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If you enjoy watching Good Eats as much as Japa does, you’ll be happy to see that sellout.woot  Today is featuring a digital thermometer with alerts for doneness and time.  This kitchen tool is a must for any true Brown fans.

With the NFL regular season coming up in less than a week I gotta suggest that you watch HBO’s sports show Hard Knocks.  The show is a football documentary that focuses on an NFL team’s preseason.  It provides an absolutely fascinating view into everyday life in the NFL.

I just finished season 4 of the show that features the Kansas City Chiefs in 2007.  You see QB battles, rookies trying to make the team, and holdouts.

It’s interesting to see how the fringe players fight to make the team…and what happens when they do or don’t make it.  The show gets you close to the players - you learn about their lives and struggles and whatnot, and it’s all very compelling.

What was great in season 4 is the holdout of star RB Larry Johnson.  You see Johnson holding out, then returning to the team in the middle of the preseason.  You also see previously retired player Priest Holmes trying to get back into shape to try and make the team.

I really can’t say enough about the show.  My only criticism is that it is too short - only 5 episodes or so a year.  And, you only get to see the preseason.  It would be equally interesting to see how these players progress throughout the year.

This season the show focuses on the Dallas Cowboys.  It’s on HBO, so you need a subscription to watch it…or, you can just download it like me.  Anyone who is remotely interested in football will love this show…and even if you’re not you can really appreciate all that goes on behind the scenes in the NFL.

Look, I don’t know a lot about politics.  All I know is I like Obama because he went to an extraordinary high school.  But I was really surprised to hear that John McCain selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate today.

On one hand, Palin’s politics seem to be in line with McCain’s.  She’s pro life, a long time member of the NRA, and she put an end to Alaska’s bridge to nowhere - one of McCain’s prime examples of government waste.

But really, there are lots of VP candidates with values similar to Palin’s.  I mean, her politics made her a candidate for the VP spot…but I don’t think they got her the job.

So what’s with Palin?  For one, she’s a woman.  And I kind of get that McCain would perhaps want a woman to try and win former Hillary supporters that haven’t yet gotten on board with Obama.  But at the same time I think there are lots of folks in McCain’s base that would be uncomfortable with a female VP…let alone a female president.

And that’s a bigger issue.  McCain is old as fuck.  In eight years he will be 80.  Any vice president on his ticket will be heavily scrutinized for the first string job.  And I don’t think Palin’s a good choice here.

For one, she’s inexperienced.  She’s a first term governor that was previously the major of some small Alaskan town.  She frequently talks about how she was a hockey mom just a few years ago.

This makes her a poor VP candidate for McCain, in my opinion.  Imagine a president that has only a few years of experience in politics…in Alaska of all places.  That will be tough for anyone to stomach, especially McCain’s supporters.  Not only that, but it will limit McCain’s ability to play the inexperience card on Obama.

Still, the Palin announcement overshadowed Obama’s victorious acceptance speech the night before at the Democratic convention.  A good outcome for McCain who has struggled to counter the Obama hype machine.

All in all though, I think McCain made a bit mistake here.  It will get him tons of short term press…both positive and negative.  But I don’t think this will translate into votes.

I mean, McCain is already playing the ‘I’m not a celebrity’ card, but this announcement was very press whorish.  He was doing a fine job with attack adds, and although I get that he would like to have the best of both worlds, choosing Palin was a steep price to pay.

McCain has closed the gap between him and Obama, even coming ahead in some polls.  I think a more conventional, old white guy pick for VP would have been more appropriate here.  I can’t imagine that Palin was a choice that came from a large, organized VP selection committee.  It seems more like an individual pick from either McCain or one of his advisors.

I think in the coming weeks McCain will start to lose momentum.  It’s a bad pick, and I’d bet that it will cost him the election.

What’s kind of odd though, is that history will be made in 2008.  Either a black president, or a female VP.

Oh, and one more thing…doesn’t she have a striking resemblance to Tina Fey?

The Redskin’s preseason concluded yesterday with a disappointing 24-3 loss to the Jags.  Colt Brennan led the Skins for the majority of the game, going 13 for 18, gaining 119 yards with no TDs and no INTs.

It was not the best performance, but he was decent.  The Skin’s poor performance was due more to a weak offensive line and penalties than Brennan himself.

The final preseason doesn’t mean much to first stringers, but it can be pretty important for players on the brink of making the roster.

Sixth round pick Colt Brennan has performed well this preseason, at times looking like a 1st or 2nd stringer.  He avoided throwing an interception throughout the preseason and had several quality games with pinpoint precision passes.

I think at this point it’s a lock for Brennan to make the roster as a third stringer.  But he is still far behind Todd Collins, the Skin’s veteran backup.  With that said however, starting QB Jason Campbell is injury prone.  If he misses any games then Brennan will rise to the second team, with an opportunity to take some reps as a regular season QB.

As a sixth round pick Brennan’s main goal was to make the roster…and he’s accomplished that.  He didn’t really have a chance to rise to the 2nd or 1st string, but he sure has made an impression.

Coaches have actually had to temper Brennan’s solid performances with criticisms of his decision making.  But for a sixth round rookie that ain’t a bad situation to be in.

Good luck in the regular season, Colt.

The New York Times had an article about two girls that did an interesting experiment.  They visited 4 sushi restaurants, ordered popular Nigiri staples, then sent the fish to a lab for identification.  Guess what they found?…Many of the fish was mislabeled!  More expensive varieties of fish were substituted for cheaper varieties.  The most shocking switch?  White Tuna which actually was something called Mozambique Tilapia <gasp>  I think either of those two words would be enough to make Japa sick to his stomach.  One of the most commonly substituted fish was of course the generic red snapper.  I personally have seen all kinds of things served as red snapper from rock cod to tilapia.  Some lucky New Yorker was being served Acadian redfish an endangered species!  Not even Roger at Zushi Puzzle can pull that move.  What am I saying!?! of course Roger could do it.

Its nice to see even more creative ways of bastardizing sushi

News channels are reporting that Dr Dre’s 20 year old son was found dead at home this morning.  So far the cause of death is unknown. 

Today I’ve seen a few news outlets report on a possible assassination plot against Barack Obama.  Apparently three men were arrested near Denver after two rifles and high powered scopes were found in their car.  A Denver TV station is reporting that two of the men had white supremacist-related tattoos.

According to a CBS affiliate in Denver, one of the men responded in the ‘affirmative’ when asked if he had come to Denver to kill Obama.

Pretty crazy stuff, but hardly unexpected.  You just gotta hope that Obama’s security is prepared for something like this.  I mean, when I saw him at the Biden announcement he was pretty damn close to the crowd.  Sure, there were probably metal detectors and whatnot, but it’s hard to accurately screen ten thousand people.  Not only that, but these guys had what were essentially sniper rifles.  Some of these guns are accurate from over a mile away, and at that distance the bullet hits before the sound of the shot is even heard.

It’s difficult to think of someone actually trying to assassinate a president…at least for me.  I mean, I don’t remember Reagan - I was too young.  But one thing the Internet is good for is linking people with similar interests, and I think there are still tons of crazy white supremacists out there.

In any case, at least this plot was foiled before it came close to being taken into action.  It seems like a random, lucky arrest though.  I hope that accounts for all the crazyness for this election.

-So it’s over.  Does anyone care?  I mean, after all this Phelps stuff who was even watching the games?

-Ok, there were some sports.  Like track and field.  I don’t know much, but it seems like the US didn’t do so hot.  And what ever happened to this Gay guy?

-This guy Bolt is a shithead.  I mean, comeon…celebrating during the race?  Nice job representing your country by showing the world that you have no class whatsoever.  And that was just the start of it…dances after races, posing before…Act like you’ve fucking been there.  I mean this guy runs fast, I get it.  It’s barely a sport.  And one that people care about at most once every four years.  Get over it.

-I heard that softball and baseball will no longer be in the olympics.  Really?  Today while I saw an hour of rythmnic gymnastics, which is girls basically dancing around on the mat throwing around batons and hula hoops.  And BASEBALL isn’t a sport?  I mean, I know there is an olympic committee, but do we get to vote on this stuff?  We’re the ones who have to watch this shit, after all.

-US basketball finally got back the gold.  It’s about time.  I guess when you compose the team with players that have chemistry, instead of just picking a bunch of cocky assholes, then maybe you have a better chance.

-The US won in the total medal count, with 110 medals.  China followed with 100 medals, so we beat those fuckers.  But they had 51 golds to our 36.

-What kind of surprises me is that Canada got 18 medals.  Not that Canadians aren’t talented, but these are the summer games.  Cuba also got 24 medals, which is pretty impressive for a country that has a population of only 11 million.

-There was a lot of talk of human rights, but I don’t really hear about this once the games started.  I mean, some protesters were booted out, but really, who cares?  I mean, do you really want to have delays during the Olympics because of these tibetian assholes?  Time and a place for everything.  People think freedom of speech means making a big production and slowing down everything around you.  And I don’t think it does.  Sometimes, you gotta throw people in jail because they’re being douches.

-As TJFKAK pointed out boxing in the olympics is ridiculous.  It’s weird how they count punches, like the majority of judges have to vote on each punch pretty much, all within a few seconds.  The result is that scores are very controversial.  Like, in some cases punches that clearly landed were not registered at all.  Plus, it makes the game pretty boring…and lot of soft jabs and hugging.  All very queer.  This has to be the final straw for boxing.  It’s just not a fun game to watch.  Bring in UFC in 2012.

-All in all, wasn’t a bad games, I guess.  Nothing really bad happened, save for a murder and some angry losers.  The chinese seemed very insecure about the whole deal, but I guess it may be kind of in their nature to CGI fireworks and switch out singers and what not.  I mean, they’re already selling the Dark Knight on DVD for $0.50, is anyone surprised their fireworks were fake?

A few years ago a hawaiian team won the little league world series.  And it was big.  Like, Walgreens coming to honolulu big.

And believe it or not, it has happened again.

Today a team from Waipi’o that represents Hawaii, or the Hawaiian Kingdom Government depending on how much of an ignorant douchebag you are, won the little league world series.  The team trounced Mexico 12-3.

You gotta be kind of impressed that a team from hawaii actually did this…I mean, it’s a small state with not a lot of city resources for public sports.

Just wait, this will be the biggest thing on the islands for a long time.

Congrats, guys.  The only thing that could beat this if one of you reach 3rd place on American Idol.

This is kind of a crazy story.  Today a Cuban Taekwondo fighter attacked a judge after being DQ’ed from his match.

Who knows what the hell is going on in this clip, because it’s not in english.  But it is usually pretty bad news when a competitor actually attacks the ref.

I’m not sure how long the vid below will last on YouTube because of copyright, so check it out soon.

It’s hard to feel sorry for the Niners…I mean, they were a dynasty.  They had Montana THEN Young…like, back to back.  So they can afford to suffer, right?

Well, for the past several years they have really been suffering.  Particularly at the QB spot.  They’ve been at or near the bottom of their divisions for a LONG time…even though they have invested in pricey first round talent.

It all started in 2005 when they drafted Alex Smith #1 and signed him to a $50 million contract.  Four years later?  Smith looks no better than he did in his rookie year.

Sure, it may have been hard for Smith to deal with so many offensive transitions.  And he was injured.  But at some point an NFL quarterback starts to produce, and with no progress seen over the past years you gotta be disappointed.

And today Smith lost his starting job…to J.T. O’Sullivan.

J.T. who?

O’Sullivan has only played two years in the NFL since 2004.  He has also played in Europe.

But he performed decently last year in Detroit and he came over to SF along with offensive coordinator Mike Martz.

Who knows if this will be the end for Smith.  But it should be.  O’Sullivan has looked pretty good in pre-season and if he can win 8 games the 49ers will be impressed.  Not only that, but he’s getting paid the league minimum…and they can really use the cap room consumed by Smith.

The niners will actually be a team to watch this season…new offense, improved defense, a couple new receivers.  It’s about time.

Last week a couple of hikers made headlines around the world after they reportedly discovered the corpse of Bigfoot.  They released a few pictures of a hairy figure in a cooler, and threw a big press conference last week to report on their findings.

Well, believe it or not, it now appears that the Bigfoot finding was a hoax.  One of the scientists that actually studied the ‘corpse’ reported that it was actually a rubber bigfoot costume.

Who knows why anyone would make this claim.  I mean, sure they got a lot of press but at then end of the day they look like idiots with a rubber bigfoot suit.  Who were they expecting to fool?

And the press needs to be a bit more discerning with these claims.  I mean, they reported on a picture of a bigfoot costume.  What gives?

So maybe Jak is right - Olive Garden isn’t authentic Italian.  But then again, what is more italian than a fat pasta pot belly full of pasta carbs?

Here, Olive Garden is pure italian, with their never ending pasta bowl.  For only $9 you get all the pasta you can eat, plus your choice of sauces.

Get started on your own Tony Soprano belly today…by the time this promotion ends you’ll be ready for your first goumade.