Something to cheer about?
Photo credit: Jaguars.com

Don’t feel bad, Jacksonville Jaguars! Your players may comprise the second worst team in the NFL, but your cheerleaders have fared considerably better, according to Bleacher Report’s NFL cheerleader power rankings.

Out of 32 teams, the ROAR of the Jaguars come in at #20. That’s the good news. The bad news: Six of the teams in the league don’t even have cheerleaders (a factoid that would make an excellent trivia question, by the way).

At least the members of the ROAR, can take solace in the fact that they are hotter than the cheerleaders from six teams that do have squads: the Atlanta Falcons, Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Minnesota Vikings and Tennessee Titans.

Personally, I have no business judging cheerleaders, as my only experience with the “sport” is watching Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team on CMT and a devastatingly embarrassing experience trying out for the junior variety squad in high school (not that I’m bitter; actually, I didn’t become bitter until I didn’t make the majorette team either).

In fact, I think most of the ROAR girls are very attractive and can certainly dance better than I can (which is saying a lot since I am Jacksonville’s reigning Dancing With the Stars champ). I do have a few suggestions as to how they may improve their standing in the power rankings, however.

1. Stop trying so hard to be liked. Of the 35 ladies on the roster, only five sign their names without a heart.

Those girls have heart!
Images from: Jaguars.com

2. Spend a little more time furthering your education or career and a little less time in the tanning booth. Everyone knows how sexy an intelligent woman is (at least that’s what my above-average intelligence tells my flabby white belly.)

What color would Crayola call these?
Images from: Jaguars.com

3. Cheer for a better team.

In true stalker fashion, I documented the event with my trusty iPhone and superhuman eavesdropping ability, the results of which I present to you here in a list I call 10 Things You Probably Won’t Learn About Jaguars Players From Watching ESPN or Subscribing to Bleacher Report.

1. Donovin Darius is extremely punctual. Matter of fact, he arrived at the event prior to co-hosts Greg Jones and Maurice Jones-Drew. 1B. I am a terrible photographer, but it’s him: I promise.

2. An avid Madden Football player, Jones did not play as the Jaguars. Instead, he competed as the Minnesota Vikings. (And yes, folks, his biceps look just as big in person as they do on TV.)

3. Ashley Jones-Drew, MoJo’s new bride couldn’t be any sweeter or more down to earth. FYI, she likes his hair longer but isn’t too crazy about the facial hair.

4. Derek Cox has an amazing memory. I met him at Guns ‘N Hoses, and he remembered what shoes I was wearing. Either that or there’s a restraining order I don’t know about.

5. Justin Blackmon drove off in a Hyundai Sonata. So notta what I was expecting (see what I did there?).

6. Most Jags players suck at bowling. Rashean Mathis, for one, threw at least three gutter balls in the five minutes I was paying attention.

7. Laurent (La-RON) Robinson and his lovely wife Kat are expecting their first child in November. The baby’s name will be Jade (unless someone messed up the sonogram).

8. Not only is he adorable and charming in person (probably not adjectives he’d like used in his player bio), but Jeremy Mincey smells good too. And his best friend is J. Dash. (Think they’d let me join their wolfpack?)

 
9. The most popular guy of the night—by far—was Fred Taylor. Not only were fans clammering for his autograph and pictures the entire time he was there, but he was constantly surrounded by other VIPs like Super Bowl-winning QB Mark Brunell (who has lost a lot of weight, by the way), former Philadelphia Eagles CB Lito Sheppard (who is super nice) and sports agent Andrew Kagan (who, I’m quite certain, could go his whole life without ever hearing another Jerry McGuire reference). 9B. The least likable VIP of the night—according to me—was already—in my opinion—a jerk. I’m not going to call him out by name, but I will say his number between 1 and 50.

10. Offensive guard Will Rackley was asked to be a celebrity judge at the 2013 Jacksonville Backyard BBQ Championship. I know this because it was my idea. Proving once again, that I’m a stalker with a heart of gold.

Thursday, September 27
TASTE Food & Wine Event
6 PM, TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse
* STALKER ALERT: Former NFL players including Tom Matte and Mark Duper, former NHL player Ron Duguay, supermodel/TV host Kim Alexis and the ROAR Cheerleaders are scheduled to attend.

Thursday, September 27
Northeast Florida Beer Cup
6:30 PM, Florida Theatre

Thursday, September 27
Brad Paisley, Scott McCreary and The Band Perry
7:30 PM, Veterans Memorial Arena

Thursday, September 27-Sunday, September 30
Jacksonville Fall Home & Patio Show
Prime Osborn Convention Center
STALKER ALERT: Mark Brunetz of Style Network’s Clean House appears Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 

Friday, September 28-Sunday, September 20
Sesame Street LIVE!
Veterans Memorial Arena

Saturday, September 29
Canines & Cocktails
4-7 PM, Jacksonville Golf & Country Club

Sunday, September 30
Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Cincinnati Bengals
4:05 PM, EverBank Field

Sunday, September 30
Joe Cocker
7 PM, St. Augustine Amphitheatre

Go “Around Town” with Kerry “The Specktator” Speckman on First Coast Connect on 89.9 FM every Thursday around 9:45 AM. And if you really want a laugh, tune into the show via USTREAM. Her dancing skills are really quite impeccable, an indisputable fact now that she has been crowned “Jacksonville’s Favorite Dancer.”

And sometimes she forgets she’s on camera and picks her nose.

Friday, September 21-Sunday, September 23
First Coast Children’s International Film Festival
Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach

Saturday, September 22
PurpleStride Walk
7:45 AM, Sea Walk Pavilion, Jacksonville Beach

Saturday, September 22
Blondie and DEVO
7:30 PM, St. Augustine Amphitheatre

Monday, September 24
Be a Kid Again … for the Kids
7:30 PM (6:30 PM with VIP ticket) Latitude 30
STALKER ALERT: In addition to hosts Greg Jones and Maurice Jones-Drew, scheduled guests include more Jags players than you can shake a foam finger at, former Big Cats Fred Taylor, David Garrard and Mark Brunell, as well as GM Gene Smith and former NBA star/Olympic Gold Medalist Christian Laettner

Tuesday, September 25
Adam Ant
8 PM, Freebird Live

Wednesday, September 26
The Price is Right Live!
7:30 PM, Times-Union Center

Wednesday, September 26
Stevie Nicks
7:30 PM, St. Augustine Amphitheatre

Go “Around Town” with Kerry “The Specktator” Speckman on First Coast Connect on 89.9 FM every Thursday around 9:45 AM. And if you really want a laugh, tune into the show via USTREAM. Her dancing skills are really quite impeccable, an indisputable fact now that she has been crowned “Jacksonville’s Favorite Dancer.”

And sometimes she forgets she’s on camera and picks her nose.

Since it was a blind tasting, I can’t really give you my opinion of the winners in each discipline seeing as that I don’t know whose food was whose. But I can tell you the who’s who of barbecue judges…

This year’s judges included State Attorney Angela Corey, Duval County Tax Collector Michael Corrigan, The Morning Show anchor and consumer reporter Nikki Kimbleton and meteorologist Rebecca Barry of WJXT Channel 4, Steve Sutton of 99.9 Gator Country, the very tardy First Coast News reporter Ken Amaro (and “I’m Telling Ken” it’s not polite to show up an hour late for an event you are asked to participate in), former PGA player and TV broadcaster Steve Melnyk, and Jaguars players DE Aaron Morgan, OT Daniel Baldridge (I’ll save you the Google search: He’s 6’8″) and DT D’Anthony Smith.

Given Corey‘s recent attention in the national spotlight, I wasn’t expecting her to participate as advertised, but there she was chowing down on chicken, pork and ribs with some of the Jags players (which is more than we can say for Sheriff John Rutherford and Basketball Hall of Famer Artis Gilmore, who chickened out—literally). Corey may be “one of Florida’s toughest prosecutors” (according to the New York Daily News), but she couldn’t have been any nicer to this celebrity stalker.

The event was hosted and organized by Jaguars radio host and face behind Cole Pepper’s Blackjack BBQ sauce Cole Pepper, a celeb in his own right, to benefit the Daniel Kids Foundation.

Special note to Cole: I had great time! Your team was fabulous, and the food was amazing. Feel free to invite me to any other carnivorous judging events in the future.

The party gets started at 6:30 PM and features appearances by the brand new members of the ROAR, a performance by the totally awesome D-line, DJ Chill Will spinning the tunes, prizes and autograph sessions with players.

According to a very reliable source (who is not Jaxson de Ville, for the record), here’s where the players will be in case you want to line up early…

Tent 1
• Blaine Gabbert
• Will Rackley
• Rashad Jennings (I dare someone to ask him how he, as a professional athlete, felt about losing at dodgeball to a ragtag magazine staff … Jax Magma rules!)
• Cecil Shorts

Tent 2
• Jeremy Mincey (trivia: Mr. Mince and future Grammy winner J. Dash are BFFs)
• D’Anthony Smith
• Tyson Alualu
• Derek Cox (I had the pleasure of meeting him at Guns ‘N Hoses a couple of weeks ago and he was a delightful young man … even if he was sitting in no-show former NBA star Otis Smith’s seat and didn’t even know who he was. Tsk-tsk.)
• Laurent Robinson

Inside Whiskey River
• Jammie Cirlew
• Kevin Rutland
• Corvey Irvin

Former players including Mike Hollis, Damon Jones and Don Davey are also scheduled to appear. And I hear the mustachioed one himself, Shad Khan, may even made a brief appearance before heading to the war room.

If all that hoopla is too much for you, head on over to Pele’s Woodfire in Riverside for a more civilized draft party with Paul “Poz” Posluszny. I would be curious to see which is bigger in diameter: his neck or one of Pele’s meatballs. Feel free to let me know.

And in case you are wondering, Maurice Jones-Drew won’t be anywhere near Jax tonight, as he’s still at his home in California. I know there is talk of a contract dispute, but give the guy a break: He just got married!

Anyone who does go to either draft day even, feel free to share your photos with me at info@thespeckator.com or via Twitter @TheSpecktator. I will be otherwise engaged at a rehearsal dinner, pardon the pun.

Photo credit: Laura Evans Photography Crappy masking credit: The Specktator

And so the curtain drops on another week of celebrity stalking, local event reporting and gorging myself on local cuisine—all for you, the loyal readers of The Specktator. Realizing you may not have time to read my yet-to-be-award-winning blog every day (particularly since I may skip a couple), I figured I’d save you the time and give you the most requested topics on the site and most popular articles of the week.

I’m selfless like that, you know.

Most requested topics on the site:
1. “J. Dash”
2. “David Garrard”
3. “Tim Tebow girlfriend”
4. “Leanza Cornett”
5. “Shad Khan yacht” 

Most popular articles on the site:
1. Jax Truckies steaks its claim as new foodie destination
2. Invasion of Privacy: Grillin’ and Chillin’ at Cathedral Arts event
3. And so begins the transformation of Jacksonville’s own J. Dash into future Grammy Award winner J. Dash
4. Invasion of Privacy: Glen Campbell
5. Want to see inside Shad Khan’s yacht?

The Cathedral Arts project hosted its eighth annual Spring for the Arts event at Deerwood Golf & Country Club last weekend. Among the attendees were former owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars Delores and Wayne Weaver (who clearly need have their names removed from Jaguars.com), Mayor Alvin Brown (who isn’t nearly as entertaining as JaxMayorBrown on Twitter) and former Jaguars safety Donovin Darius (who was professionally stalked by a very tan member of The Specktator Eye-Team).

I didn’t hear much about the Weavers’ or Mayor Brown’s comportment (yes, I used my thesaurus for that one), but I did hear that Darius was all up in the grill of local philanthropist and volunteer extraordinaire Mary Virginia Terry, no doubt to solicit some support for his charity, the Donovin Darius Foundation, which seeks to “to equip and empower youth ages 8-18 for academic success, character and personal development, and healthy lifestyles.”

Not that I can blame the guy because if I had been there, I’d probably have been stalking her myself for my upcoming non-profit project, which you’ll be hearing about in the very near future.

Photo credits: Delores and Wayne Weaver, First Coast News & Daily Record; Mayor Alvin Brown, coj.net; and anonymous Eye-Team member and Donovin Darius, someone’s iPhone

Allow me to explain: Local media outlets, including Action News, Channel 4, First Coast News, Folio Weekly, Jacksonville Business Journal, WJCT, WOKV, and, of course, Jacksonville Magazine are competing in a double-elimination dodgeball tournament to benefit the Police Athletic League. That’s right, folks, red rubber balls will be hurled at some of your favorite TV reporters, radio hosts, print journalists and one very special calendar blurb writer (Note to my fellow competitors: I’d prefer to be hit in the arse as I’m less likely to feel it through all of the “padding”) all for charity.

Some teams are bragging that they have a Jaguars player on their team—offensive lineman Eben Britton is WJCT’s “ringer,” which clearly they need (have you seen how tiny those people are), and running back Rashad Jennings is taking one for the WOKV team, despite being on the Jags’ injured reserve list—however, the team that everyone should truly be worried about is Jax Magma. (As a side note, a friend, who happens to be a police officer, suggested that we just throw it at the Jags’ players hands since they’ll never catch it. Good one, JB.)

Team Jax Magma, you see, has a true expert, a “dodgeball assassin” as he likes to refer to himself, as our coach. Kevin Porter, producer/director/writer/actor and president of Iconic Innovations Media Group, just so happens to have starred in a little movie you may have heard of called Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story in which he played Lazer of the Purple Cobras. And if the other teams aren’t worried about the professional dodgeball advice that he has imparted to us, they should, at the very least, be scared of him personally. He’s a big dude. And not very friendly…

Newsroom Street Fight gets underway Saturday, February 25 at 10 AM at PAL’s Southside-Monument location (3450 Monument Road). Not only is the event free, but there will be vittles provided by Firehouse Subs and French Fry Heaven, plus raffles including hot-off-the-presses merchandise from The Jax ‘Stache. It will be a ball. Trust me.

As much as I’d like to brag that I know Team Jax Magma is going to win, I must admit that the real champs are the wimps at The Florida Times-Union who are dodging the whole event.