St. Joe’s Students Have Horrible Taste In Music

I’m on the mailing list for The Hawk, the official student newspaper of the St. Joe’s. I can’t really remember anything the paper has done since calling Cardinal Rigali gay in last year’s joke issue, but it turns out the paper has a horrible taste in music. Just look!

Yes, that’s Coldplay, leading The Hawk’s albums of the year section. It’s apparently just a random assortment of staff picks, which is why one of the albums of the year is also the Jonas Brothers. I’ll admit I’m not much of a music fan; I believe I broke my girlfriend’s ears with my constant playing of the 10-disc NFL Films soundtrack. Brian is definitely the one who should be tackling this. But whatever, I particularly liked the first sentence to the review of the Seasick Steve album, which is a person and/or band I believe was made up, and I wanted to note it:

In a world full of cute Stevie Ray Vaughn impersonators, Seasick Steve is a return to the gritty roadhouse sound of John Lee Hooker and Hound Dog Taylor.

St. Joe’s Concert A ‘Fiasco’

Saint Joseph’s had its spring concert last Thursday, and the headline sums it all up: Fiasco at the Fieldhouse!

Apparently, one of the opening acts for Lupe Fiasco was Trey Songz, and his set was first delayed due to a problem with his DJ’s equipment. And then Songz went and just walked off the stage when some punk St. Joe’s kids starting shooting rubber bands at him, shouting “St. Joe’s sucks” and the like. He said he feared for his safety.

According to Sean Morntahen,’11, before Songz left the stage for a second time, he asked who in the audience was throwing things at him, and a male student raised his hand. This was when Trey left the stage, went to his bodyguard, and then the body guard escorted both parties outside. Chris Mayer, ‘11, was standing near the stage barrier and saw the bodyguard grab the male’s arm. He could hear arguing and yelling while the three were outside the Fieldhouse from Trey’s microphone.

Both witnesses did not see any punches thrown or anything suggesting a physical altercation. A freshman female sociology major told The Hawk that Songz started arguing with his manager and that it was his manager and the bodyguard who held him back from approaching the male student.

Also be sure to read this student’s column where he complains about the concert and then reveals he didn’t have to pay for his ticket.

Fiasco at the Fieldhouse [The Hawk]

Frantic Final Minutes Of TU-SJU

Hey, I know not everyone who reads this blog is a sports person, but above is the last three minutes and change from last night’s Temple-Saint Joseph’s game at the Palestra. It’s everything the best Big 5 games at the Palestra are like. Although the shorts are longer now, basketball games like this have been a part of the Philadelphia landscape for over 50 years. The Liberty Bell? Puh-leeze. Give me this any day.

Although, to the Temple kids: Storming the court? I dunno, I hate complaining about that because I feel like an old man and I’d have stormed the court, too.

Temple edges St. Joseph’s in Palestra thriller [Inquirer]

Study Reveals: Boston College Not Near St. Joe’s

It’s been just a few weeks since St. Joseph’s decided to adopt Boston College as its football team so the kiddies have a football team to root for in the fall.

Well, the St. Joe’s campus is up in arms (well, not really) and today there are dueling columns in the school newspaper (The Hawk) about the subject. While the pro column makes the usual points — hey, cheap trip to Boston, which is “a very fun city” — but I’d like to look at the con column:

This convenience perspective is probably most effective in capturing the true absurdity of the idea. A quick search on Mapquest.com [apparently, this column was written in 1999 —ed.] shows that Boston College is located nearly six hours northeast of the St. Joe’s campus, a seemingly unreasonable and prohibitive distance for the program to succeed.

I can picture the St. Joe’s brass slapping its collective forehead about now. “Six hours! Why didn’t we look that up first?” Also, who needs to look up how far away Boston is? Okay, a better question: Who would admit to doing that?

Program offers a new sport for fans to enjoy [The Hawk]
Football is unecessary luxury for a small school [The Hawk]
[via Soft Pretzel Logic]
March 2: St. Joe’s To Combine Hawk, Eagle In Mad Experiment

St. Joe’s To Combine Hawk, Eagle In Mad Experiment

The city’s Division I college football team lineup is about to get a little bigger.

No, St. Joe’s isn’t starting a football team. But the school is set to adopt fellow Jesuit institution Boston College’s football team. Wait. Guh-wah?

A survey at St. Joe’s last year revealed some kids who go to Joe’s miss having a football team on campus. Of course, a football team is expensive — “The University has so many financial commitments at the present time that creating a football team would be prohibitively costly.” — so the school just decided to create a partnership with BC instead. The adoption, the school paper says, will allow St. Joe’s students to go up to BC for a game and root, root, root for the Eagles.

Or, perhaps, the Eagle-hawks:

The Oct. 2, 1987 edition of The Hawk contained a letter to the editor with a poll to select a team for St. Joe’s students to follow through The Hawk sports section. The Auburn Tigers collected the most votes, and from 1987-1991 the students of Saint Joseph’s embraced Auburn University’s football program as their own.

Hawk articles referred to the Auburn team as the Tiger-Hawks, and students could follow the ups and downs of this adopted team through the student newspaper.

In the first year of the adoption, approximately 100 Saint Joseph’s students went to take part in Auburn’s 1987 Homecoming. Auburn offered free tickets for their Homecoming game to anyone presenting a Saint Joseph’s I.D.

Students trekked to Auburn for a second time in 1988 and again in 1989.

Saint Joseph’s interest in Auburn eventually waned following an unsuccessful 1991 season that was further tainted with play-for-pay allegations made by former Auburn defensive back Eric Ramsey.

Ain’t that how it always is? You adopt a random football team in Alabama to root for, and then that team ends up paying its players. If I had a nickel for every time that happened…

St. Joe’s adopts BC football team [The Hawk]
The enemy of my enemy [Soft Pretzel Logic]
[Original photo from BC Eagles Football]

Here, Delonte West Utilizes The ‘Testimonial’ Style Of Advertising

Delonte West — who really should have been a 2006 Person of the Year for his Valentine’s Day column — used to play for Saint Joseph’s.

Now, he plays for the Boston Celtics, but when he’s done that, he has a future as an actor in commercials, as you can see here.

Delonte West Hanger Commercial [YouTube]
Feb. 14, 2006: Dating Delonte, An ESPN Original Series

Dead Iraqis Purchasing Goods At Record Rate

There might be more hilarious commentary in The Bulletin’s website today than I’ve ever seen anywhere, ever. It is amazing that this is real and not, say, The Onion. Let’s just put it all out there, shall we?

Frank Diamond, “Grossman’s ‘Unprotected’ Thankfully Strays From The Norm“:

Another area where campus counselors fail students is the push for HIV prevention…. That some lifestyle choices greatly increase the risk is deemed too politically incorrect to mention.

Sean Patterson, “Catholic Universities Betray Their Values“:

Moreover, some very un-Catholic events take place on the campuses of Catholic colleges and universities. The calendar of Saint Joseph’s University features an officially-sanctioned week devoted to gay issues, formerly known as “Rainbow Week.” A gay organization called S.T.O.P. (Students for Tolerance, Openness & Pride) is an officially recognized student group at SJU. I suspect that S.T.O.P. does not share the Church’s view of homosexuality.

Shoshana Bryen, “Before We Surge“:

Silvia Spring writes in Newsweek International that since the fall of Saddam:

* Iraqi real-estate prices have gone up several hundred percent,
* Iraqi workers’ salaries have increased more than 100 percent,
* The number of cars in Baghdad has grown by 500 percent,
* The Iraqi construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are all growing,
* The number of registered businesses increased from 8,000 to 34,000,
* The number of cell phone subscribers increased from 1.4 million to 7.1 million, and
* Stores are stocked with goods and consumers are buying them.

Also, be sure to check out Dom Giordano’s column about how New Jersey is full of people who hate America and why forcing schools to teach kids about Veterans Day and Memorial Day is the best idea ever.

You know, these would be funnier if these weren’t the type of people who run our fucking country. I never knew that AIDS prevention and not hating gay people were such horrible things. Who cares if thousands of people have died in a pointless war: Iraqis now have cell phones! Presumably, all the people who are dead are having a great time texting their dead friends.

Local Food Service Workers In Peril

Correction to an item from earlier this week: The person robbed at the Franklin Institute earlier this week was not a patron, but the Aramark offices inside the Institute.

Apparently, knowing that Body Worlds wasn’t there anymore and the cashiers at the Franklin Institute wouldn’t have as much cash, the robber went to the inside Aramark offices — they do the food service there, I assume — and robbed it at gunpoint.

Police caught him, and here’s where the plot thickens:

Capt. Mike Sinclair says the man in question may have also been involved with a robbery at the St. Joseph’s University student center: “The lone gunman entered the Saint Joseph’s cafeteria, which is managed by Aramark Food Services, and robbed the night cashier.”

What does all of this mean? We have an ex-Aramark employee with a vengeance out there. The Aramark Shark, if you will. (Hey, you try to come up with a two-word pun for a guy that robs Aramark repeatedly. No, really. Please.)

Cell Phone Leads to Franklin Institute Robbery Suspect [KYW 1060]
Wednesday: A Penny Stolen Is A Penny Earned
Photo via Philly Skyline’s 50 Tallest Buildings in Philadelphia feature