mattmorales.com

So all Patrick Ramsey and no Chase Daniel.  I still don’t know what to think of the home-town hero. 10/18, 191 yards a touchdown (that he had no part of) and an awful interception.  He did effectively march down the field but was nonexistent in the end-zone.  So against the Charger’s 2′s he’s an OK QB, which is really all you can ask for in a backup.  Unless you have somebody better in Chase Daniel, which I think we do.

Chris Ivory is great.  Amazing 70+ yard catch and run TD.  He’s exactly the kind of player Payton wants.  He doesn’t push the line as much as you think he would given his size, but he undoubtedly has power.  Look forward to seeing him as the 3rd down back.

Offense sure did put a lot of yards on the board but should have scored twice as much considering 550 total yards.  Attribute that to Ramsey’s ineffective play in the red zone.  To San Diego’s credit they weren’t making things easy for us in the beginning.  That first half was a hard-fought battle between the two teams.  It would be interesting to see how the game would have played out if it were regular season.  Still, not many explosive plays for the Saints, to be honest.

Run Defense was remarkably better, and against some good RB’s and a solid offensive line.  Chargers had 68 rushing yards.  Passing’s another story.  Was it Porter and Sharper’s absence that led to 255 passing yards against the Saints?  The secondary gave up plenty of big plays, lets hope this doesn’t last.

Special Teams were much much much better.  Only one big returned allowed, and that was later on with 2′s.  Very encouraging to see this.

To end, I think the Offense isn’t clicking the way they did last year…yet.  Some balls were dropped that would be caught, some horrible penalties (11 for 90 yards total).  The Saints can do better, I’ve seen it.

Excited for Saints V Chargers tonight.  I was hoping to see more Chase Daniel but from what I’ve heard on ESPN it’ll be a split between him and Ramsey.  And what of Sean Canfield?  Also looking forward to seeing Chris Ivory in action.  Guy is a brute, reminds me a bit of Maurice Jones-Drew in build (although Ivory’s a good bit taller according to stat sheets).

Lots of my friends still think that you can’t judge much by the preseason.  I disagree.  The Saints were explosive in last years third preseason game and I truly believed after watching it that they were a deep playoff contender.  So here’s some predictions I’m willing to make right now about a few teams and divisions.

Green Bay takes NFC North convincingly and play in NFC Championship game, Detroit posts a 6-10 record, Chicago’s offseason moves amount to a hill of beans.  Jury’s out on Minnesota.

I said at the end of last season that San Francisco would win the NFC West.  I also said that Matt Leinart would not start for the Cardinals.  Judging by how things are shaping up, no need to change those opinions.

The Falcons are going to be good.  Trust me.  Wild card team.  Clausen will start for the Panthers after mediocre showings by Matt Moore, and the production will be the same.

The NFC East is a mess, and for the first time in a long while it could be considered a weak division.  After the McNabb trade I predicted a Dallas – NY – Washington – Eagles finish and I still believe that, but I now think those bottom three records will be a lot closer than imagined.  Dallas compiles an impressive record by being the only stable team but then eats it in the playoffs.

AFC West – Chargers win again because their division is a joke again and they don’t make it to the Super Bowl again because their value is exacerbated by the fact that they play sub-par teams each year.  Also, Denver finds that Tebow is worthless, and nobody outside of Florida is the least bit surprised.

AFC South – Tennessee Titans.  You heard me.

Being the devout Saints fan that I am, I of course am picking them to go to the Super Bowl and then win it.  Do I have an AFC for their opponent, though?  Its a tough call, lets remember what the AFC looked like at the end of last season.  Recall that Wild Card race?  Its not happening again, but I’m still not sure who stepped up and who fell down.  Except for the Titans.

I have a new website.  It’s still under construction, I guess, but this is what it will look like.

Also, I’m moving to a new neighborhood.  Its called the inner sunset district of San Francisco.

Matt

Going to archive the blog soon, once it’s offline mattmorales.com will be down to one page with links to my facebook, twitter, contact and schedule. It will serve as a place holder (albeit a useful one) until I decide how I want to proceed with a new site.

- Matt

So now livejournal plays an ad over the page before you can read it.  This blog’s days are numbered.

The Fox News Live Blog has been postponed as I am temping at the moment and can’t be home to watch the two "news" shows live.  Because of this I will be Tivo’ing Bret Baier and Shepard Smith and then watching them the following day.  For some reason on my TV these two programs are between 3 – 5pm, placing it outside the news time slot the Fox proclaims.  Now I’m not sure if this is just something with Time Warner Cable or West Coast scheduling (most likely), but it is interesting to note.  You see, people are usually at work between 3 – 5.  So if you are an avid Fox News watcher with a day job on the West Coast, then you’re likely watching  O’Reilly, Hannity and Greta Van Sustren as your news source when you come home.  Then again, you could be tivo savvy and be watching the news programs.  Who knows.

Matt

I’m on twitter now, and I’m instantly liking the experience more than blogging.  At first I was critical of an application that gives you 140 characters to speak your mind.  Where is the value in that, I thought?  As it turns out, 140 characters fits right into my horrific lack of attention span.  As it turns out, I really have nothing more to say than what twitter will allow me.  Now, that doesn’t mean I’m about to abandon the blog.  I’m just not as concerned about saving it.  And yes, my newly found adoration for twitter has everything to do with Drew Brees responding to one of my tweets. 

Speaking of the blog, my webserver has an internal wordpress application that I will start using in the near future.  The ideal situation will be to find a way to archive this blog, delete the account, and then restart things in one fell swoop.  If things work correctly the new blog will be integrated into mattmorales.com so the days of offsite linking will be over.  I could have done that ages ago with livejournal, I admit, but it was an extra few dollars a month I never decided to spend and now there’s no reason to do it with wordpress already available to me under my website.

Finally, I’m considering a live blog of Fox News between 6 – 8pm.  My only problem is that it’s March Madness right now and my roommate is a huge basketball fan (and who doesn’t like March Madness anyway?)  So while I wanted to do this tonight it might have to wait until next week (the 23rd is looking to be the date).  Why am I doing this?  I’ve been inspired by a news hound that is currently not speaking to me.  He’s argued that the Fox News "news" hours (see www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/media/12fox.html) are reputable reporting.  To be honest, I can’t counter that argument because the last time I really sat down and watched Fox News was in college.  Heck, if it wasn’t for the Daily Show, I probably would never know the channel existed.  So I will be watching "Fox Report with Shepard Smith" (described by foxnews.com as: No pundits, no discussion; just the news. "FOX Report" rips through the day’s top stories at the "speed of live!") and its lead in "Special Report with Bret Baier".  I’m not familiar with Bret Baier but I’ve liked Shepard Smith ever since this: www.youtube.com/watch.  The "We don’t fucking torture" comment was fun, too, but his hurricane Katrina reporting is what won me over.  So, lets call it March 23rd, my date with Fox News.

Matt

twitter.com/realmattmorales

(from my Yelp review)

I finally enjoyed a slice of pizza in Los Angeles, and it was served to me not far from my apartment.  

For months I assumed that there was nowhere to find a decent pie in LA, and for the most part I was right.  After a string of awful slices I stopped looking around for a good pizzeria, even refusing to go to places that were close to me (Garage Pizza, etc).  Then I was told about the Bayou Beast, a pizza with crawfish, shrimp and andouille sausage, and I had to try it.  

Two Boots has their signature pizzas available for single-slice orders (my preferred way to get pizza), which means that the pies are out for you to see at the counter.  It was the first time I saw pizza that I actually wanted to eat in LA.  Every style looked tempting (particularly the Larry Tate, which had my favorite spinach and tomato combo) but I came for the crawfish that I miss so much from home.  The Bayou Beast’s seafood toppings tasted fresh, albeit a little mild, and the sauce and cheese were very good.  The crust was a bit crispier than I like it, but I’ve only had that soft foldable New York crust done right in, well, New York.

If I were to give any advice on ordering, it would be to load up on toppings.  The sauce, cheese and crust are good but not good enough to stand on their own.  The toppings were great, though, so it comes as no surprise that Two Boots’ has a dozen creatively-named pies that showcase them in interesting ways.  Take a look at the menu online, I’m sure you will find one that suits your fancy.  If not, go for the orchida option and select any five toppings that look like winners.

Tip for the Bayou Beast: if you want to really compete the New Orleans experience, Abita Amber is sold at the House of Spirits just down the street.

I had a few ideas on what to blog about today.  There was my recent decision to leave the metal band, my mtv audition, or even a review of a new comic book series I’m reading called Sweet Tooth.  Then I saw a commercial for a jerk-off dumbbell.  For reals.

Matt

Since nobody seems to be using livejournal anymore I’m going to be moving my blog to a new server.  Preferably one most other comics are using.  That leaves me between Blogger and Tumblr.  Its a shame to leave livejournal as I’ve always been happy with it, but it seems to have gone the way of friendster.  Hopefully I can archive everything I’ve posted here.

- soon to be moved mattt

Well, it’s been quite a while since I blogged.  Probably since I gave it up and was contemplating deleting this livejournal (while hopefully saving the archives for nostalgia’s sake).

Then I started thinking about completely redesigning my website and making the blog the main part of it.  All I needed was something to get me blogging again.  It’s not like things haven’t happened since April of last year.  I moved to Los Angeles, starred in a Spanish-language Domino’s Pizza commercial, joined three bands (left one), moved to a new apartment after only 5 months in my first one, witnessed the Saints win the Superbowl (on TV).  But after after all that it was receiving a spam comment in Russian that got me to log in (its been deleted).  Now that I’m here, I guess I’ll start with my intent of having a blog again.

But where to start?  So much happened, so much time passed.  Well, lets just focus on what was one of my happiest moments since moving to LA:

Yea.  That right there.  That moment.  I’ll never forget where I was at.  Me and Kathryn, in a brewpub in Sacramento, amongst dozens of Vikings fans.  You might think the video of Peyton and Brees receiving the Lombardi trophy two weeks later would top everything but I’m pretty sure most Saints fans would agree that this moment trumps all.  The NFC game was much more dramatic that the Superbowl.  It was tied multiple times, it went to overtime, the outcome relied on a kicker who had missed a chip-shot a few weeks ago.  And lets remember, the Saints had the distinction of being the worst team ever.  Its a title we could only shake by getting to the Superbowl.  If we could just make it to the big game then 43 years of futility and disappointment would finally end.  So to have decades of failure symbolically come to an end within 3 1/2 seconds (I’m counting from snap to splitting the uprights) is quite an occasion.  Now, just need something similar to happen to my career in comedy…

Anyways, good to be back. 

Matt