Fisher Job

Fisher Job was born Friday, March 12, at 8:10 a.m. He weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs 1.3 ozs. Everyone is doing great.

Best Fishing Trip Ever

This past weekend, I took part in the best fishing trip ever. Now, I'm no expert fisherman. I can actually count on my hands how many times I'd been freshwater fishing, and could probably use my fingers and a couple of toes to count the number of freshwater fish I'd caught in my lifetime.

But this weekend that all changed. An invite to the Coastal Club in Southwest Louisiana and the freshwater curse was broken. In less than three days of fishing, nine guys (with not all of us fishing each day), caught more than 500 bass ... and that's no exaggeration.

A few of the guys are avid bass fishermen, and they even said that it was the best fishing weekend of their lives. These bass hit on just about anything we'd throw, but dark colored (blue, black, dark green and pink/black) worms seemed to work the best.

Here's one of the biggest ones I reeled on our last fishing day:

Here's a monster that Kyle pulled in that will soon be replicated on his wall. It weighed in at 8.6 lbs.:

Of course, every fishing trip has to include a good fishing story and one of the last fish I hauled in gave us all a story to tell (besides the monster pictured above and the many similar bass we put in the boat). On our last day of fishing, I got a good bite and reeled in what I thought would be another bass, but when I pulled it out of the water, it was a shinny silver color.

Matt asked, "What's that?" and Kyle assumed it was a freshwater mullet. But I noticed the spot near its tail and knew right away that it was a redfish.

Normally, including this day, it would be odd to catch a saltwater fish in freshwater. But Hurricane Ike had flooded the area and there's still remnants of saltwater. So I guess this little guy had adjusted to the fresh water and was living among the bass. Apparently, they haven't caught any other redfish in this canal, but of course the guy who grew up fishing saltwater would reel in a saltwater fish.

You can take the boy out of saltwater, but you can't take saltwater out of the boy.

A big thank you goes out to Jon for arranging the trip and to Mr. David for treating us like kings all weekend.

Wedding Video, Youtube Sensation

This has been going around for the past few days and the couple was even on Good Morning America today. If you haven't seen it yet, don't be the only one not talking about this wedding video:

Metallica Inducted in Rock and Roll HOF

Awesome to see Jason back with Metallica, even if it was for one night only:

April Fool's Day Madness

With the Internet and sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, the entertainment industry has and easy outlet to "leak" April Fool's Day pranks on fans who may not have noticed the date on the calendar.

Here are a few things to watch for today. There are some believable ones on there, but Lost fans are already going nuts over the "rumor" that ABC has canceled Lost and there won't be a 6th and final season. Come on people.

Grand Isle Basketball

The Times-Picayune ran a feature on Grand Isle basketball today. Pretty good article, even though it makes Grand Isle sound a little worse than it is.

The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama

It was a historic day for our country as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States earlier today. Almost everyone I know was watching the inauguration live, whether they were at school, home or watching it over the Internet (Thank you ITS for streaming the event for those of us at work).

The country is at a crossroads now and whether you voted for him or not, the changing of the guard to President Obama is a major milestone in our country's history. Now he has a lot of work to do, and it will be interesting to see what his first moves as president will be.

Merry Christmas!

Mark Wahlberg Rocks

Mark Wahlberg was gaining the reputation of being a jerk after he went on a few talk show's last week and bashed SNL and their skit "Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals":



Andy Samberg, who is responsible for the some great digital shorts, struck gold again with his Wahlberg impersonation and fans were wondering why Wahlberg didn't have a sense of humor and wasn't playing along.

Well, fast forward to this Saturday and the pay off for the feud:



Wahlberg and SNL played this one brilliantly and there was a tenseness when Marky Mark confronted Andy. SNL still isn't great, but they are capitalizing on the buzz surrounding the show leading into the upcoming election. Having Sarah Palin on the show created one of the highest rated episodes in a long time, but the highlight for me was the Wahlberg/Samberg confruntation ... oh and the fart face business meeting. Fart Face

Indiana Jones V, really?

I was as excited as the next guy to watch Indiana Jones IV, but came away from the theatre a little disappointed with the effort. Now there's talks that George Lucas wants to do Indiana Jones V. Lucas has a reputation for wanting to milk money out of his most successful franchises (Indiana Jones and Star Wars) but this is getting ridiculous.

I am a huge fan of "The Last Crusade" and felt it was a good ending spot for the movies, but then Lucas wanted to do another one. He convinced Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford to do it and now he's working them over for a 5th installment.

Does everyone really want to see a Shia LeBoeuf led Indiana Jones? That's the rumor for the next movie. Ford would take a backseat and play a role similar to Sean Connery in the 3rd film and LaBoeuf would go on the adventure.

I am a huge George Lucas fan, but I hate to see him run his successful movies into the ground. It became a running joke with Star Wars with the Special Editions and Prequel Trilogy and now its happening with Indiana Jones.

I have to admit though, I will keep paying money to see my favorite characters on the big screen, so as Obi Wan Konobi once said, "Who's the more foolish: The fool, or the fool who follows him?"

Vote for LSU, Have a Great Day!

Vote for the Golden Band from Tigerland in ESPN/Lucas Film's Battle of the Bands. The battle features select college bands performing the Indiana Jones theme song.

Check out the video of the LSU Band featuring the Golden Girls & Mike the Tiger dressed as Indiana Jones and stick around for a fun cameo from the Mad Hatter himself, Coach Les Miles.

Congrats to Team USA

From the "Redeem Team" to Michael Phelps and from women's basketball and gymnastics to soccer and volleyball, the 2008 Summer Olympics were a huge success for the United States. Sure there were some tough loses (Lolo Jones, softball, team gymnastics, Dara Torres), but overall the Olympics were great television. Beijing did a great job as host city, and NBC had some excellent events to broadcast.

Congratulations to all the athletes in this year's games and good luck in four years in London. We'll be watching.

Rant Time

So I'm watching the awesome season finale of Lost last night. The first hour was great. We come back from a commercial and future Sayid lights up some dude and then, frozen screen. What's going on? The audio is still going, but the picture hasn't changed.

A little while later, Sun comes on the screen, but the picture immediately freezes again. Then Juliette appears and boom, frozen screen again. Finally after about 25 minutes, everything is back to normal and we're in the Orchid station. What did we miss? A lot.

Thank you Cox and WBRZ (local ABC affiliate) for giving me something to do today as I look for the lost 20 minutes of "There's No Place Like Home" on ABC.com.

Iron Man Rocks

I was skeptical of seeing Hollywood's latest comic book movie effort in Iron Man, but I left the theater more than satisfied. Iron Man is definately worth the price of admission and will launch a new line of Marvel flicks, culminating in The Avengers in 2011.

I would like to commend Jon Favreau for his vision of Iron Man. He took a realistic approach in portraying Tony Stark similar to Christopher Nolan's vision for Batman. Iron Man stayed away from cheesy love triangles or a 1970s era dance sequences down the sidewalk and stuck with a good story.

I wasn't too familiar with the Iron Man comic before this movie, but after hearing about Marvel's future releases (Iron Man 2, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers), I look forward to seeing this franchise's future. As long as they keep Jon Favreau involved in these future movies, the series will be a hit.

What to do without Lost?

We're still months away from the start of season 4 of the best show on TV, Lost. Luckily, once the show starts in February, we'll get 16 straight episodes with no repeats. In the meantime, what are we to do while waiting? I've rewatched a few of season 1's episodes, but here's some other shows that have kept my interest while waiting for a return to Craphole Island:

• The Office: This season started off slow with their hour long episodes. The format just works better in 1/2 chunks, but last week's visit to Dwight's beet farm was awesome. They are hitting their stride now and the rest of the season will be awesome. Plus, TBS is now running the repeats from the first few seasons, so you can't go wrong with The Office.
• Doctor Who: How did I miss Doctor Who growing up? My friend Josh is a big fan and I was introduced to the Time Lord after hearing about it from him. Whether its the new series on Sci-Fi or catching up on Classic Who, this is a really good show. I'm still unsure of who my favorite doctor is, but I know that I really like Doctors #4, #5, #9, and #10 the best so far...but not necessarily in that order. I still need to see more of #3, but he's right up there too. #6, #7 and #8 are ones that I have yet to check out any of their shows, so I can't really talk much about them yet.
  
• Heroes: Season 2 of Heroes is offering more adventure and more heroes than last year. The problem is that there is now too many stories to focus on. Instead of "Are you on the list" and "Save the cheerleader, save the world," there now seems to be a core group of original heroes that are being killed off. A fun mystery for the show and maybe we'll see the origins of these powers.
  
• Flash Gordon: The original Flash Gordon serials inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars, so the new series was one I had to check out. The first few episodes were a bit slow since they had to introduce the characters, but now that the intros are out of the way, they can focus on the adventure. Its not great acting, but it is a fun sci-fi show to check out.
  
• How I Met Your Mother/Big Bang Theory: These shows make up the 7-8:00 hour on Monday nights and both are worth checking out. How I Met Your Mother is always good for some laughs, especially from Barney (Neil Patrick Harris). Big Bang Theory is another cheesy sitcom that I'm enjoying that my wife thinks will get canceled (like The Class and Inside Schwartz). It focuses on science/sci-fi nerds, and of course, I can relate to the material.
  
• Top Chef: The 3rd season of Top Chef recently ended with Hung winning the title of Top Chef. This was definately an interesting season and I enjoyed all of the contestants this year. I thought that Dale was going to pull it out at the end after Casey basically had her worst performance of the season in the finale, but Hung used his "me first" attitude (along with molten chocolate cake) to get the victory.
  

Welcome

Welcome to the "Gulf Coast Offense," a site for fans of Southern Louisiana sports teams, especially the New Orleans Saints, Fighting Tigers of LSU and New Orleans Hornets. With no professional baseball team in Louisiana, the Atlanta Braves have become my team, so I'll focus on them as well.

While these are my favorite teams and the ones I follow the most, other sports topics will be discussed, and I may venture outside of the sports world to discuss other things as well, especially television shows and movies. Look out when Lost returns next spring, this may turn into a Dharma zone.

Now that the introductions are out of the way, I hope you enjoy my ramblings.