Cleaning out the Links, Part IV

Once again folks, its time for Cleaning Out the Links, Part IV, which has become my favorite weekly segment on my blog.

Sunday Reflections are cool but they sometimes get personal and I express some feelings that aren’t fun to deal with. MMA Review is good as well, but not everyone is into that. This segment has some seriousness, some humor and everything in between. Without further ado…

-Here’s a list of the top-10 Unreleased Things Ever Made: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/the_10_most_amazing_unreleased_things_ever_made.php I agree with choice number eight. Nine Inch Nails was the truth and one of my favorite “groups” ever. Notice I said was. The Broken album is a masterpiece. What has happened with the last few albums Trent Rezner?

-Since the Olympics are currently going on, Entertainment Weekly has posted Hollywood’s spin on Olympic events. Some of these clips are pretty funny, especially Forrest Gump going to China to play table tennis. Sound familiar? http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20216974_13,00.html

-College football season is approaching and there are always those college quarterbacks who were amazing in school, yet for whatever reason it doesn’t translate to the NFL. Some are system quarterbacks (the Houston ones back in the day Andre Ware and David Klinger), some were blessed to be on loaded teams (Miami’s Gino Torretta) and some were overrated from day one (I always hated Notre Dame’s Rick Mirer).

However, the one that was saddest to see was Tommie Frazier. He may have been the best college quarterback of the past 30 years. He ran an option like no one else and that 1995 Nebraska team was the best one that I’ve ever seen, including all of the great Miami, Florida State and USC teams. Injuries caught up with him, specifically blood clots in his legs. If healthy, he could have at least been a valuable playmaker like Hines Ward or Randle-El of the Redskins in the NFL.

Here’s the link to the top-10 NFL Quarterbacks who never were: http://www.theloveofnfl.com/site/comments/top_10_nfl_qbs_who_never_were/

Here’s Tommy in his glory:



-Buffalo Bills’ special teams’ player Kevin Everett had a severe neck injury that left him temporary paralyzed in Week One of last season. However, he has recovered and is walking again. However, there was a time when that was in doubt. This poor newscaster was trying to report on his progress and see what happens:



-If there’s one thing I love eating, it’s a chicken sandwich. Here’s a link to the top fast food chicken sandwiches since 1996. How Chick-Fil-A didn’t make the list is beyond me! I may be a “yankee,” but I know good southern fried chicken: http://ghostsofwaynefontes.blogspot.com/2008/08/best-fast-food-chicken-sandwiches-circa.html

-Wrestling was a huge part of my life for many years until I got to college. However, I still hold a place for it in my heart. It was nice to see someone put together the top-30 finishing moves of all-time. The scary thing is that I’ve tried at least half of these on people in my life. War Mr. Perfect! The figure four is way, way, way too low. That’s a top-10 move at least and if done in real life can really mess someone’s leg up, which is important. I’m shocked Matt and Jeff Hardy haven’t died doing their finishes yet. I love Rocky, but the People’s elbow is weak. I can’t argue with #2 and #1

The song contains some bad words, so if you’re at work, you may want to keep the volume down:



-Speaking of wrestlers, here’s how Goldberg celebrates Hanukkah:



-My favorite ever segment on The Daily Show on Comedy Central was Even Stepvhen with Steve Carell and Steve Colbert. Here’s a link to some of the best ones: http://www.milkandcookies.com/playlist/10133/

-Super Mario Brothers may be the most famous and most played ever video game. Here are some fun facts about Mario himself: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/09/22/10-mario-fun-facts/

-I love going to the Sports Illustrated Vault and seeing old articles like this one in 1992 talking about how bad USC football is and the trouble they were having with NCAA violations. Some things change, some stay the same: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004163/index.htm

Here’s another one from the 1977 college football preseason preview: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1092775/index.htm

Notre Dame #1, I can kinda understand back then. Texas Tech #4? Interesting. Maryland was in the top-10, odd. Houston in the top-15, not these days.

-Here’s a list of the 50-sexiest music videos of all-time: http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/nerveeditors/50-Sexiest-Music-Videos-of-All-Time/01/

Number #4 was a life changer for a young boy when it came out. I watched the video with a look of shock and just stayed speechless.

-Here are some cute animals that can really mess up your day (potentially NSFW because of bad language): http://www.cracked.com/article_15853_6-cutest-animals-that-can-still-destroy-you.html

-Here are the top-50 goals in soccer history:



I’m taking the rest of the week off from the blog because I’ll be out of town. Hopefully I’ll be back in town on Sunday for a Reflections. Until then, stay strong and listen to some more self-defense tips from Bas Rutten:

Sunday Reflections

What’s going on everyone, its time for Sunday Reflections!

-This weekend has been interesting. I saw my friend Joel get his diploma from my graduate school on Friday night and that was a good experience. I’ll be in his position in May getting my degree and I’m looking forward to that opportunity.

It made me thinking about the fact that I’ll be done with school in less than a year. I’m happy with my progress and I’ve learned some things. However, there are things that I want to improve on and learn about that I haven’t done yet. This is the opportunity for me to take advantage of and I need to do that more.

Most importantly, the graduation food was outstanding! Feed me and I'm a happy boy.

-I opened up my blog for other writers to contribute and have gotten one or two responses. Hopefully some of those posts will start appearing on the blog. Joan is one of them. I’m looking forward to that. Speaking of Joan…

-Just kidding! There will hopefully be no more over-analytical posts about Joan like some of my past ones, which were interesting to say the least.

We interacted with each other this week and hopefully I helped her through some stuff she’s dealing with. She's been documented on this blog way more than I expected, the last post is here: http://pourtoutpancakes.blogspot.com/2008/07/sunday-reflections-sunday-reflections.html

It’s an odd feeling to really care about a woman as a friend and naturally want to take it to another level because that seems right but you know that there are reasons that it can’t go there yet you’re not mad because she needs you as a friend more than as a boyfriend.

Ok, I’ve been typing and retyping for 20 minutes how to discuss this without boring all of you. I’ll just say that at first I was into her for the physical reasons, because she is beautiful, especially this week when I saw her. I was speechless when she entered the room. It was the same when I first met her, which I still remember. God, that’s lame. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I’ve developed more then just mere feelings for her, I actually care about her very much on an emotional level after this week, which I wasn’t planning on. I thought I was completely over her romantically, but I guess not.

I’m not going to screw up our friendship by doing something stupid, because I care about that too much. I’m still interested in other women without a doubt because I’m not in a relationship with her and she's in a relationship. I’ll work it out.

-I’ve been all over the Olympics! I was up until 2 a.m. Friday night watching Judo online. I’ve also been watching team handball, field hockey (underrated by the way) fencing and weightlifting. I’ve been watching the swimming and rowing and liking it on NBC. Surprisingly, I love soccer but haven’t been checking it out that much.

Sports like basketball, tennis and other secular sports can be checked out later on. When am I going to check out team handball again?

Right now, I’m trying to watch gymnastics and I’m not feeling it.

If you read my preview, you notice that I don’t like any of the sports that consists of a judge, accept for maybe judo, which doesn’t consist of a judge but a referee to interpret some rules.

I just can’t accept someone judging another person and determining the score.

And I know some of you are reading this and saying, Etienne Marcel, you like mixed martial arts and there are judges in that. True, but that’s only if the fight makes the maximum rounds. There are plenty of chances for the fight to end in ways controlled by the fighters like knockouts and submissions. Divers and gymnasts don’t have this chance.

I respect the athletes, I just don’t dig the operation of their sports. It’s good seeing Bela Karoli on the TV though. I thought he still coached the women gymnasts. I want his mustache.

-Speaking of martial arts, I saw UFC 87 on Saturday and like what I saw. Georges St. Pierre is a beast. You will get more analysis on Friday in MMA Review.

-That’s all from me this week. I’m not going to have a big post schedule this week because I may have to head to Georgia to take care of some family stuff.

Tomorrow, I’ll have my baseball predictions review for August. Tuesday, I’ll clean out some links. After that, I don’t know. Have a good week everybody.

I’ll leave you with some tips on self-defense from my main man, MMA legend, El Guapo Bas Rutten. If you think he’s acting odd in the clip for theatrics, he isn’t. Guapo always acts like that. Funny stuff.