Weekend Randomness

My Sports thoughts from this past weekend:

- Its sucks what happened to Carson Palmer
- Tom Brady still rules
- The Suns are for real
- How is Mark Brunell doing it? He had the classic age 10 years in one year (happens to everyone, examples being Gary Payton in 2003-2004, Adrian Murrell in 1999 and Matt Williams in 2000.) yet he somehow regain the starting job his next year. This is significant because he still plays like he did last year, yet somehow he won a playoff game and is two games away from the Super Bowl. Explain this to me? Also can anyone name another WR on the Skins that's not Santana Moss? I can only name 4 players on their offense: Burnell, Chris Cooley, Moss and Portis. (Okay I can name more but those are the only players that matter. The bottom line is I have no idea how this team has won 11 of 17 games they have played this year.) This team bears an amazing resemblance the Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES version) Kansas City Chiefs. No offense at all (the Chiefs have an aging Joe Montana and an over the hill Christian Okaye). The Chiefs offense is so bad I managed to lose a game 5-0 to the computer in the season me and the roommates are playing. 5-0! I didn't know it was possible to have only 5 combined points scored in a Temco Super Bowl game. However, like the Redskins, the Cheifs defense is so incredible (Derrick Thomas, Niel Smith, Percy Snow and Dale Carter) that I stand at 12-2 through 14 games despite having the last ranked offense in the league. So basically I cant see the Redskins winning against the Seahawks, then again I have no clue how my TSB team keeps winning so you never know.

Alright now onto the Suns. They have been playing really well lately, in their last 10 games they are 8-2 and their two losses have been 3OT games. The basically have had to rough spots all year this year, the start of the year when they did not know how to play together right away and a few weeks ago when everyone was hurt and they only had 6 healthy players and Jim Jackson (he no longer counts as a player. But that's fine, he did enough in game 5 of the Western Semis vs Dallas last year to imortalize him in Suns history.) I don't know if any of you returning blog readers remember from my old summer blog, but I likened last year's team to Luke Skywalker from the Empire Strikes Back (Back to back blogs with Luke Skywalker references? I didn't expect that). For those who don't remember I will recap it real quickly:
The suns were out to "save" the NBA with their fast break, wide open, offense first style of play. They were trying to save the NBA from the Empire, which is represented as the defense intensive style of play that has killed the NBA's popularity from the mid 90s until now. The "Empire" had its share of bad guys, Pat Riley, Jeff Van Gundy, the current emperor, The Pistons and the current Darth Vader, the Spurs. The Rebel Alliance, represented by teams that play fun, high scoring ball, was weak and only represented by a few teams: The Kings and the Mavs. This is why the Suns were like Luke Skywalker. They were a young, brash team that came out of nowhere to be the NBA's new hope. However, like in the Empire Strikes Back, they rushed into a battle with Darth Vader (the Spurs) before they were ready. Luke got his hand cut off, the Suns lost 4 games to 1 and we had to suffer through 71-67 NBA final type games between the Spurs and Pistons.
Fast forward to now, the Suns are starting to resemble Luke Skywalker from the Return of the Jedi. They are older, wiser, darker and edger. They are no were near as innocent. Thanks to Raja Bell, Kurt Thomas, Boris Diaw and James Jones they play much better defense which has allowed them to be almost as good without Amare. You could see it when they played the Spurs on Saturday night. They were in control the whole game, they denied the Spurs easy drives into the line (which the Spurs seemed to get at will during the playoffs last year) and they pushed around Manu (how great was it to see him get his elbowed and shoved around by Kurt Thomas and Raja Bell in the 4th quarter?) In two games this year the Suns have split with the Spurs, although in game 1 this year the Suns were outplaying the Spurs until Barbosa went down (who was having a great game) and they kind of lost there way. Hey its only the regular season, but it seems like the Suns could have a chance this year if Amare comes back healthy. He the good guys have to win right?

originally this blog was meant to not be about sports so much, but I kind of got carried away. Anyway I have a movie review for you on the chronicles of Narnia:

This movie was well done and it followed the book well, from what I remembered. It was entertaining, somewhat funny and well acted. It was interesting seeing the book EVERYONE read as a kid adapted to the big screen. Plus the story is a timeless American classic. I do not have much else to say about it other than its worth seeing in the theater, especially if you read the book as a young kid.

Also, I think I was the last person in the world to see SNL's "Lazy Sunday" the rap video about going to see Narnia. With such classic lines as:
"Chronic- What?- icals of Narina"
"Mr. Pibb plus Red Vines equals crazy delicious."
"She acted like she ain't never seen a 10 before"
"McAdams like Gosling"
"Double True!"
"They call me Burr the way I be dropping Hamiltons."
I dont remember the last time an SNL skit created this much buzz. I had quit watching SNL because it had gotten so bad, but after seeing that I decided to start TIVOing it again. I wonder, will that skit be remembered as the skit that started to bring SNL back? You never know . . .


Okay y'all I'm off to enjoy my last week before ASU starts up again.