Bubba Dogs

Great video of Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter and G. Love (Philly/Avalon). All these guys met through surfing circles, and all are great musicians. Donavan played at the Brendan Borek benefit in Wildwood last year. I had the occasion to meet and briefly surf with G. Love on 30th Street in Avalon a couple years back. As laid back as he appears, and a good surfer. Frankenreiter and Jack Johnson can also rip. What a life. Play/write/surf.

Check out this video of Kelly Slater, the world’s best surfer, with a great Jack Johnson soundtrack:

No wonder Slater dated Pamela Anderson,

,

Cameron Diaz

and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen

Good Outside Mag article on Slater:
Outside Magazine Kelly Slater, the Michael Jordan of surfing.

Colin Brady fired these off to me. I always tell my students that, when they’re able, put a pack on your back and travel the world. Have a plan before you leave for when you return, but go out and see how other cultures live. These pix iterated that point to me and reinforced my firm belief that we live in the greatest country that God ever created.

A Swimming Pool in Beijing:(It feeds into the “Yellow River”)

Lunchtime in India:

Lunchtime in Hawaii:

For sports nuts: One of my closest college buddies got into the sports blogging thing a couple years back and is an overboard Red Sox/Pats/all sports in general nutcase. All have had that college friend that was Belushi in Animal House. That was Josh. His blogging has gotten him somewhere, however. He was recently picked up to write for Fox Sports online once a week. Check out his blog, it’s really well done loaded with sports wit.

joshqpublic.com

Had a great beach day today. Thanks to all of the Bubba Dog customers for making my job so enjoyable.

FYI, we open every day, unless it rains, and we’ve only had one rain day in Sea Isle since June 29th. Last year there were 4 at this time.

A friend’s children (twins) celebrated their 3rd birthday today.

Starting Young

Got up early and snapped some photos. Hope those that can’t be here get a taste of what they’re missing. They’re simple, but that’s what I like about them. I’m sure they’ll help to keep us all warm in February.

Sea Isle Pix

Dune

Dune 2

This bird, I call them “Skimmers”, hangs out on the same railing at Mom and Dad’s every day. It only gets up to dive bomb a minnow. Beautiful bird.

Had a great session on Friday evening. Water was great as was the company. Here’s Danny getting some air:

Dan - Air

Danny snapped this one. Couldn’t resist:

Ups

Had a great time re-connecting with old friends. Here is Carlin, Frankie, Pieco and myself. We’ve known each other for 30 years and remain friends all because of Sea Isle.

Amigos

I jinxed ‘em. Yesterday’s quote (see below) re: Chase Utley,

If he keeps it up, Chase Utley is going to replace Schmitty as my favorite Philly of all time. .399 average at home. I love everything about his game. Moms and Dads of aspiring baseball players should videotape everything he does and have their sons emulate his every move. He watches 2 hours of film on opposing pitchers before every game, and there are 162 of them! MVP type year for Chase.

Breaks his hand today against the lowly Nationals. MVP not only of the Phillies 25 man roster, but of all 750 players in Major League Baseball. How’s that for a blow, fellow Phils fans? Trade deadline plans re: Aaron Rowand and/or Michael Bourn trades are now scrapped. I hope they don’t deal Bourn because he has ridiculous speed and defensive prowess, however, Rowand is gone at the end of the season anyway. He’s going to demand big money given the type of season he’s having (.328 avg, 32 doubles, .525 slugging, etc…). We all know that the Phils won’t buck up. But, how do you deal him having lost Utley and his MVP offensive numbers? Abraham Nunez will play a stud second base, but he’s batting only .256 to Utley’s .336. On base percentage is .414 to .316. Every at bat, Chase has a 10% better chance then does Nunez of getting on base. A similar comparison would be having a .250 hitter up to bat vs. a .350 hitter. Couple that with Chase’s game overall. He’s my favorite player in MLB because he has no flaws. He maximizes every aspect of his athletic ability and has a Larry Bird type work ethic (my favorite athlete ever).

So much for post season plans. It’ll be fun to watch and I hope I’m wrong, but, once again, the Phils are in bad shape re: post-season plans. I guess the ownership group - Giles, Montgomery, and the invisibles - now have the excuse they were looking for - to do nothing before the trade deadline. Last night was the 16th sellout of the season for the Phils. They average 38,156 per game. They’ve played 49 games at home this season. They’ve drawn 1,880,025 fans this season. Ticket prices are approximately $27 each on average. That’s almost $50 mil in ticket sales alone. There are still 32 games to go which translates to another $33 million. $88 million in ticket sales, probably double it with concessions, etc…, and we have Jose Mesa and whatever his name is Zegursky in the bullpen. This ownership, while they market relatively well and have courteous employees working the park, know nothing about the game and should have sold 15 years ago. We’re screwed until they do and will never win a World Series with them at the helm.

Heal quickly Chase.

The first annual Sea Isle City Hot Dog Eating Contest is coming closer to reality. It may very well take place during Irish Weekend. My plan is for it to benefit the Fallen Heroes Fund. This charity is designed to provide a free college education to the offspring of those killed during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A great charity, eh? We would have military personnel (in uniform) act as judges. At the July 4th Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest in Coney Island, 50,000 people attended this year. Who knows where this could go? More details and major announcements forthcoming (if powers that be support, and all indications are that they will).

Joey Chestnut - winner of Wing Bowl ‘07 and the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Chestnut can put away those weenies. 66 in all this year, one every 11 seconds. Probably the best competitive eater in the world. Would he come to Sea Isle? Why not?

The Black Widow, Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi. Three of the best in the world compete in the 2006 Nathan’s contest.

Lots of positive stuff happening in SIC these days. Whenever I have anything to report, I’ll share it with you all.

Irish Weekend will be taking place in Sea Isle on weekend of September 22nd. Details forthcoming. This is the same weekend as North Wildwood Irish weekend, so the planners are taking a bit of a chance. I guess the mindset is that perhaps there are those that would prefer to stay away from Wildwood craziness and that, due to our geography, Sea Isle could attract some of the more northern folks that wouldn’t otherwise drive the extra 20 minutes to WW. My hope is to tie hot dog contest in with Irish Weekend. All is still in planning stages.

There’s talk of an Oktoberfest in Sea Isle City during the October time frame. More on that later.

Ryan Howard is an absolute stud, but who didn’t know that? Hit a game winning homer to win it in the 14th inning last night. This after the bullpen blew it, again.

If he keeps it up, Chase Utley is going to replace Schmitty as my favorite Philly of all time. .399 average at home. I love everything about his game. Moms and Dads of aspiring baseball players should videotape everything he does and have their sons emulate his every move. He watches 2 hours of film on opposing pitchers before every game, and there are 162 of them! MVP type year for Chase. This brings to mind a question, has any team in baseball history ever had back to back MVPs? As you know, Howard won it last year.

Hamels has a shot at winning 20 games this year. His change up is as effective as Steve Carlton’s slider and Curt Schilling’s fastball. Should lead the NL in K’s this year.

J Roll hit a triple and scored on an error to send it to extra frames. Rollins is hitting .325 since June 1st.

Aaron Rowand, the unsung hero, is batting .330 this year.

All of these guys deserve a shot this year. We are right on the brink, again. We’ve won 5 straight and have 4 to play against Washington and Pittsburgh who stink. By the trade deadline, the Phils should be right on the brink of the wild card. Please, Mr. Gillick, get us some relief pitching and give these guys a shot. 6 days to go before trade deadline.

If you hadn’t heard, Sea Isle was firing on Monday. Below is Marcus on a 65 foot right taken at 59th Street. Who says the East Coast doesn’t get big?

Took the kids, Marcus, Kev and Dan on a boat trip to Strathmere for the six mile bay row which is a great event that benefits Multiple Sclerosis. It was an amazing night and capped off a great weekend at the hot dog cart and an ever better day for surf. Best waves of the summer were today. Hard northeast yesterday (Sunday) was cleaned up by 10-15 knot WNW winds today. All clean by 11 and was firing by 1. Head to foot over on 59th Street until at least 4:30 which is when I got out of the water. Would love to hear from anyone about other spots (email me). I’m sure States Ave. was huuuuge.

Back to boat trip. Highly recommend to anyone to do it next year. Front row seat for as long as you want. We followed the first heat (there were three) of approx. 15 boats for about a mile. Little guy had to hit the head “really badly” so, without complaint from me, we headed back north to The Deauville. Parked the boat and had dinner with the kids and other familiar faces. Sunset was off the charts.

Click on below images. After doing so, click on them again for a larger image: (Feel free to save any. Some of the sunset shots may be worthy.)

MC got a hold of the camera and played with controls that I have yet to figure out. Below images are too big to show as thumbnails. Click on each title to view (they’re worth it).

One More.

World’s Best Sitter

The Gang

Egrets? Herons?

Psyched to see friend Kevin Murphy, at age 40, come in second in the first heat which may have been good for second overall. Brian Wilson (not that one) and I rowed this race twice and it was a killer when I was 33. Kev always has been an animal. He was a full ride rower at Temple and won the Dad Vails in the Heavy 8 his freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years. I know of one other guy to have done it (Bob Reinhardt, La Salle High ‘83). Don’t know if there were any others. Murph used to spank Chris Hoey and I back in the late ’80s. 20 years later he’s still finishing top two…Animal.

It’s days and nights like these that make me finally realize, at age 40, how special a place Sea Isle is and how fortunate that I’ve been to have spent nearly every summer of my life down here. Perfect 3 day stretch at the shore capped off by a perfect night with my kids. The absolute clincher would have been to have Kristen along. Supposed to be 85 and sunny tomorrow. Can’t wait to start writing lesson plans….

Prior to having children, I coached a bunch of different sports while teaching at Community Middle School in West-Windsor/Plainsboro School District. In 2001 I coached our 8th grade basketball team. One of the players on that squad frustrated the heck out of me. He was 6′4″ in 8th grade with a size 14 shoe. He had all of the ability in the world, but would rather shoot 3 pointers than dominate the paint. I remember well benching him for shooting 3’s. He ended up averaging about 8 points a game and 4 or 5 boards. His averages should have been triple what they were. We ended the season with a disappointing 8-14 record.

Fast forward 4 years. This player ended up transferring to St. Joseph’s in Metuchen, NJ. He grew to 6′11″, 295 lbs. and received a full ride to the University of Connecticut. He soon decided to forego his scholarship and enter the 2005 NBA draft. He was subsequently chosen, as a lottery pick, by the Los Angeles Lakers at #10, only months after receiving his driver’s license at age 17. His name is Andrew ‘Bynumite” Bynum and he is viewed as the Laker’s center of the future. Yep, Kobe’s teammate and coached by Phil Jackson. He remains the youngest player to ever play in the NBA at 18 years, 6 days.

I was such a bad coach that I couldn’t coach a lottery pick to a winning record.

Check him out getting dunked on and dunking over Shaq:

Bill McGinn is a close Sea Isle buddy of mine. We’ve known each other for 30+ years and tonight we were having a chat with his father Joe about basketball. The conversation turned to Joe having played for West Catholic in the ’50s and winning the City Title in 1953 against Wilt Chamberlain’s Overbrook squad. In 1955, West (and Joe) played against Wilt again and lost big.

The first picture is of Billy, Joe and myself tonight at The Carousel. The second is of Joe driving straight at Wilt 52 years ago in the City Title Game at The Palestra. The picture is signed by Wilt, though you can’t see it in this shot. Billy claims that the ball still hasn’t landed after Wilt swatted it. Joe claims to have made a sweet left-handed layup. What we do know is that West Catholic lost that game by 36.