Redesign Notes

unless you've got a vision problem, you will have noticed a few slight modifications to my site, a few notes on these:

-The Twitter widget that I originally had up wasn't really working for me ... it made the page seem a bit cluttered ... on top of that, Flash player is kinda wack ... something which became apparent when it would fail to pop up on occasion ...

-Some of you may be wondering why I created a link to my YouTube channel ... well, it's a chance for my fans to see what I'm watching (under favorites) and commenting on (of course, 'cause your boy's always got an opinion) ... when the time finally comes that I purchase my Blackberry, I'll shoot some videos with it ... maybe later invest in a good webcam and do some podcasts ... then I'll upload all of those onto YouTube ...

-I currently own the "JSmoothOnline" domains for Blogger, YouTube and Twitter ... yes, your boy's trying to establish (if it isn't already) J-Smooth as a brand name and intellectual property, LOL ... next stops, my own reality show and clothing line (back in high school, J-Smooth "Pimpgear") LMFAO ...

-now as for the picture links of my "affiliates" ... it's something that I wanted to have when I first created this blog page ... but it wasn't available back then ... I'm a visual kinda guy and text links don't really compel me to check something out, this way has a bit more appeal ... another plus to the pic links is that it puts a face to the name when I mention one of my dudes in my entries ... come to think of it, they should all be thanking me for making them look G ...

-any suggestions?, because your boy is all about the fans ...

~J-Smooth~

Summer Weekend Recap

-kicked it with Prophet on Friday, then again on Saturday at Octal's ... got in some much needed socializing with Fam ... I know we're older now, but it still doesn't feel like it ... same ol' Oc', same ol' Proph', same ol' J-Smooth ... I said it last night and will echo the same sentiments today, House of the Flying Daggers has got to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen ... not even worthy of a rating ... the only brightspot, if any, was Zhang Ziyi, she is amazingly hot ... I think I've got a new crush, LOL ...



-parents come home today from the motherland ... so my freedom ends today, on top of that I have to pick them up this afternoon which means a departing from the regular Sunday pick-up ball ... double downer ... but on the upside, my parents always bring me home some good stuff (ie. food, clothing) from back home, so I can't complain ... plus, mother nature dashed any hopes of ball today ... this Canadian weather is nuts ...

-RIP Vernon Forrest ... for those of you who don't know him, he was a great boxer, most known for being Super Welterweight Champion and defeating the great "Sugar" Shane Mosley twice ... He was gunned down in an attempted robbery in Atlanta last night ... Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, Arturo Gatti and Vernon ... the count is now at four, of celebrities that are dead and quite frankly shouldn't be ... the scary part of Vernon's death is that Proph' and myself were talking about him, literally just hours ago ... proof positive that you're only guaranteed today, tomorrow is a gift ...

~J-Smooth~

Random Rundown

-TMZ is set to release the footage of LeBron James getting dunked on at his camp ... I hate TMZ, but anything that makes LeBron look like a b!tch has my full attention ...

-anyone else getting sick of seeing Seth Rogan on movie trailers? ... all his movies with the exception of one, have been complete trash ...

-I'll say it again, the Raptors are gonna be tough to hate on this season ... It's a New Jack City! ... what the acquisitions of Jarrett Jack, Hedo Turkoglu and Demar DeRozan do is give me a fighting chance in a bet I made in '06 ... call me insane, but I can see the Raptors finishing as high as 4th in the East this year ... further evidence of a diluted talent pool in the NBA ...

-Manny Pacquiao versus Miguel Cotto, has finally been agreed upon for November 14th ... word is that A-list sports and entertainment personalities have already been contacting Bob Arum for tickets ... I wonder what Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s excuse will be when Pacman outdraws his fight ...

~J-Smooth~

Roadtrip!!!

highlights/lowlights of my visit Stateside:

-the day's weather started out promising ... clear, blue skies ... but that changed in a hurry ...

-went to mass at Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Lewiston ... every time I visit, it's like coming home ...

-I'm utterly devestated ... The Old Country Buffet has been closed down ...

-lookin' to see what all the southern fuss is about, I went to TOPS and picked up a box of Grits ... just had a bowl, not bad, but I'll stick to my Quaker Oats ...

-picked up a few things at the Outlet Mall, not many deals though ... the prices at Niagara Outlets are usually a good gauge for what prices are like at Walden Galleria Mall, so I didn't bother going there ... maybe a blessing, I'm probably better off saving for my annual NYC trip ...

~J-Smooth~

Movie Review reviews; The Bank Job

I've been looking over my entries from the past year ... most specifically my movie reviews ... I can't believe that I've watched over 40 ... not that I keep track, but it seems like that's the most I've ever watched in a year's period ... now looking at the scores that I've given, I'm going to change my ratings on two movies ... Rendition, I'm downgrading to a 4 from a 4.5 (which in retrospect, despite being a great movie, was a little too high) and I'm marking up Taken to a 4 (which I surprisingly graded very low originally) ... but all the scores still seem to be pretty accurate ... the following is a list of my upper-tier movies:

4.5 - Traitor
4.25 - We Own The Night, Love Actually
4 - Shooter, Rendition, Taken
3.75 - The Departed, Notorious, The Other Boleyn Girl

Anyhow, I just got through watching The Bank Job ... and it was another solid movie ... that makes it two in a row ... I'm not even going to get into "critic"-mode for this one, because I can't even break this movie down like that ... I just enjoyed it, all the way through (and that's what the movie-goer experience should be) ... but I will give it a score, 3.75/5 ...

~J-Smooth~

Milestones

2 YEARS, 300 POSTS ...

again, I'm amazed on how fast time has gone by ...

my sophomore year on Blogger has seen my output reduced by half ...

no new design this year, I think I'll stick with the current layout for a while ... but if you haven't noticed already, I've added a couple new features to this site ... first, the Twitter widget (again thx to Garneteye) which are more up to date on what's goin' on with yours truly ... second, the YouTube video up top, I'll post any video worth watching before any of my entries ...

I guess on to this entry ...

-watched the movie Taken ... solid film ... score 3.25 ...

-listened to Daughtry's new album ... average ... score 2.75 ...

-if the Toronto Raptors manage to pry Jarrett Jack from the Indiana Pacers, that means they will have 3 players I actually like (Hedo Turkoglu and Demar DeRozan, the others, 4 if you include Chris Bosh) ... hating them might not be as easy this year ...

-the Boston Celtics acquisition of Rasheed Wallace may very well put them over the top ... but if Lamar Odom returns to the Los Angeles Lakers, the finals next year will be a heavyweight fight ...

-what's up with women in the world? ... they don't seem to be acting like ladies anymore ... RIP Arturo Gatti and Steve McNair ...

-this may be a little late to comment on, but I thought Michael Jackson's memorial/tribute was very well done ... I tried to be tough, but got a little misty-eyed watching it ...

-finally, I've got my ear to the ground ...

J-Smooth

RIP

It's the one year anniversary of the death of the D-Mac familia's patriarch ... I can't believe it's already been this long ... but at the same time, the memories of that day and those following are still very much fresh in my mind ... how has it changed me? ... well a self-observation (at the risk of sounding cliche), I've come to appreciate life a lot more ... I mean, I've always loved life, but now my approach is more of an easy-going, cautious one ... I keep all the people I'm close to, close ... and not sweat all the trivial and superficial things ... lastly, I just wanted to say, once again, T****, I Love You and Thank You ... RIP

~J-Smooth~

The Twittersphere; Local Ball

-your boy has uped and decided to enter Twitter Nation ... I wasn’t really compelled to at first, because of the concept ... for those living under a rock, Twitter is basically one element of Facebook (the status updates), to let people know what you’re doing and thinking at the moment ... I was just scrolling through my Facebook Wall the other day and an observation I made was that my usage of late has been very Twitter-esque, thus I just decided to not be a hater and give it a chance ... currently I’m “following” (Twitter’s equivalent to a Facebook friends list) people like: my little bro Zona, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Charlie Villanueva and even U.S. President Barrack Obama ... but like I said in one of my “tweets”, it seems half@ss tweeting without a Blackberry (which I hope to get before year’s end) ... because that’s the other feature with Twitter, you can post tweets via Blackberry (on the go, so to speak) ... I’m not sure if long-term I can see Twitter being implemented into my day-to-day cyberspace activity, among others things like YouTube, Facebook and various boxing and basketball news sites ... but I guess we shall see ...

-ran some ball yesterday at the local court, something which has become a weekly practise ... I’ll just say it straight up, I haven’t played against ANY legit competition, with the exception of a couple of Pinoys from my area ... my city is currently expanding, thus more-and-more people are moving in on a yearly basis ... I’m willing to bet more than half our population has moved in within the past 5 years ... anyhow back to ball ... over the past few weeks, I’ve played against different people, but what’s funny is that squads are usually made up of guys of the same race, who “stick together” (blacks, browns, Chinese, Pinoys etc.) ... what I want to address are the black and brown ballers that I’ve played thus far ... nearly all of them have big mouths and all act so damn hard, thinkin’ they’re “G’s” ... I’ve got a big mouth myself, so I can’t hate on that ... but what I love doing is taking dudes with big mouths and shutting them up ... The group of black guys caught sight of our squad and started sayin’ sh!t like “this shouldn’t take too long”, “let’s make this quick” ... then I whispered over to my boy Youngblood before the game that I knew we could run these guys ... little did I know how prophetic I had been ... playin’ ball, I’m a combo guard, but yesterday I primarily ran the point on offense while manned the middle on D (I was the biggest guy on our squad, so really by default) ... on offense, I was attacking the rim and setting up my squad all day ... on D, playing down low allowed me to be more vocal and see the court better ... let’s just say the opposition got their @sses handed to them ... best part about it, was there was DEAD silence after the game, they couldn’t say sh!t ... moral of the story, don’t under-estimate the competitiveness of THIS Pinoy ...

Peace!

~J-Smooth~

Craptors; BEP; Redemption

-I’ve been searching my previous entries and Facebook sent messages for where I called it ... but I know for a fact that I predicted Hedo Turkoglu’s signing with the Toronto Craptors ... I know I told the fam and mi familia ... the Jermaine O’Neal/Shawn Marion trade from earlier this year confirmed it for me, but I already had a hunch about it before that ... now the question is, WTF was Bryan Colangelo thinking? ... probably something like “yesssss!, another Euro player, but this time he’s actually ‘legit’ because he played for a winning team, now I can justify over-paying for this guy” ... now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Turkoglu, but on the Craptors, his signing negates everything they’re trying (or what they say they’re trying) to do ... Colangelo said that they want to get tougher, more athletic and better defensively ... nope, nope and nope on the Hedo signing ... but then again, does any logic in Raptorland make sense? ... they want to run, so they draft a great athlete in Demar DeRozan, who can finish the break, OK fine ... but who’s gonna get the ball to this guy and run alongside him? ... the word “push” was obviously omitted from Jose Frauderon’s Spanish-to-English dictionary ... now as far as toughness and defense go, the projected starting line-up has not improved at all and I’d even say has gotten worse, if that’s even possible ... they lose A LOT, minus Marion ... as it stands, you’ve got Andrea Bargnani, Chris Bosh, Turkoglu, DeRozan and Frauderon ... someone please explain to me why Colangelo remains convinced that Bargnani can play the 5? ... he can’t guard guys at that position, period ... and I’m not even talking about Dwight Howard, I’m thinking of tier 2 guys like Kendrick Perkins and Tyson Chandler ... Bosh, as good as he is offensively, is not exactly a defensive stud ... Hedo played in a defensive system in Orlando, but is not a good man-to-man defender ... DeRozan is still a rookie who I’m expecting to take his lumps in his early career from guys like Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade ... and Frauderon, is allergic to D ... The only thing the Hedo signing does for the Craptors is give them another 20PPG scorer ... but points are meaningless if you can’t stop anyone ... Toronto Craptors basketball, “where WTF? happens” ...

-I finally listened to The Black Eyed Peas’ new album The E.N.D. ... their first single “Boom Boom Pow” is pretty catchy ... while not exactly as good as Elephunk, it’s on par with Monkey Business ... and apl.de.ap continues to prove why he’s one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated emcees in the game ... I’d rate the album as a whole 4/5 ... and there is absolutely no sarcasm or Pinoy bias at all in that score ... ;P

-almost 7 months after, J-Smooth finally avenged his only two losses in a storied career ... those losses came at the hands of Anthro, but this time around J-Smooth responded with an emphatic and convincing beatdown ... think Pacquiao/Hatton ... when it comes to Mario Kart Wii, J-Smooth is the P4P and PPV King, LMFAO ...

Peace!

~J-Smooth~