Catch-all

Keeping up with this blog thing is difficult, y'know? Here is a list of all that I don't have which is required to maintain one of these things:

• Dedication • Perserverence • Patience • Time (sorta) • Desire • Interest • Good Ideas • Smarts • Basic computer skills • Ability to pique one's interest • Ability to maintain one's interest • Ability to capture one's interest • A computer • Ego complex • Alter-ego complex • Id complex • Superid complex • Carpal-tunnel-free fingers • Hope • Dignity

You get the point. So I think that maybe I just should, say, do this once a week. At least that I can keep up with. I think.

So here's a wrap up, in easy to digest point form:

• Preparing for Nebraska Roady 2005 which will be Sept. 30-Oct. 2. Eleven Brandonites are hitting the road to Lincoln to catch the UNL-Iowa State game on the 1st. That said, this is a game that scares me a bit. The Huskers have lost just eight games at home in the past 17 years and Iowa State, which had a bye last week, has already knocked off No. 8 Iowa. Granted that was in Ames, and in college football there is nothing like home-field advantage.

• The days could be numbered for Zac Taylor as the Huskers' starting QB. There is preliminary talk that perhaps true freshman Harrison Beck, a top-10 H.S. recruit in the off-season, might get a chance if Nebraska's struggling offence can't get things righted. Taylor got mucho love in the off-season for being a guy that would be able to play in Coach Callahan's west coast system and his effort in the team's Red-White game seemed to be a good sign. He put up video-game numbers at Butler Community College but that hasn't equated to big numbers through three games (two against teams the Huskers traditionally would have butchered).

That said, the Blackshirt D has been outstanding and kept that team in games it hasn't always looked like it belonged in. A good sign for the future, especially considering one of its biggest horses, Steve Octavien, has been injured since the first minutes of Game 1.

• I have to rant about Khari Jones being released by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Is this just the most ridiculous thing that this guy can't find work in a league where there's, what, maybe five legitimately good quarterbacks? I mean, be real, if you cheer for teams in Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton or Ottawa then you don't have much going for you at that position. And Jones has now been released by three of those aforementioned five teams.

Perhaps the downfall for KJones was signing the six-figure deal with the Bombers in 2004 because he's priced himself out of the market when teams aren't willing to take a chance. Still, no one can make an argument, a legitimate argument, that the Ticats are better off with Danny McManus and Marcus Brady than they are with Khari, who was never even given any sort of chance to play there.

Before being released, Jones had completed 35-of-60 passes for 406 yardds, two INT's and a TD in a mostly relief role. In fact, the Ticats had been using him in gimmick roles more than anything, not exactly the breeding ground for QB consistency, while they stubbornly stuck with McManus, despite the fact that if McManus were anyone other than a 16-year veteran he would not be afforded opportunity after opportunity given his string of mediocrity.

Back to Jones.

The argument I've always heard by people knocking him, and make no mistake for some unknown reason it's mostly Winnipeggers that do this, is that he was blessed with great receivers during the great run of 2001 in which he threw for an ungodly 46 touchdowns. That he couldn't succeed otherwise. And yet we're still putting people like Henry Burris into diety status in this league when he isn't even remotely as poised or able to lead a team as Khari was.

I could run down a Murderers Row of quarterbacks in both the CFL and NFL that were blessed with great receievers who couldn't get it done. Jones himself, through Week 12, had completed 64 per cent of his passes despite the fact he was throwing to guys named Flick, Morreale, Peterson and Yeast. And doing it on the worst team this league has had in awhile. His QB rating is in the respectable mid-80s and he's not exactly being bailed out by the perfect storm situation he was apparently granted in 2001.

What I would like to know is what Jones would have to do to please people? Forty-six touchdowns didn't do it. Even if Winnipeg had won the Grey Cup that year, that wouldn't have done it either. Four years later we'd still be here defending him or railing against him, depending on where you stand.

More accurately, Jones was more a victim of his team's inability to adapt to when other teams made adjustments to what the Bombers were doing. We heard time and again that teams were doubling and tripling Milt Stegall but yet our offence did little to change or make adjustments. That's what smart coaches do, make adjustments. The only adjustment the Bombers made was to repeatedly fire their OC's for someone more incompetent. Over the past four seasons the offence has grown steadily more stale and, starting in 2002, Jones paid part of the price for that. (Three OC's in three years, people).

So here we are with Calgary forced to play Jason Gesser last week in a must-win game, Saskatchewan doing its QB-by-committee thing again this season, Ottawa stubbornly sticking with Kerry Joseph for a reason no one knows and Hamilton shedding a former league MVP in favour of a 40-year-old, a never-was hopeful that never will and a no-name out of NFL Europe whose own family would have a hard time picking him out on the field.

Now sit there and tell me that each of these teams, with who they have in place at QB right now, are honestly in position to make a run because of their quarterbacks and not in spite of them. And while you're at it tell me that who those teams have at quarterback are each better equipped to lead a team than Jones is.

If you can do that, I'm sure there's a GM job available for you in Hamilton. They like to hire people like you.

• The tribute album to the late Luther Vandross is on the shelves right now.

Tell me, was it just me or did Luther's death not really get the same kind of ink that would seem fitting for a guy who did as much as him? Who would you put in his league for length of career, success, impact on music and celebrity status?

Sixteen albums, eight Grammy awards and the ultimate benchmark: Being recognized instantly by people who need only to hear your first name to know who you're talking about.

The tribute album is typical but that should not take away from the fact there's still some memorable performances. Usher's rendition of "Superstar" is powerful, Beyonce and Stevie Wonder, a surprising combo, team up on "So Amazing," Alicia Keys, one of the greatest female voices we have, checks in on "If This World Were Mine," John Legend earns another feather in his cap and sings "Love Won't Let Me Wait" and Jamie Foxx even pulls up for "Creepin" once again showing his range as a singer has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past few years.

Wyclef Jean, who has carved a niche out of really reinventing cover songs, does it again on "Always and Forever." You have to be a bit curious as to how Clef, whose Haitian roots and hip hop background don't always lend themselves to sugary ballads, would handle one of the classic love songs. Instead he doesn't overdo it and go for the sound you'd expect of that song. Wyclef puts a bit of a dancehall beat behind him and modestly belts out the famous chorus with his distinct mellow delivery that allows the song to maintain its sensitivity while also adding a certain nostalgia.

Elton John teams up with Vandross on "Anyone Who Had a Heart" for a sentimental interpretation of the Burt Bacharach original. It's a solid duet of two very distinct — yet diametrically opposed — voices blending together.

Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin, Angie Stone and Patti LaBelle join the cast and one thing is clear: It's hard not to make something good when the masterpiece of work is in front of you and you just have to colour in between the lines.

• Speaking of Luther, brings me to Stevie Wonder. Now, anyone who knows me knows that my having seen Stevie in concert will always go down as my "In 20 Years I'll Be Telling People I Saw Him In Concert and Feel Like It Was Royalty" moment. And maybe I just won't ever think anything he does is bad, but watching him perform his new single "Shelter In The Rain" on CNN yesterday floored me. There are so few voices that are as distinguishable, powerful and magnetic as his.

Further to that, he is likely the only person in this world who could have pulled off what he did at the NBA Finals this past summer. He was announced to be performing the national anthem before one of the games, forcing me to drop what I was doing and wait for him to come on and sing ... Only thing was he did the entire thing on harmonica and it was more gripping and engrossing than most vocal renditions. Simply amazing.

That's Stevie. And so, because he is that guy, he gets today's

Lyric of the Day:
Heaven help the child who never had a home,
Heaven help the girl who walks the street alone
Heaven help the roses if the bombs begin to fall,
Heaven help us all.

Heaven help the black man if he struggles one more day,
Heaven help the white man if he turns his back away,
Heaven help the man who kicks the man who has to crawl,
Heaven help us all.

Heaven help us all, heaven help us all, help us all.
Heaven help us, Lord, hear our call when we call
Oh, yeah!

Heaven help the boy who won't reach twenty-one,
Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun.
Heaven help the people with their backs against the wall,
Lord, Heaven help us all.

Heaven help us all, heaven help us all, heaven help us all, help us all.
Heaven help us, Lord, hear our call when we call.

Now I lay me down before I go to sleep.
In a troubled world, I pray the Lord to keep, keep hatred from the mighty,
And the mighty from the small,
Heaven help us all.
Oh, oh, oh, yeah!
Heaven help us all.
Heaven Help Us All