How could I not blog about Stacey Jones and the Warriors’ thrilling come-from-behind (twice) win yesterday. That was probably the most exciting game I’ve seen since the World Cup final or the Warriors’ last-minute win against the Storm in the playoffs last year. Yesterday’s game wasn’t really for the purists – there was a shitload of errors and penalties – but there’s no denying it was exciting. Even the usually critical Phil Gould, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, was full of praise for this game.

The best part about this win from the Warriors’ standpoint will be Stacey Jones’ performance. It’s pretty remarkable that he’s been out of top-flight football for 18 months (and the NRL for even longer) and can just waltz back onto the field and play a starring role. Besides setting up two crucial tries, he almost set up Nathan Fien for another one near the line and  provided a crucial kick in the dying stages that got us another set of six. I can’t lie – I was skeptical about Jones’ return, but if he can hang back like he did yesterday and just play his hand when it’s needed, then we got ourselves a premiership team on our hands. Shot Jonesy – a living legend of Kiwi sport.

Sidebar: How useless are the Blues… fuuuck. And how much stinker is the standard of the Super 14 compared with the NRL? Not even comparable.

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The new NRL season is nearly upon us, so being a rugby league Stan I just joined up to the NRL website’s fantasy league. Got my team all sussed and feeling good about the upcoming ’season’ haha.

For the unitiated, fantasy leagues are common amongst most major sports (Super 14, NFL, NBA, MLB etc). Basically, the deal is you’ve gotta put together a team of players from within the comp, in this case the NRL, making sure they all fit underneath the salary cap. As the season progresses, the players you choose then earn points for your team after each round. The points are accumulated based on a range of stats — metres gained, tackles made, tries scored, try assists, line breaks etc.

If you’re an armchair coach and this sounds like you, sign up for the fantasy league here. Remember though, it’s not about who your favourite players are, it’s about who’s gonna earn you the most points. Once you’ve registered, come verse me and some mates in league number 294165 – The T-Knux Cup. My team’s The Cousin Harolds.

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…should check out this mean Gorilla Zoe track with Young Dro called Break it Down. The beat is kicking my ass. Believe my system at home is getting a thorough workout playing this one. Click Sloth to download and check it out… and if you’ve got a version minus the DJ choppin’ it up, don’t be a holdout, link it up in the comments section. Shot.

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After the jump are four Playstation 3 games (some will be on the 360 too) I’m looking forward to playing when they come out. What’re you anticipating on the videogame front?

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My boy Jay put me on to this. If this doesn’t make you wanna jump on some goombas, warp through sewer pipes or punch bricks to get coins then you must be too damn young. Props to Jesse Tugboat – the man behind the 8-bit goodness (thanks to all those that pointed that out in the comments). Check the tracklist after the jump if you can’t work out the songs.

8-bit Hip Hop medley

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If you’re a league fan and wanna relive last year’s Kiwi World Cup glory then head down to the Viaduct tomorrow at 12 noon. The world champs and their world champion female counterparts, the Kiwi Ferns, will be the guests of honour at a public reception at the Louis Vuitton race village. I’m finna head down if I can weasle my way outta work early.

Oh, and one more thing – fuck the NZRL (New Zealand Rugby League if you didn’t know). Those useless assholes have been so slack in their response to their flagship team, the Kiwis, winning the World Cup. Can you imagine if the All Blacks won the last World Cup? There’d probably be a public holiday declared and at the very least a fucken ticker tape parade down Queen St – and not 2 months later. I can’t help but feel the NZRL (primarily) has let a lot of fans down, and the game of rugby league, through their failure first of all to celebrate and commemorate the win in an appropriate way, and their incompetence at capitalising financially from the win. And aside from those immediate spin-offs, they’ve missed the boat on raising the profile and standing of league in this country long-term. Considering how huge the Kiwis’ win over Aussie was, the response from the NZRL has been uuuuseless. Fuck the administration though, if you’re free tomorrow, get down to the Viaduct and support the team.

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When I was a young rap fan in the mid to late 90s I was all about the posse cuts. There’s something about getting a whole bunch of rappers together on a single track that’s cool to me. I used to go hard taping music videos off of the chart shows, Juice TV and MCM (I grew up in New Plymouth, so we had none of that cool shit Aucklanders had access to like Sirvere & DLT’s show) and for some reason there are a few posse cuts from my tapes that I’ll just never forget. People (of a certain age anyway) always cite Tribe’s Scenario, Juice Crew’s Symphony and Craig Mack’s Flava in Ya Ear Remix, but this blog is a nod to 5 tracks you may have forgotten that are memorable to me. It’s not meant to be a top 5 of all time or an exhaustive list, it’s just a chance to reminisce.

Feel free to comment about your memorable posse cut songs, but remember I’m talking about songs that had videos, feature 4 or more rappers and were before the 2000s. See below for mine.

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Bahaha I dunno whose bright idea this was but I can’t believe there’s gonna be another Street Fighter movie. I didn’t even hear about it til 15 minutes ago.

It makes me laugh just thinking about the first one and the wack job they did, like casting Raul Julia as M. Bison and muthafucken Damian Chapa (Miklo from Blood In Blood Out) as Ken – if you’re gonna get a Hispanic dude to play Ken, at least get a blonde one! And I’ll never forget how stink the fight scenes and special effects were – I at least expected one “hooo-yu-git” or a “duk-duk-doogit” somewhere but no. What the fuck man. It must go down as one of the dumbest book/game/comic/whatever adaptations in history.

This new movie though could be worse. It’s called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and as you’d expect, it focuses on her character. Who gives a fuck about a Chun-Li? The story should only ever follow Ken and/or Ryu and Guile – none of which even feature in this movie apparently. Also, the cast is lame as hell once again. The trailer (check below) at least looks alright, but it’s easy to make something interesting and cool for 60 seconds than it is for 90 minutes. Surely this is gonna flop on all counts. Oh and while I’m reminiscing on old movies being raised from the ashes, any of you guys see last year that they’re remaking The Last Dragon? Sam Jackson as Sho’nuff – crack up!

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David Tua v Shane Cameron; The Terminator v The Mountain Warrior (haha wtf)… Damn, I haven’t been this interested in a boxing match probably since Tua fought Lennox Lewis and got jabbed up for 12 rounds. This match-up has been 2-3 years in the making, but finally a date was confirmed yesterday – June 6th, 2009.

I realise this is boxing and shit can change at any minute – I mean the venue is still being decided and the fight’s dependant on both boxers completing warm-up bouts first – but let’s just assume it’s 100% gonna go down. Who would win? At 37, Tua is arguably past his prime, particularly since he hasn’t fought much in recent years, but he’s got a pretty impressive resume. He fought several current or future champions in his career – Hasim Rahman, John Ruiz, Michael Moorer and of course Lewis – and has knocked out a whole bunch of people in the process – 44 of his 49 wins. Cameron hasn’t fought any illustrious fighters to date, but has lost only once and has been convincing against the opponents he’s beat. While it’s hard to compare 2 fighters’ feats from 2 different eras, one thing that’s apparent is Tua at his peak v Cameron at his is a no-contest. Personally, I’m with Tua – he might have aged, but I bet that left-hook and hard head are still there… plus he was one of my childhood heroes so he’s also the sentimental favourite (aww). So sports fans, who’s your money on?

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Man, this is a cool ass Nokia advert.  It’s a pretty mean idea and they executed it perfectly.

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