By Paul Honda
hrcFantasyLeague@aol.com
Monday, Nov. 6, 2006

Some thoughts, useful and useless alike.

Funny as it gets: Anybody watch White Boys in the 'Hood? It's amazing how much talent is out there in the standup comedy world. I never knew it. Really. Could there actually be more than two or three people in this country who can make you think and laugh for more than 10 seconds?

This whole Showtime thing is very good. Has it been around long? Now that I have a subscription, the last few months have been a epiphany. I wonder at times, "Man, this lousy crap is PAY television?" But there are other times, enough to satisfy, apparently, when I think, "Holy crud, that was gooooooood..."

Weeds is another show that went way beyond my lowered expectations. I didn't bother watching for weeks and weeks after I started paying for it. Then I bothered to watch one of those 3-minute promos. Award winner. Comedy. OK, I've known way too many people who smoke pakalolo (regularly) since I was a kid. This can't be that bad if it won awards. And how, HOW do they create a weekly show that has a duhhhhrug as its superstar.

So I watch a bit. Hey, it's the chick from "Fried Green Tomatoes" (a solid 3 1/2-star flick). Woah. She looks exactly the same as she did 20 years ago. By the end of the program, I was hooked. Weeds isn't a pro-drug show. It's borderline anti-drug. But the whole mess encompasses so many people from the little town/suburb of Agrestic, including councilman Kevin Nealon (yeah he is a character in the show) that it never gets boring.

I won't spoil the fun for anyone who's about to order Showtime because of my rave review, but the material is born with rife and conflict, and most of all, good timing. That makes for great comedy without cheesy cliches. Anyway ...

Mmmm: I can't help thinking about a big Korean lunch. So here.

Even the veggies are sounding great right now.

Would it not be awesome of piping hot Korean food was sold at the state volleyball championships? Yeah, walk into McKinley Gym, smell the kal bi, sit down and enjoy good food and good volleyball. Sorry, I can't do the canned chili on rice. Canned chili gives me heartburn, I learned a couple of years ago. That's the sure sign that age is catching up with you. Homemade chili is still good on my stomach.

Run, run, run: I ain't afraid to say it. I worked my ass off on Saturday. There were two cross-country championships at CORP. Got there before 1 p.m. Turns out, nobody from the ILH and OIA bothered to tell the non-cross country world that the times were pushed back to 3 p.m. So there I was, with my sturdy fold-out chair from Costco ($20 and it has yet to break on me like the $7 special from Wal-Mart), with a few scattered fans ... just wondering what was up.

Hardly any runners were there at 1 p.m. For me, it was fine. I got to see and hear most of the UH-Utah State wipeout. (63-10, yeah baby.) And having a couple of hours to catch on things online was fine with me. I just felt bad for the people who got there early, like 11:30. It's true. That's what one of the OIA officials said. Oh well. Weather was nice, and God knows we don't take good weather for granted anymore. Or quake-less days. Yup.

One of the nice things about that afternoon was the way the ILH and OIA cross country folks worked together and shared the same computers, same tents and route. It was a beautiful thing. See, I know the leagues get along quite well. I see it at the board meetings of the HHSAA, or at facilities that host state tournaments.

So, once they got started at 3, things went so gloriously smooth. ILH girls, then boys. Then the OIA girls, then boys. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Got my stats, printed out almost immediately by officials, yes! Got my quotes. Cross country kids are always some of the nicest, well-rounded athletes. Sent one story to the office in between the two meets (four races in all), and when it was pau, I headed to Aloha Stadium for the Punahou-Kamehameha football game. Sent the other cross country story (OIA) from there.

And for my next magical trick: My only regret was missing most of the Iolani-Saint Louis football game, which had started at 4:45. The sad thing is, nobody sent in the football stats. Home team's responsibility, and that would be Iolani on this day. Somehow, the Raiders think that the stadium provides stats to the media. Wrong. There's nobody, and I mean NOBODY, at Aloha Stadium who sits there through each game and tallies up yardage for individual players. It's done by media, and if they're not there, it falls on the home team.

It's not really a coach's priority, I understand. But I can't be in two places at once unless I'm the Japanese guy from "Heroes" ('Save the cheerleader, save the world"). Anyway, I'll talk with whoever I need to talk with about this. Maybe I'm supposed to wring out numbers out of thin air, after all.

I bought Madden 07 in August. A nice little birthday present to myself. It is now November and I still have not played the game once. Even my NCAA Football game ... bought it in August, didn't play it at all until my nephew started last week. Now he's hooked. He's been better at it than me for the past three years. I just don't have the time, and my PS2 is stuck in one of these boxes that I haven't opened since moving ... I need a reason to play Madden. What kind of a gamer am I?

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