New Blogs!
Went far and wide for the two new local blogs we've got for you today - they're produced by people here at 400 N. Broad.
Dave Hiltbrand has created a cyber-version of Dave on Demand, his Saturday column at the Inquirer, and in it he goes deep on some pet subjects, like American Idol.
He writes of the Seattle auditions:
The hanging judge was in a foul mood. BTW, thanks for dressing up, sport. Simon showed up in an undershirt with hair that looked like it was cut with a cereal bowl.
But why waste one of your perfectly good black muscle-Ts on such a pack of losers. Every time the camera would flash to the holding room, it looked more like the crowd at the bus station in Cleveland than a group of aspiring pop stars.
Make no mistake about it: Seattle brought the crazy. Like peroxide Mischa and her bookend mother who seem to have escaped from R. Crumb's worst nightmare. Mischa certainly gave a fresh reading to the Pussycat Dolls' lyric: "Don't you wish your girlfriend/Was a freak like me."
Then there was Nick, swaying like a bugeyed metronome as he butchered "Unchained Melody." Speaking of the Righteous Brothers did you catch insta-buddies Kenneth and Jonathan. Give these guys a series!
Kenneth is the glow worm that Simon referred to as a "bush baby". (I think the creature you were going for there was ring-tailed lemur.) But you can't fault his boy band choreography.
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Second, we have Soft Pretzel Logic, a local college sports blog from Jonathan Tannenwald, a Philly.com producer whom we'd quoted in his past life as a Penn student who wrote the West End site. (The Penn part explains is why he quotes John Locke on round ball.) Soft Pretzel Logic is named after the comfort food that got him through many assignments at the Palestra.
His Locke-quoting post is about numbers. He writes:
I have a lot of friends around college basketball who make a huge deal out of stats and drawing conclusions from them. I agree that some of them are very good things to know. Offensive and defensive efficiency, tempo and ratio of three-pointers to field goals come to mind right away.
But stats aren't everything to me. I still think there's such a thing as clutch, and that a small, cramped gym with raucous students can get in a player's head and make him miss a shot he'd make in a 20,000-seat arena with sky boxes and a few jumbotrons.
I believe that a great player will step up when his team is faltering late on the road and hit a big shot to silence the home crowd, no matter what his usual offensive efficiency is. Randy Foye did it against Penn last season after the Quakers mounted a huge second-half run to cut 'Nova's lead from 21 points to four. With just over a minute to play, Foye pulled a crossover dribble and nailed a 13-foot jumper without flinching in the least. That's something that I don't think a page of stats can accurately represent.
I thought you didn't watch American Idol? Last nights episode was glorious though. That lemur kid was too much.
wadn't me. that was demanding dave.