This is a sad day. We have arrived at our final Hawaiian WAC Tennis Tournament update from Brett Frank, full-time basketball coach, but more importantly, part-time entertaining blog correspondent. You may or may not have heard the Fresno State women’s team won the title this weekend in a wild, thrilling final. Brett’s back from Hawaii and I can’t wait to hear the full report.

I must admit I am slightly relieved there will be no more updates simply because my Roman numeral counting is somewhat limited, and we were getting close to having to change headlines. It’s a little like Spanish. I count really loud and strong, right up to about ocho, and then I start trailing off and mumbling. Major thanks to Brett for taking time to update us while on vacation. He did a great job. Enough stalling, here is Brett’s final report:

(more…)

I’m starting to think this won’t end well. I feel like I just invited a guy in a ski mask to escort me to the ATM, or Tom Brady to tag along on my honeymoon. You know how this turns out. Later I’m probably going to be sobbing and wondering why I didn’t see it coming.

Brett Frank, our Fresno State tennis correspondent in Hawaii, is now reporting on food. And TV shows. He’s whiplashing from one subject to another. He’s using asterisks to insert useless information. In short, he’s stealing my act.

(more…)

I’m always confused about standard time versus daylight savings time, but especially when it concerns Hawaii. The state of Hawaii, and pretty much the entire Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone, ignores daylight savings time altogether. Doesn’t even recognize it. If Hawaii and daily savings time got on an elevator together, it would be awkward. Historically, it’s thought to be because of a long-standing Island guideline that, roughly-translated, states: “What do we care what time it is? We’re in Hawaii!”

But seriously, Hawaiian standard time is based on – as well all know – the mean solar time of the 150th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. As you can see, I’ve gotten really good at copying and pasting. If I had to guess, I’d say the problem is offshore ripples in the space time continuum. Frankly, I think this is what happened to Amelia Earhart. Whatever the reason, there is no daylight savings time in Hawaii, so during the winter, it’s two hours earlier in Hawaii than in California. And from March to November, it’s three hours earlier. 

(more…)

Already, this blog is more successful than anyone could have imagined. The internet hasn’t crashed. The F.C.C. is still not involved. I haven’t been fired from the job that actually pays money. It’s pretty much Jelly-of-the-month bonus time from here on out.

With that in mind, the blog proudly presents something completely fun and unexpected: We have a correspondent! I was as schocked as you are. His name is Brett Frank, an assistant coach for the Fresno State women’s basketball team. More importanly, one of the 10 coolest people you’ll ever get to meet. OK, chances are you won’t get to meet him, but I have, and you should be jealous. He’s single-handedly changed my thoughts about people from Oklahoma.

(more…)

YOUR DAILY PROOF THAT PEOPLE HAVE TOO MUCH FREE TIME

My only question here, well, besides the robot reading the Bible on a park bench, is … Sports logo bloggers? Really? Talk about your specialty professions.

(more…)

Oscar De La Hoya retired this week, his dad on stage with him in Los Angeles as he made the announcement. He took months making the decision. It is tough, as he said, for the great ones to know when to quit. I suspect it is the same in other professions as it is for athletes. Architects. Supreme court judges. Columnists. A lot of us hold on a little too long*. The skills slip with age, at least for everyone who isn’t Clint Eastwood. We notice it most in sports, though, probably because we care so much and the end comes so quickly.

*Remind me sometime to do an entire blog about my hometown dentist, an aging man who died while still practicing. My family had to switch dentists, obviously, and on the first visit, the new guy said I had 10 cavities that needed to be filled. It might have been 12. I can’t remember. It was not a fun two weeks. Point being, Willie Mays wasn’t the only one who hung on to long. It’s hard for all of us to move on from what we love and what we know.

(more…)

The three videos recommended in the latest Jon Carroll column. If you’ve never read Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle, he is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in a newspaper. As per usual, he’s right on. These will make your day. And maybe your tomorrow.

  (more…)

From my voicemail this morning …

“After reading several of your things, and I’ve been reading them for several years here, I think you oughta move out of town at the first chance you get. And stay out of town. Maybe go back to, I don’t know, are you from Nebraska somewhere? Write about the corn fields over in Iowa or something. I think you’d be better at that because I don’t like what you’re writing. … I’m unhappy with your insinuations. I’ll start a drive if you need money to get out of town. So just let me know.”

- guy who gave only his last name

(more…)

I swear, this blog won’t be all about me. There are, frankly, hundreds and hundreds of great blogs out there and this isn’t one of them. Maybe it will be great one day, or more likely just tolerable, but not yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to post an entry without having to email the web tech guy every 17 seconds. It would also be nice to get words to appear in that thought bubble over there to the right above my floating head. Theoretically, that will be where you can see my Twitter* status. No idea why you’d want to see that here, but then again, I’m not sure why you’d want to see it on Twitter either.

*I have been Twittering for exactly two days now. Here it is. It’s going well, in the sense that no one who actually knows how to Twitter has made fun of me yet. (Just for the record, this asterisk aside is dedicated to Joe Posnanski, one of my favorite sportswriters who also happens to have a great blog. I’d give you the link, but you might not come back. He loves putting little asides into his blog posts and even came up with a word for them … “Pozerisk (PAHZ-tur-isk), noun. An aside that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything but is thrown into the middle of the story because the author thinks it’s funny.” That sounds about right.)

So this is Blog No. 1. The Original. Ten years from now, people will say, “I wonder what Matt James’ first blog post was about,” and someone else will say, “Who?”

(more…)