very first scene of the first episode is Tony arriving at Dr. Melfi’s office …

… and crucially, the penultimate episode finds Tony being thrown out of the office and telling Dr. Melfi off.

This framing device underscores the reason this particular period of time in Tony’s life is the time we spend with him on the show. The Sopranos takes place within a window during which Tony had the potential for change and self-analysis. And in case you didn’t notice, Tony didn’t blossom into a beautiful flower, as evidenced by, say, the time he roughed up his suicidal son for crying. With his therapy at an end and his family’s lives ruined, Tony is going to continue being a piece of shit — or die, it doesn’t really matter. Because the show hasn’t been following Tony. It’s been following Tony’s capacity for growth. Once that has been effectively eradicated, the show is over. He will keep lying to himself and his family. Nothing to see here, folks, just another violent philanderer who lacks self-reflection. It cuts to black as if the video feed to his psyche has been severed. Or someone shot him in the head, it’s hard to say.

1

OK, Here’s A Go-For-Broke Defense Of The Lost Finale

The Lost finale has plenty of detractors. George R.R. Martin famously crapped all over it, and when Breaking Bad‘s last episode aired, jerks Tweet-bombed Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof to say “That’s how it’s done.”

The most common complaint is that the finale didn’t answer any of the show’s mysteries. But as we’ve pointed out, they did. You just had to watch the damn show. Which lots of the finale’s viewers didn’t. Based on the ratings, around a third of the final episode’s audience likely hadn’t watched Lost in years, but were curious to see if the Island would be revealed to be computer game being played by Hitler or something.

Also, despite the fact that people are still confused about this, the characters weren’t dead the whole time. Those eerie shots of the original plane crash’s empty wreckage they showed during the end credits?

Yeah, those were thrown in by the network as a “visual aid” to transition from the show into the nightly news, with no input from the actual writers. They mean nothing.

Now, the characters were dead during the final season’s “Flash Sideways” sequences, which were set in a bizarre magical purgatory that had nothing to do with the show’s established mythology … or did it? The last moment of the finale finds the characters being absorbed in a white Hallmark-y glowing light:

The same kind of light has been used throughout the show to represent the Island’s electromagnetic energy, like when Desmond blows up the Hatch. Hell, the “heart” of the Island is seemingly half urine, half white light. So what if this dimension the characters find themselves in isn’t separate from the Island’s powers? Throughout the show, a lot of stuff people wanted magically appeared on the Island, be it a horse, or food, or even a crapload of smuggled heroin. Wish fulfillment seemed to be the Island’s ultimate power.

Now, the sideways universe only appeared in the last season, after Juliet detonated a nuke from inside a pocket of that energy. She was trying desperately to create an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed.

Her last words? “It worked.” So the result of that action was a false reality created by the Island wherein Juliet and everyone else is granted their innermost desires. The finale may be sappy, but when you boil it down, it’s a pretty damn dark sci-fi story. Our beloved characters have to reject their personal fantasies and abandon a false reality to embrace their own deaths. Of course, this all played out in a church, which kind of felt like the TV equivalent of answering your doorbell and having a Jesus pamphlet shoved in your face.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter, or check out the podcast Rewatchability.

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The Ultimate Purchasing Guide for the Perfect Foosball Table

Whenever I think about foosball tables, I recollect regarding episodes of Pals in Joey as well as Chandler's apartment or condo. "Good game" would be offered by Chandler upon the end of a played against his flatmate. The stars make playing the game seem so simple and I have desired a foosball table since their very first video game. Nonetheless, have you ever attempted to play a game of foosball? I was in a close friend's rec room one time, and also he had an excellent foosball table. My one pal and I acted to be Joey as well as Chandler playing foosball. Having actually never played previously, I had no idea exactly how challenging it was. Seeing the small round, moving the players passed away sideways and also having them kick forward as well as working as a goalkeeper. There are multiple consider acquiring a table, consisting of: Spending plan: If you typically aren't mosting likely to be playing that a lot, you should not be spending close to $1,000 or even more. Personally, I would not invest more than a few hundred. Casual gamers like myself could get away with a more affordable top quality table, which was among the figuring out elements for me. As a laid-back foosballer at parties, a $100-$ 500 table could be adequate. That's It For?: When I got my foosball table, I acquired it for my college buddies and also I. Recognizing the people I was mosting likely to be playing with, I didn't wish to purchase something too costly. If you're likewise a college youngster, I would not advise forking over $1,000 unless you're going to be developing an affordable as well as expert group. Constantly make certain to buy for individuals who will certainly be utilizing it most as well as keep in mind if they're harsh, or gentle. Table Material: My friends and I are a little bit rougher, which is why I went with the long lasting plastic. I was afraid that a wood table would be also easily scraped and something constructed from bit board would quickly damage. There are products on this checklist that have a particle board as their primary product. Gamers: The overall of males on the foosball table installation must be 11. While there may just be a few poles, we've been able to have a 2 versus 2 game of foosball. It's not always about 1v1 having fun. Size: There are many different dimensions available for foosball tables, as not every person is the same elevation. If you resemble me, a standard foosball table will be the only one that's best in elevation for you. A standard, complete foosball tables have to do with 2 1/2 feet in width with a length of 5 feet. For a regulation table, measurements are around 30" in width x 56" in length x 36" in elevation. Keep this in mind throughout your search. Goalies: For goalkeeper arrangement, there are 2 options. The initial being a solitary man goalkeeper system and also a 3-man goalie system. Anytime I would certainly play, I would certainly notice that the sphere would certainly jump and also strike the two outside guys, yet won't be anywhere near the objective. I after that recognized that these two men serve as players to keep the round moving as opposed to goalies. Prior to I made the large choice, I asked myself these concerns: 1. Exactly how little is my room? Because I really did not have a lot of room to spare, a large table had not been in my sights. This is why I bought a table top version. 2. Do I require a 1-man goalie arrangement or 3? Depending on your laid-back versus serious requirements, you might prefer one over the other. Constantly make sure to check the options for goalkeeper setup. I selected a three goalkeeper setup so it would certainly be a lot more enjoyable to maintain the round in play, rather than extremely competitive as well as not fun. Quality features that I searched for in my search was the dimension of the foosball table, the overall layout of this table, the assembly, as well as of course the evaluations. Thanks to confirmed evaluations, I was able to figure out which foosball table is best for my way of living. Pictures were likewise a fantastic deciding factor for me to locate if I enjoyed the looks of the foosball table. Private testimonials of each foosball table likewise helped me figure out the top quality of playing. Usually, clients remain in the market for a brand-new foosball table because theirs have actually either broken or have not stood up with the moments. While I was purchasing a foosball table for the first time, I understood the stress of being bewildered by the options. In evaluating the highest quality foosball tables on the contemporary market, I hope to assist you make a decision that will last you years to come. After looking for the various sorts of foosball tables, I stumbled upon both types of grades for foosball tables. These qualities are known as house models and also specialist versions, although several of the "house models" are constructed to specialist grade criteria. Tables like this are offered at a customer degree however are a bit pricier, something I had not been incredibly interested in, but wanted to experiment with. Higher quality, professional tables will include more functions like the levelers and also score systems that I pointed out previously. Precision is an essential factor in playing foosball efficiently. Any floor covering that isn't really flat will certainly have an extreme impact on tables without levelers. If you're someone who does not take shedding quickly similar to myself, you want the playing field to be as fair as feasible. Because I reside in a home near my university school, it's an older home. Considering that it is older, I most absolutely had to search for a table with some sort of levelling system. Levelers play a significant function in the success of an at-home table. By paying the additional to obtain more, I was able to guarantee that every person would certainly obtain a fair chance at winning. A primary distinction between all tables close to the measurements is the quantity of men they have on the area. As I mentioned, there's a tossup between a single-goalie system as well as a 3-man goalie system. This is just what made the difference in between "sold" as well as "no, thank you" for myself. For those who will not be making use of the foosball table a lot, yet want to have one for family events or university events like we've stated, I suggest that you acquire one that's more portable and much less about the expert quality. If you're buying it for the younger children at your household celebrations, a portable foosball table will certainly be enough. If your parties are anything like mine and mostly consist of fun as well as adventurous grownups that like foosball, I recommend acquiring a bigger table. In this scenario, the table could be put in the basement, garage or yard so it's not in your means, but easily obtainable. Selecting the most effective for Your Way of living For those with a reduced budget plan that doesn't have a height preference, the most effective foosball table for you might be the small, Sport Squad FX40. For a restricted time, it's on the less costly end. This remains in comparison with the greatest I've stated as well as enables you convenience in elevation. If you're planning to use a specialist grade table and also you do not have much of a budget plan, the very best foosball table for your demands is the Tornado Sport Foosball table. This table could be on the higher end of the rate range, yet the abundant mahogany will certainly last you for many years ahead and also allows you to choose the elevation.

[rcebaltimore-blog]

The Ultimate Acquiring Overview for the Perfect Foosball Table

Whenever I think about foosball tables, I think back regarding episodes of Pals in Joey as well as Chandler's house. "Good game" would certainly be provided by Chandler after the end of a bet his roommate. The stars make playing the game appear so very easy and also I have wanted a foosball table considering that their first game. However, have you ever before aimed to play a game of foosball? I remained in a good friend's rec room once, and he had an excellent foosball table. My one buddy and also I pretended to be Joey and also Chandler playing foosball. Having never played in the past, I had no concept just how challenging it was. Seeing the small sphere, moving the gamers died sideways as well as having them kick forward and working as a goalie. There are numerous factors in buying a table, consisting of: Budget: If you aren't going to be playing that a lot, you shouldn't be spending close to $1,000 or more. Personally, I wouldn't invest more than a couple of hundred. Casual players like myself can escape a less costly high quality table, which was just one of the determining variables for me. As an informal foosballer at parties, a $100-$ 500 table can be enough. Who's It For?: When I acquired my foosball table, I acquired it for my university friends and I. Knowing individuals I was going to be playing with, I really did not wish to buy something also expensive. If you're likewise an university kid, I would not suggest shelling out $1,000 unless you're mosting likely to be creating an affordable and also professional team. Constantly make sure to buy for the people who will be utilizing it most and bear in mind if they're harsh, or gentle. Table Material: My friends and I are a bit rougher, which is why I went for the long lasting plastic. I was afraid that a wooden table would certainly be too easily scratched and something made from particle board would conveniently break. There are items on this listing that have a bit board as their primary material. Gamers: The overall of guys on the foosball table should be 11. While there might only be a few poles, we have actually been able to have a 2 versus 2 game of foosball. It's not always regarding 1v1 playing. Dimension: There are several dimensions readily available for foosball tables, as not everyone coincides elevation. If you're like me, a basic foosball table will certainly be the only one that's best in elevation for you. A requirement, full foosball tables have to do with 2 1/2 feet in size with a size of 5 feet. For a regulation table, measurements are around 30" in size x 56" in size x 36" in height. Keep this in mind throughout your search. Goalies: For goalie configuration, there are 2 choices. The initial being a single guy goalkeeper system and also a 3-man goalie system. Anytime I would certainly play, I would certainly notice that the ball would certainly bounce and strike both outdoors males, but will not be anywhere near the objective. I then understood that these 2 men function as gamers to maintain the round moving as opposed to goalkeepers. Prior to I made the big choice, I asked myself these concerns: 1. How little is my area? Given that I really did not have a lot of area to extra, a big table wasn't in my sights. This is why I purchased a table top variation. 2. Do I require a 1-man goalkeeper arrangement or 3? Relying on your casual versus significant requirements, you could like one over the other. Constantly ensure to examine the choices for goalie configuration. I picked a 3 goalkeeper configuration so it would be much more enjoyable to keep the round in play, rather than excessively competitive as well as not fun. Quality attributes that I searched for in my search was the size of the foosball table, the general design of this table, the assembly, as well as naturally the reviews. Thanks to verified testimonials, I had the ability to figure out which foosball table is best for my way of living. Pictures were also a wonderful deciding element for me to discover if I took pleasure in the aesthetic appeals of the foosball table. Specific testimonials of each foosball table also helped me establish the quality of playing. Often, clients remain in the marketplace for a brand-new foosball table because theirs have either damaged or have not stood up with the moments. While I was purchasing a foosball table for the very first time, I recognized the irritation of being bewildered by the choices. In examining the finest quality foosball tables on the contemporary market, I wish to help you choose that will last you years to come. Upon searching for the various types of foosball tables, I stumbled upon both sorts of qualities for foosball tables. These qualities are called residence versions and professional versions, although several of the "residence models" are developed to specialist quality standards. Tables similar to this are offered at a customer level yet are a little bit pricier, something I had not been extremely interested in, but wanted to try. Better, expert tables will include more features like the levelers and rack up systems that I discussed formerly. Precision is an essential consider playing foosball efficiently. Any kind of floor covering that isn't level will have an extreme influence on tables without levelers. If you're a person that doesn't take shedding easily much like myself, you desire the playing field to be as reasonable as feasible. Considering that I reside in an apartment near my university school, it's an older house. Given that it is older, I most certainly should search for a table with some sort of levelling mechanism. Levelers play a substantial role in the success of an at-home table. By paying the extra to get even more, I was able to ensure that everyone would certainly get a fair shot at winning. A primary distinction in between all tables next to the dimensions is the quantity of males they have on the area. As I mentioned, there's a tossup between a single-goalie system as well as a 3-man goalie system. This is what made the distinction between "offered" and also "no, thank you" for myself. For those that won't be utilizing the foosball table installation much, but wish to have one for household parties or college celebrations like we've stated, I recommend that you purchase one that's more compact and also less about the professional grade. If you're buying it for the younger youngsters at your household celebrations, a small foosball table will be adequate. If your parties are anything like mine and primarily contain fun and also adventurous adults who enjoy foosball, I suggest acquiring a bigger table. In this circumstance, the table could be put in the basement, garage or yard so it's not in your means, but quickly obtainable. Selecting the very best for Your Lifestyle For those with a reduced spending plan that doesn't have a height choice, the very best foosball table for you may be the small, Sporting activity Squad FX40. For a restricted time, it gets on the cheaper end. This remains in comparison with the greatest I have actually pointed out and allows you versatility in elevation. If you're wanting to use an expert quality table and you don't have much of a spending plan, the most effective foosball table for your requirements is the Twister Sporting activity Foosball table. This table could get on the higher end of the price range, but the abundant mahogany will last you for several years to find and enables you to pick the height.