Fantasy Island

Sports-wise, I’m a little depressed today. My fantasy football team lost.

Fantasy sports, particularly fantasy football, have taken off in the past few years to the point where they might be bigger than the actual games themselves. “Fantasy football” used to just mean you sat there on the couch and fantasized about the Detroit Lions ever winning a game again. Now, it is a billion dollar industry that tons of Americans waste their afternoons playing.

Now, I’m upset that I lost this past week, because it was a very important game. I’m in a league with a bunch of my friends, so of course, as with anything I do with my friends, I want to crush them. I want to be able to do an exotic victory dance in front of them at parties to both embarrass them and alert nearby females as to what a classy stud-muffin I am (although since I am Irish, I prefer “stud-scone”).

Unfortunately, the women will have to wait, because my fantasy football team laid an egg this week. It’s actually a little more humiliating when your fantasy team loses as opposed to the real teams. When the real football team you root for loses, you technically had nothing to do with it. You instead get to blame the people that actually contributed to the defeat: the players, the coaches, Tim Tebow, the referees, Obama and God (hey, if He gets credit for wins He has to take the blame for losses; it’s only fair big guy). Whereas you assembled your fantasy team, so you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Thankfully, even though I lost, I’m still in the playoffs. This is actually unusual because I tend to suck at fantasy football. The only time I ever won a league was a fantasy baseball one this summer, and I think that was mainly because the fantasy baseball season is really long and everybody else just stopped playing or died.

Anyway, there are several reasons that I am not good at fantasy sports. For one, I know a lot about sports, but I am not a big numbers guy. Some fans see a player and can rattle off important stats and information. My evaluations of players tend to be more general. For instance “that guy sucks,” or “He couldn’t catch crabs at a Red Lobster.” Numbers are very important in fantasy sports. In fact, there are countless number crunching nerds that we real sports fans use to make fun of in high school that are now making lots of money telling fantasy players what to do on ESPN.

The other reason is that I tend to let my emotions get in the way. For instance, I am a big Jacksonville Jaguars fan, so I tend to draft Jaguars players even though scientific studies have proven that Jaguars players were never actually taught how to play football. I also tend to skip over players that I personally do not like. Unfortunately, as a jealous non-athlete, I tend to dislike all fast, strong, successful athletes. I tend to root for the slow underdogs, which is how my fantasy team ends up being 75% kickers.

Some people take days to prepare their drafts, getting together with their friends and organizing comprehensive lists of players and back-up options. I tend to forget when my drafts are taking place. Take my last few drafts. My baseball league was filled with people primarily in Hawaii, and was scheduled for 6 pm Hawaii Time. Four time zones away though, I was soundly asleep. Then I was in a basketball league, but the draft took place after I came back from the bars. So in my drunken haze, I drafted ten centers and used my first round pick on J.J. Redick, who is 6’4”, white, scores about 4 points a game and is about as athletic as a pile of Play-Doh. I was completely awake and sober for my football draft, but I was too busy talking smack on the chat room smack-board to actually draft players to back up my smack-talk.

But I’m in the playoffs anyway, and I’m guaranteeing a victory right here. I even have my victory speech ready:

“I’d like to thank my CPA, who handled all the number crunching. I have to give credit to my internet connection, which allowed me to make several key pickups before anybody else noticed. Oh, and God.”

Hawaiian Home Field

So I’m a little upset right now, because the University of Hawaii lost to the University of Colorado this weekend. I had been looking forward to this game for a while, because it meant that I got to stand in the middle of the CU student section wearing nothing but UH green and a stupid grin on my face. Then of course, UH decided to suddenly start choking like octogenarians at a care home steak buffet.

Now throughout the week I got a lot of criticism for rooting for Hawaii instead of Colorado. Apparently they thought that I was not being very loyal. This confused me, since I thought that rooting for Colorado, a school I have been associated with for less than four years, over Hawaii, a place I have lived for 18 years, was the exact opposite of being loyal. Besides, I pay the University of Colorado tons of money. If anything, they should be loyal to me. The board of regents should be showing up to my exams and holding up signs and doing the wave in the back of the room.

Besides it’s not like I chose to come to CU because I grew up watching all the great CU teams (if there were any). In fact, I was unaware there was a state called Colorado up until about six years ago, and I only found out then because I did a Wikipedia search on Coors. If the University of Hawaii had a journalism school, I would be there.

Of course I don’t really expect everybody to understand. Growing up in Hawaii with no pro sports teams, most sports fans there have very wide and varied tastes when it comes to the pro teams the root for. Some people have good taste, while some people root for the Denver Broncos. I mean, my dad roots for the San Francisco 49ers while I root for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now, even I know that it is pretty hard to have two teams farther apart without somehow involving Alaska.

But UH is the one thing that all people in Hawaii have in common. And it’s not just football. I’ve watched (and genuinely cared about) everything from volleyball to water polo. I remember a few months ago, UH’s women’s softball team went to the World Series tournament while my parents were up here visiting me. This of course meant that instead of actually doing anything, we sat inside and watched the game. Well my dad and I watched. My mother actually affected the game by screaming at the television. At one point, we were all ready to leave for sushi but she would not leave until one UH girl finished her at-bat. Did I mention that it was a 19-pitch at-bat?

But it’s not just UH. We tend to root for any team with Hawaii ties. The most recent example was a Hawaii Little League team that went all the way to the final before losing to a group of robots from Japan designed to look like children. I never watch Little League, but I watched every single game Hawaii was in.

I also like watching national TV coverage of Hawaii teams. For some reason, they always feel the need to play generic Hawaiian music while showing cutaway scenes of beaches and people surfing. I’m not sure why; it’s not like we are a foreign country or something. You never see them playing country music while showing people drinking on lawn chairs in the dirt when Alabama plays do you? That and they can never pronounce the names of anybody on our teams.

Anyway, despite losing to Colorado, which is a truly humiliating thing, I am, and always will be a UH fan through and through. So I may take a bit of heat this week. A lot of people have been teasing me about how UH used to be the rainbows, and how gay that apparently is. I invite them to say that to these guys.

Just Keep Swimming

Seeing as it is insanely hot in Boulder right now and I have nothing better to do with my time, I have started swimming laps again at a local outdoor pool. The main reason is that I miss the beach, and swimming in an outdoor pool is about as close as I’m going to get to the ocean this summer, unless you count Baddie and Midget sending me pictures of Florida sunsets while laughing hysterically.

I have always like swimming, mainly because it is the only athletic activity that I showed some proficiency in (unless you count eating as an athletic activity). Growing up in Hawaii, you pretty much learn to swim before you learn to walk (although many people who know me argue that we never really learn how to walk). Not being able to swim while living on an island can be inconvenient at times.

Now, while it’s great exercise, there are some drawbacks to going to public pools to workout. Mainly the “public” part, because you end up swimming with a lot of random people, and many of these people do not fully understand what a lap pool is supposed to be used for. Yesterday I found myself constantly having to pass some guy who had a wetsuit and a snorkel on and was drifting more than he was swimming. I’ve seen tourists snorkeling at reefs swim with more urgency than this guy. I kept looking for the fishes that he was apparently watching.

The worst was the other week, when two pregnant women hopped into my lane and decided that they were going to walk the entire length of the pool. Walk. In a pool. Now, I’m not saying these women should not be allowed to do this, but there is a time and a place where you are free to do whatever you want in the pool. They call it “free swim.” But during “lap swim” time, you should probably be swimming laps, or at least swimming. And don’t even get me started on locker rooms. Yes Mr. seventy-something guy, we know you are confident with your body, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.

Of course, I’m a bit spoiled, since back home I have a free pool at my high school that is not very busy. It’s pretty much like having my own private pool. I remember during one year when I was on the high school swim team, the pool was actually closed to the public and only the swim team could use it. This could have something to do with the fact that there was no lifeguard and the chemicals in the pool were strong enough to strip paint off a car. We would often get out after practice and our hair would fall out and we couldn’t’ see and we had rashes on the extra arm that had sprouted out of our foreheads.

Now, just to get this out of the way, I swam competitively, but I was not very competitive. Actually, my only real achievement was almost getting kicked out of a meet for swearing in front of a race official. I just needed an excuse to wear really tight swimsuits in public. I’m just joking. I think. Although sometimes you got the feeling our entire team had no idea what was going on. At my first meet, two of my teammates swam 150 yards of breaststroke, which is fine except it was only a 100-yard event.

But if I had to pick a highlight of my swim career, it would probably be the district qualifying meet in my junior year at HPA high school. I had already swam all of my events, so I had already changed to street clothes and was eating Cheetos in the bleachers when my coach informs me that I had tied some kid for the last spot in the finals in the 100-free, so we had to have a swim off. The other kid was from HPA so he had home field advantage, but HPA is like the Yankees of the Big Island. Nobody likes them because they are rich and they win everything. Plus I was fat and I had Cheeto dust on my fingers, so I was the clear underdog. So most of the crowd was pulling for me. I ended up beating the guy in what is still my best time in that event.

Of course, I had to take my ACTs on the day of the actual finals, so I got there late, lost my goggles the second I dove into the water, and got disqualified. So in the end I think I would have been better off just giving up and finishing my bag of Cheetos. Have you ever swum after eating an entire bag of Cheetos? You should try it. Just make sure it’s free swim time at the pool.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Last night was actually a pretty big night in baseball, because Matt Garza of the Tampa Bay Rays threw a no-hitter. Now there might be some of you out there who aren’t aware this has happened. Then again, there are probably a lot of you out there that aren’t aware the baseball season had even started.

It’s not really anyone’s fault. Sure they call it America’s Pastime, but that’s only because video games and recreational drugs weren’t readily available back then. It’s just that baseball can get, well… boring, especially for casual sports fans. Now I’m a hardcore sports fan and I love baseball, but even I admit that baseball sometimes puts me to sleep. Which is actually why I like it. There is nothing like watching a midday game on your couch, falling asleep after the second inning, and then waking up to infomercials for something called “Brazil Butt-Lift.”

The main problem with baseball is that it just moves so slow. I mean, think about what happens in the average at-bat. The batter will go through his routine, which normally involves adjusting his gloves, grabbing his crotch, swinging his bat, tapping his shoes, grabbing his crotch, filing his taxes, and then finally stepping into the box while grabbing his crotch. The pitcher will then go through his routine, which normally involves circling the mound at least five times like some sort of malfunctioning helicopter, playing with the rosin bag, grabbing his crotch, kicking the dirt, adjusting his grip on the ball, grabbing his crotch, reenacting the final scene of “Hamlet,” and finally staring at the catcher. The catcher then gives the pitcher his signs, which involves about five minutes of random finger pointing that makes him look like he’s trying to flick ants off of his inner thighs. And then, finally the pitcher will wind up and… the umpire will call for time, because he needs to grab his crotch too.

I mean the very rules of the game are meant to encourage mediocrity (just like our country’s educational system). Think about it, if a batter succeeds once every three times, he is considered awesome. Imagine if that were the standard for other professions, like say, brain surgeons. Plus there is the whole three strikes system and the fact that the season lasts what seems like the entire year. So you can see why many people have a hard time caring what the heck the Kansas City Royals are doing on a Monday afternoon in the middle of July (probably losing).

That’s why the game was fun back in the 90’s when they let the players use steroids and they use to hit homeruns out of the stadium every five minutes. I mean, last night’s no-hitter was a big story, but when you think about it, a no-hitter essentially means that nothing happened. Now I’m not suggesting that they bring back steroids, because I don’t appreciate that people who are already stronger and richer than me can afford drugs that make them even stronger and richer.

Another thing I don’t like about baseball is all the stats. Nowadays watching baseball feels like going through Algebra all over again in the sense that they are assigning random numbers to random collections of letters that mean nothing to me. To know if a player is good, I have to know his WHIP plus his OBP plus his OPS and his VORP plus his YMCA and PETA. For me, these numbers don’t tell me how good a player is. I want my announcers to be very simple. For instance, “this guy sucks.” will do. Or “this pitcher couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a bazooka,” or “he swings the bat like a little girl swatting bees in a phone booth.”

Actually, those last few statements were things that my coaches used to describe me when I used to play baseball. Okay, it was actually T-ball. For those of you who aren’t aware of what T-ball is, it’s like baseball for uncoordinated children. They put the ball on a tee and just let you swing away at it. And like everything I tried when I was a little kid, I was horrible at it. I once struck out in T-ball. Do you realize how hard that is? I mean you don’t even need to really hit the ball, you could just knock the tee over with your bat and you at least get a single. Although, in my defense, I wasn’t using steroids like those other kids.

King James Ransom

I’m not sure if you heard, but LeBron James signed with the Miami Heat last night. Haha that was sarcastic of course. There is not a person in the world right now who doesn’t know that. People who couldn’t tell you the difference between Pau Gasol and Big Foot know (by the way, the key is that Gasol is hairier). I bet my friend back in Hawaii Little Chris knows this, and this is a guy who in November of 2008 was unaware that we were having a presidential election.

We of course can thank ESPN for this. ESPN has a subtle way of telling you what they think is important. That is, if you are the type of person who thinks getting hit by a speeding freight train is subtle. They barrage you with a constant 24/7 blanket of coverage on whatever happens to have their interest at the moment. If you did a push-up every time they said the word “LeBron” in the past two days by now you either look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or you would have died. Then of course, there was his decision to announce his decision on a one-hour show (called, creatively, “The Decision”), which I’m sure had executives at ESPN practically wetting themselves with glee wondering what kind deed they did to have a golden ratings egg fall into their laps.

But then again, can you really blame them? This story has a better plot line than 85% of Michael Bay’s movies (especially now that Megan Fox isn’t in Transformers 3). On one hand, you have his hometown of Cleveland, a good old-fashioned Midwest city full of bad luck, downtrodden citizens, and cold winters. On the other hand you have Miami, a city with great weather, fake boobs, and Cubans on yachts. When you think of South Beach, you think of Miami Vice and Don Johnson strutting around town flirting with beautiful women and driving convertibles. When you think of Cleveland you think of… the Drew Carey Show?

So I’m not that surprised that he chose Miami over Cleveland (plus I heard Paul the Octopus predicted it). I mean, I understand being loyal to where you were born, but I was born in Hawaii. It’s a lot easier to for me. If I were LeBron I would choose someplace with a beach over a landlocked state any day. And of course all of you are like “But Mitchell you chose to go to school in Colorado instead of Hawaii.” That is because I am a study in bad decisions, and that’s why nobody gave me a one-hour show to announce where I was going to school (although the cheers I got from my family when I said I was going far away were much louder than anything LeBron got).

Still, it was sort of endearing to watch the city of Cleveland try and get him to stay. And by “endearing” I mean “sort of sad.” Watching grown men fawn over him like tweens at a Twilight showing just made me wonder about the state of our society when one athlete can do that to entire cities. So it probably shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise when he had the nerve to have his own show, seeing as we’ve spent the last three weeks stroking ego like… okay better not to finish that sentence.

Anyway, I wanted to watch just to see how in the world he was going to fill an hour with a decision that basically took him five seconds to actually say. As it turns out, they did it by asking him every possible question that nobody in the world would have thought of asking him at that moment. It was like we had a show to finally uncover the JFK scandal and the host was asking the FBI what type of plants they decorate the office with.

Finally, after all of America yelled at their TV “Just ask him WHERE already!!” he announced that he was “taking his talents to South Beach.” I just hope that it ends up better than most of the aspiring models who say that before they end up at a strip club. But he should be happy because apparently he and Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh had some sort of three-some bromance going on for awhile now. Of course, money might be a problem, since at the moment the team has a total of four players signed and no money left. Maybe that’s why LeBron held his press conference at a Boys and Girls Club; he was recruiting.

The only question left is what the heck ESPN is supposed to talk about now. I presume football will be next. In fact if there is one positive about this whole situation, it is that I haven’t heard a thing about Brett Favre, who is normally ESPN’s favorite topic. The only problem is that you just know that somewhere Brett Favre is saying to himself “Hmm, a one hour show to announce a decision. Now why didn’t I think of that?” Of course, with as wishy-washy as Favre is he might have to have multiple shows. He could probably make an entire season’s worth: “Brett Favre: Indecision.”

UFC: Ultimate Face Contorting

I’m excited for this weekend, because it is the UFC fight between Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar for the heavyweight title. For you pacifists out there, the UFC stands for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. They basically put two dudes in a ring, where they proceed to try and see who can cause the most brain damage to the other person. There are basically no rules in the UFC, and they only have small gloves as opposed to the large ones they use for boxing. This means that these guys get to display their creative side when it comes to deciding how they want to hurt the person in the cage with them.

Those of you who don’t get why this is exciting clearly have never watched a fight or might be a member of a religious sect that frowns upon senseless violence. There’s just something about two people just trying to beat the snot out of each other. And it’s not like this is a new phenomenon. I mean, the Romans made dudes kill each other for entertainment, and they got a lot of things done as a civilization. Just remember that when people tell you that American entertainment today is too violent. At least we don’t feed people to tigers (unless you count Sigfried and Roy that is).

There was a while when boxing was the big fight sport, but then Mike Tyson just went crazy and started biting off people’s ears. It’s sort of sad to think that an entire generation of kids will forever just know Mike Tyson as “that guy who sang the Phil Collins song in ‘Hangover.’” Anyway, it took UFC awhile to get really big, mainly because it was highly illegal almost everywhere. Today, there is a time limit on matches and some rules (like no hair-pulling or punting people in the face while they are down). In the old days, that wasn’t the case. They just put two people in a cage with no gloves, rules, or time limits and just told them to beat each other up until somebody gave up or became unconscious.

I first became a fan of the UFC because of a fighter who lives on the Big Island, B.J. Penn, who was the lightweight champion until three of the dumbest judges in the world robbed him of the title a few months ago. Penn was born with two rocks for hands (and judging by the punches he can take, another in his head) and no bones in his body. How else can you explain this (go to the 2 minute mark). Penn’s flexibility has made him one of the best in the world at jiu-jitsu, a skill which by now you have heard at least one idiot in a Tap-Out t-shirt reference. But in case frat boy didn’t explain it well enough, jiu-jitsu is the art of bending people’s limbs in a direction they were not meant to be bent and trying to deprive your opponent of oxygen.

But as good as Penn is, Brock Lesnar is in a whole other category. In fact, he might be a member of a completely different species, presumably the one that includes Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman. He looks like a villain from a James Bond movie. The man was put on Earth for one reason only: to hurt people. And he is very good at it. And his opponent, Shane Carwin, is no pushover either. He has won every one of his fights by a knockout within four minutes. Just think about that for a moment: no man on Earth has been able to be in the same cage as this guy for five minutes without ending up staring at the canaries flying around his head.

The other reason the UFC is great is that it gives men another excuse to get together and drink and eat and enjoy a sporting event. The camera often pans through the crowd, and all of the people there have one thing in common: they are very drunk. My roommate and I have hosted viewing parties several times, which we refer to as “Man Night.” This is sort of ironic, since the only two people to have attended every single Man Night besides myself are the Mosher sisters, which leads me to believe that women are crazy and just enjoy violence.

On a side note, they just announced a ban on vuvuzelas at all future UFC events because UFC organizers aren’t stupid, so I don’t need to watch it on mute. This is good, because one of the announcers is Joe Rogan, and it’s pretty hilarious to listen to him talk about fighting knowing he hosted Fear Factor. Plus he dishes out tons of sexual innuendos the whole night, like “he likes it on top, from there he can really pound away.”

But if Joe Rogan sex jokes and violence isn’t enough, there are always the women. Like boxing, the UFC has card girls, who happen to look like this. And then there is this girl, who is actually a fighter. She’s actually very good, but I want her to retire before she does something to that face of hers. That would be a real tragedy.

Horny for Soccer

Now, I normally don’t like to write too much about one particular topic (unless that topic is how awesome I am). The world generally provides me enough stupidity to change it up, but I just have to write more about the World Cup, because a lot has happened in the first week of this thing.

First off, let’s just come right out and say it: watching soccer is bad enough without a swarm of locusts coming to wipe out mankind. I watch soccer to hear ridiculous British accents, not the inside of a goddam bee hive. Apparently these horns are called vuvuzelas by the locals and “irritating” by everybody else. Also, it takes away one of the greatest things about watching soccer, which is listening to thousands of people with blood-alcohol levels higher than their IQs chant weird songs and obscenities in foreign languages. Plus, the horns are constant. Sure, cowbells and thundersticks are irritating, but people only play those once in awhile on important plays. Whereas these things are going constantly with no rhyme or reason to them. I’m not exactly sure how that is even possible; there must be a lot of people in the stadium passing out from oxygen deprivation.

The FIFA considered banning these horns, but as with all foreign officials, they suddenly remembered that they have no testicles and decided not to. Now, they made up some lame excuse like “it’s part of their culture.” Really? I’ve never heard of these things before, and I doubt two dollar little pieces of plastic that were probably made by children in China can be considered “culture.” And if it is a tradition, then it is a stupid one. I bet if you blew that thing outside of the stadium you would immediately be eaten by lions (not because they are hungry, but just to shut them up). Besides, culture and tradition are overrated. Cannibalism and watching Ashton Kutcher movies is a culture in some places; that doesn’t make it okay.

That is just one of the reasons that I don’t think we should ever let South Africa host anything ever again. Another is that every soccer match comes on at about 2 in the morning. Okay, that may be exaggerating a little bit, but normally by the time I get up half of the games are done. My friends in Hawaii have yet to actually see any of the games, since they come on there before the sun is even up. It’s bad enough that people in Hawaii had to watch the NBA Finals Game 7 at 3 in the afternoon, but nobody is going to get up early just to watch soccer.

It really is too bad, because this has been an exciting World Cup start (at least by soccer standards). I’m mainly just happy because the French have not won a game yet. Also, the U.S has not been that bad and still has a chance to advance. Their first game against England was a tie, thanks to a blunder by the English goaltender on a save that nine out of ten third graders probably could have made (and let’s be honest, he will probably never be seen alive again).

Then, we fell behind 2-0 to Slovenia in our second game earlier today before staging one of the biggest come backs in soccer history to tie the game. Now, there were several things I got mad about in this game. First off, I’m not sure Slovenia is actually a country. I’ve never heard of it, and apparently neither has my spell-check. Second, we actually should have won, but the referee called off our third goal even though the replays show that if anything, the U.S was fouled. This just proves that the entire world is jealous of America and is trying everything they can to stop us from taking the last thing they can beat us at besides getting diseases. The ref is just lucky that this was the U.S he screwed and not some fanatical European country, or he would probably have been shot by now.

Now, the World Cup has not gone off without some hitches. For one thing, we have our first soccer related death. This story proves several things. First, you should never try to separate a man from his remote control, because he will fight to the death to keep it. Second, this is why religious shows are evil; they mind-control crazy people. Also, this just shows that women are crazy. I just hope that all you future wives out there remember this story the next time you try and make your husband stop watching sports and you are overwhelmed with crippling remorse. Then you should go get us some chips.

Anyway, dead people and blind refs aside, this World Cup has a chance to be a good one. We just need to do one thing, and I am reaching out to all of you who are going to these games. If the person next to you is blowing one of those stupid horns, punch them in the face. Unless it is a child. Then you should punch them in the stomach. If you oppose violence, stuff a hot dog into it. If everybody does their part, we can all watch the rest of the World Cup in peace. If not, then I might have to resort to watching gospel shows.

The World Cup: Let's Kick Balls!

It’s time to break out the face paint and the beer, because it’s time for the World Cup! That’s right, the worldwide soccer tournament that happens every four years and probably involves more drinking and rioting in three weeks than the entire 19^th century (By the way, why is everything every four years? Why is never anything every three years? Or every eleven?) The World Cup is the greatest sporting event in the world, and frankly I don’t really care about it. Lesser people might be tempted to pretend they love and know soccer to sound sophisticated, but the last thing I want to be known for is being cultured.

I mean let’s be serious for a second here. I am a big a sports fan as there is, but I just never saw the appeal to international soccer. For one thing, there’s not enough offense in international soccer. They score goals about as often as Ricky Martin scores with the ladies. Half of the games end in scoreless ties, and half of the time that is what they want anyway. There is a reason that they celebrate like they cured cancer every time they score: it’s probably harder. Hockey is another low scoring game, but at least the action is fast and there is lots of hitting. Whereas in soccer they just kick the ball back and forth across the middle of the field, and if a player gets within even shouting distance of another player, that player will collapse in pain apparently so excruciating that they stay down on the ground long enough that the grass under them dies.

I mean, I don’t know what goes on in European schools, but if you have ever watched basketball or soccer involving Europeans, you can only assume they spent their elementary school days wrapped in bubble wrap. They are very sensitive to touch. If they are touched, they will fly backward as if possessed by some unseen malevolent force and lie screaming in excruciating pain on the ground. Unless the ref doesn’t call it, in which case they bound up to their feet and begin to argue while limping on the wrong leg. Now, that’s why I actually liked watching high school soccer. Our high school girl’s soccer team ran train on everybody. And I mean that literally, some of those girls ran over people; I was genuinely afraid of at least half of them. They were all nice people, but when they stepped onto the field (or “pitch” if you want to be an anal little dweeb) the part of their brain that has kindness and emotion and sympathy just sort of shut off (I find women in malls have a similar reaction).

Speaking of wussy Europeans, that is the other reason I don’t like soccer. We aren’t very good at it. As a flag-waving, French-hating American patriot, I denounce everything that the Europeans are better at than us, like using bidets. And it’s not just the Europeans; even all those little poor countries dealing cocaine down in South America are better than us. Even the announcers are all foreign .I’m pretty sure that just before the start of the Cup, ESPN just goes around hiring the people with the most ridiculous accents, regardless of whether or not they know anything about soccer.

I mean, in most sports the U.S just dominates. Sure, there are a few Canadian teams here and there, but it’s not like I wake up every morning worrying about what the Toronto Raptors are going to do. But America plays soccer about as well as Hellen Keller plays Pictionary. Of course, that could be because we don’t take soccer as seriously as these other countries; although that is probably a good thing. These places take their soccer a little too seriously, and frankly it scares me. I mean, fans have killed players and refs that have cost them games. They have demolished entire cities over losses (and wins for that matter) and riot like the world is going to end tomorrow. I say we tell these soccer fans that Osama bin Laden in some way will cancel 2014’s World Cup and the next thing you know Osama will have fifty drunken hooligans trying to burn down his cave. This is why the only reason I might care about the World Cup is if America can win a few games. Nothing would make me happier than hooligans rioting their countries back into the Stone Age because we beat them at a silly little game where you can’t even use your hands.

Now, believe it or not, I used to be a soccer player myself, and I did my country proud by being horrible at it. Like every other kid, I was in AYSO growing up. Of course, since I was not the graceful epitome of athleticism I am today, I mainly played defense. And that is only because AYSO has a policy where you have to let every kid play. Although frankly, I would have been fine with sitting out the entire game. All I remember is that it was always ridiculously hot, and the chairs under the tent were way more appealing to me. I played from kindergarten until sixth grade – that’s seven years – and I never scored one goal. Ever. The Cubs have nothing on me as far as droughts go.

Eventually, the coaches never wanting to put me up front led me to becoming a decent defender and goalie. The highlight of my soccer career was in fifth grade, when I made a diving stop on a breakaway to preserve the win. OR at least I think that’s what happened. I might have just fallen down and let the goal through. It happened a while ago, so I don’t really remember. But what I do know is that when the U.S soccer team takes the field, I will know exactly what they are going through. Especially the losing part.

I Love Hockey, EH! I Love Drinking, EH! I Love Canada, EH?

Now I will admit that I pick on Canada a lot, and that may be unfair. Because as much as I make fun of them for being drunken, rioting hockey-heads, they are actually a classy bunch of people. Oh, wait, never mind.

Basically, the Montreal Canadiens win a game and their fans then proceed to light their city on fire. By the way, who names their team after their country? It’s a little arrogant don’t you think? Not to mention not very creative (but at least this way, every drunken fan can call themselves the team mascot). Now just to make it clear, the game that the Montreal Canadiens won was not the championship game. It was not even the conference finals. It was the conference semi-finals. I make fun of hockey a lot, but I really do like hockey, and the playoffs in particular are very exciting. But rioting after two series? Of course it’s always possible that this was just an average Thursday in Canada. I would bet money that at least one drunken rioter, when asked about the game, responded: “There was a hockey game tonight?”

I remember sitting on the couch watching fans at the game jumping up and spilling beer on themselves while screaming their lungs out. The sad part is that if I just saw that scene, I would still have no idea who was winning the game. I once went to a Denver Nuggets game against the Toronto Raptors. There was a small section of Toronto fans waving Canadian flags and consuming at least half of the beer in the building. Even though there were thirty of these Canadians in a crowd of 20,000 Americans, the loudest part of the game was the singing of the Canadian national anthem, which I’m pretty sure even the Canadians don’t know the words to. I just heard “Oh Canada!” really loud followed by what sounded like thirty drunk people all mumbling different things. Anyway, the Nuggets were routing the Raptors, yet the happiest people in the building were the Raptors fans, who either are unaware of the rules of basketball, unable to count, or too drunk to give a damn either way.

But you can bet that Canadians care much more about their hockey. When you are only good at a few things (and one of those things are producing irritating singers like Justin Bieber), you have to take pride in those things. I’m sure you all remember the epic gold medal game between the US and Canada a few months ago. Now, we Americans were bummed for a little while that we lost, but we were frankly just happy we got that far. But Canada? If they had lost that game there would have been more suicides than a Jonestown reenactment. To defend their honor, Canada probably would have mobilized their army and invaded our country. Of course, by “mobilized their army” I mean loading seven drunk guys in the back of a truck and by “invade our country” I mean start a few fires in Maine.

What’s ironic is that the hero of that gold medal game was Sidney Crosby, who scored the winning goal. In the days after that win, you probably couldn’t find one woman in the country that didn’t want to have Sidney Crosby’s child. You probably would have had a hard time finding men who didn’t want to have Crosby’s baby. But how quickly things change when most of your country’s population has alcohol-induced short-term memory loss. Canadien’s fans were actually burning pictures of Crosby (who was on the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that the Canadiens beat), which is pretty much the equivalent of burning pictures of Jesus in Canada.

But we now have to look at the bigger picture. Montreal will now face the winner of tomorrow’s game between Boston and Philadelphia, two cities not exactly known for their restraint either. So no matter what happens, the streets will be filled with drunken hockey hooligans. I mean, if Canadiens fans rioted this much after a second round series, can you imagine what would happen if they won the Stanley Cup? The entire eastern half of Canada will just become engulfed in flames. People in space are going to look down and think “Oh s**t they won.”

So unless you want French-Canada to end up as a pile of ashes (and think hard about your answer to that), we need to take immediate action. We need to start cheering for the San Jose Sharks, who are in the Western Conference finals against the Chicago Blackhawks, to minimize rioting. I’m pretty sure that very few people in San Jose are aware of the fact that they even have a hockey team, much less that they are in the conference finals. If they win, their fans will react the same way they do to everything in Southern California: they will get high and sit on the beach. Of course we could also root for Chicago, whose fans will try to take to the streets to riot but will probably freeze to death before they can do anything.

A Method to the March Madness

March is one of my favorite months. It has the best holiday in St. Patrick’s Day (really, can you get an better than a holiday that celebrates drinking and being Irish?) and the weather begins to get better. But most importantly, March is when one of the greatest sporting events known to mankind takes place: the Iditarod Dog-Sled Race.

I was just joking of course. Dog-sledding combines three of my least favorite things in the world: snow, dogs, and moving fast, so needless to say the very concept of dog-sledding offends me. I was actually talking about March Madness. For those of you who might not know what March Madness is (cough, cough, women), March Madness is the tournament that determines men’s college basketball champion every year. 64 teams compete in a single elimination tournament that goes on over the course of three weeks. This means that the national champion is determined by actual games, whereas the college football champion is largely determined by some sort of mystical entity called the BCS, which takes into account a team’s record, voter opinions, the alignment of Saturn, the migration patterns of Maine lobsters, and Liza Minnelli’s mood every morning to determine who gets to play for the title.

But that isn’t the only thing that makes the tournament so wonderful. During the first couple of rounds, there are up to 32 games to be played in a day. This means a lot of basketball games to watch, which takes time away from unproductive and unpleasant tasks, like work. And not only do we get hours upon hours of games, but they are always exciting. That’s because if a game becomes boring, the station simply switches to a more entertaining game. This is good, because we really don’t need to see some Ivy League school get blasted by a bunch of guys who have servants to take their exams for them.

And I haven’t even gotten to the best part of March Madness: the brackets. It’s tradition to fill out a bracket for the tournament, predicting the winners of each game. This is great, since normally gambling on sports is frowned upon (or at least that’s what they said when my friend and I tried to get an AYSO sports book going). But this is the one time of the year when everybody fills out a bracket, even people who know as much about basketball as French women know about shaving.

The crazy thing is that the tournament is so unpredictable that often the people who know the least about basketball often end up making good picks. Everybody has their own strategy for picking games. In fact, a lot of people I’ve talked to actually choose based on the school’s mascots. However, this can get tricky, since it is possible this year that the Minnesota Gophers meet the Richmond Spiders. I hate spiders, and I’m not exactly sure if I’ve ever had to think about how I feel about gophers. Also, what if the Syracuse Orange meat the North Texas Mean Green? They should make a law against giving your school a lame mascot, and a color is definitely a lame mascot. And don’t even get me started on what would happen if the Villanova Wildcats meet the Kansas State Wildcats, with the winner then meeting the Kentucky Wildcats (and yes, this is a possible scenario).

So you should follow my advice, because I am very consistent. The teams I pick are great. The only problem they have is they tend not to score as many points as the other team. My brackets normally tank worse than Nicholas Cage movies. This might be because I have a hard time staying objective. For instance, in the first round Florida plays Brigham Young University. I don’t really like BYU because they used to beat up Hawaii in football and I don’t really get Mormonism. (I mean, being married to one woman is stressful enough, but who is stupid enough to marry five? And they have to do this without the help of drugs). But I hate the University of Florida because Tim Tebow is the spawn of the devil. So for the Florida-BYU game I picked Penn State, because I don’t want either team to win. It’s these types of decisions that normally do me in, seeing as it will be hard for Penn State to win a game they technically are not involved in.

So I’ve filled out a bracket with a Final Four of Syracuse, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky, with Kentucky beating Syracuse in the final. But that probably won’t happen. I am more likely to steal a leprechaun’s pot of gold. Although come to think of it, I already did that today. But I might want to let him go, because there’s an amber alert out for an Irish kid who looks a lot like the leprechaun I have locked in the basement.

Tiger In the Rough

In case you haven’t heard, the big news today is that Tiger Woods is making his first public appearance since his life fell apart faster than Lindsey Lohan’s movie career. It’s been several months since anybody has even seen him; for all we know he was going to walk out to the press conference white and announce he was opening a ranch for children. I didn’t actually watch the press conference, because it happened before I woke up. But that’s okay! Because ESPN went into Beast Mode, when they talk about nothing but Tiger Woods all the time (if this sounds familiar, they do it every offseason with Brett Favre).

Anyway, even if he didn’t crash and burn quite as bad as Michael Jackson (after all, the guy died, and there isn’t really a lower low than that), Tiger sure did give it the old college try (by that I mean he tried to sleep with everyone he met). It all started when Woods crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant about five feet from his house, which was the first warning sign. Men don’t crash into things five feet from their own house. Women do. The other suspicious sign was that this occurred at about two in the morning. Now, with the exception of Lassie reruns on Animal Planet, almost nothing good happens after two in the morning, especially for married fathers.

Slowly the details finally came out that Tiger’s wife had apparently gotten mad at him for something and turned his head into a driving range, giving him a concussion and causing him to crash. This just proves that every single car accident in the world is caused in some way or form by women. Anyway, it then came out that the reason was that his wife Elin had found out that Tiger Woods was having an affair. Of course, we would later find out that by “affair,” he meant “I slept with enough women to repopulate an entire country.” This especially puzzling when you consider that Tiger’s wife looks like this. But maybe Tiger was simply trying to break Wilt Chamberlain’s record of 20,000 women.

Now, all of this news was devastating to his career. I mean, finding out you’ve slept with dozens of women behind your family’s back would ruin most people’s reputations (unless it’s Jude Law, in which case everybody would just pass it off as a juvenile attempt to convince the world he wasn’t gay). But it was especially damaging to Tiger, whose entire image was that of a person who never got into trouble and was as clean as a whistle. (By the way, I never got that saying. I mean, whistle’s go into everybody’s mouths, so I don’t know how clean they are).

There was a while where Tiger Woods pretty much sponsored everything, including (but not limited to): razors, cars, power drills, dating websites, condoms, tampons, birth control, etc. But apparently a healthy sex drive is not something that companies like to have associated with their product which is confusing if you watch commercials today, which appear to want to convey one message, which is: SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX.

So to solve this problem, Tiger has gone to sex rehab to treat his apparent sex addiction. Now I personally do not think there is such a thing as “sex addiction.” There are people who are having lots of sex, and those who wish they were having lots of sex. Technically, by Darwinian standards, Tiger is what we call a success. People like T.S. Eliot on the other hand who never have kids and just write a whole bunch of jibberish poems are what we refer to as “failures.”

Lost in all of this is what will happen to golf. That’s because nobody cares what happens to golf. But those who do care have to admit that most people couldn’t name a golfer other than Tiger Woods anyway. So golf might have to find a new temporary star. I propose Phil Mickelson who, while Tiger was sleeping with hookers, was helping his wife and mother deal with breast cancer. The only way he could be more wholesome and family friendly is if he crapped fruit loops.

Personally, if I were Tiger I would retire from golf and try to mend my family. Not because I care about family, but if his wife leaves him, she’ll take half his money and his kids. That is a lot of money, and since Tiger was dropped by a bunch of his sponsors, he doesn’t just get free stuff anymore. So keep Tiger in your prayers. He’s got a reputation that is falling apart and he’s married to an angry woman with access to plenty of golf clubs. I don’t care how much money he has, that is a scary thought.

Got Luge?

The weather in Boulder (and pretty much everywhere else east of Las Vegas) has taken a turn for the worse, and many experts believe that at least half the country will die in the next week (by many experts, I mean me and the unstable guy who sits next to me in my media history class). Thankfully, this weekend is the start of a wonderful television event that will unite people from all different walks of life and countries to yell at each other in different languages. That’s right, it is time once again for the Winter Olympics; which along with presidential elections, leap year, and Jake Gyllenhaal movies, is one of those dreaded events that occurs every four years.

Now, allow me to explain why I don’t like the Winter Olympics. It somehow manages to combine so many things that I do not like: Canadians, snow, cold weather, Canadians, hockey, men in leotards, NBC, Canadians, extreme sports peoples, people with funny accents, and last but not least, beavers (I am going on the assumption that beavers are somehow involved in the Winter Olympics). Also, I don’t like sporting events that the US doesn’t dominate. I am a patriot. So you can imagine why I would not look highly upon an event in which miserable little snowbound countries like Norway get glory. The only reason these countries do well is because they have nothing else to do trapped in the snow all year but practice skiing and inbreeding.

I mean, just think about it for a second. At least three-quarters of the events in the Winter Olympics aren’t even sports (or if they are, they are very boring sports). Take curling for instance. If you want to go see people sweeping the floor, go into a kitchen and watch women (that horribly sexist remark was sponsored by “Valentine’s Day,” starring a whole bunch of people you can’t stand and five large fish). I mean, there are a bunch like the biathalon or the octathon or the geriatricthon that I’m pretty sure just randomly combine a bunch of stuff together like a winter sports hot dog. I’m not certain here, but I think there is even one that involves skiing and shooting a gun, which is not so much a sport as something a person might do in winter after consuming too much alcohol.

One of the more popular “sports” in the Winter Olympics is ice skating, even though I am still not exactly sure why any male would ever watch ice skating. Maybe you could say that it involves women in skimpy outfits, but most of them are five years old and are raised in the same cages used to stunt growth that house gymnasts. Ice skating just sort of involves going around in circles and then jumping and falling down (which, let’s be honest, is the only interesting part). And don’t even get me started on Johnny Weir.

Thankfully there has been a recent shift towards more extreme winter sports. This is good because US competitors tend to be better at these events. However, this is bad because nobody who isn't stoned knows what the hell is going on in extreme sports. Have you ever watched extreme sports with a stoner? This person can’t remember how to spell their last name, but they can watch some random flipping and instantly identify it as a “540 backflip over-under daisy chain cross-grab.” I’m almost certain that the announcers are just making things up as they go.

Announcer #1: “And he approaches the ramp… oh my god he just pulled a 645.8 double-pump tomahawk twisty-tie celery biscuit triple-bypass spiral notebook spleen toss! Dude that was rad!”

Announcer #2: Cough, cough. Gasp. “Man I’m hungry. We should order like fifty Sausage McMuffins.”

It doesn’t help that unlike the Summer Olympics, I have school during the Winter Olympics. That means I’m a little too busy pretending to be busy to watch bobsledding in the middle of the day. And apparently nobody else does either, because NBC anticipates they will lose $10 million dollars on the Winter Olympics. Now I am neither a business major nor a math major, but something about that doesn’t seem smart to me. I think they might be better off televising a large pile of money being burned. I actually might watch that, because it might make me feel a little warmer.

The one thing that is kind of cool about this year’s Games is that they are taking place in Whistler. I’ve been to Whistler two times and I liked it. Not because of the skiing or the snow, but they had this really good restaurant called Mongoli Grill. But while we were up there a few years ago we did see some of the sites where some of the events were to take place. The locals were pretty excited about the Games; you could hear it in the higher pitch of their “ehs!” And after walking around, I understood why. Unlike NBC, Vancouver was ready to cash in on this thing. You couldn’t walk five feet without seeing some sort of Olympics merchandise. They just take a $5 t-shirt, put that stupid Olympic multi-colored lego-Frankenstein logo on it and BAM: it costs you $50.

Of course, the only thing I want from there is poutine. Poutine is a Canadian dish made by topping fries with cheese curds and gravy and is my favorite food in the world. You know what’s fun? Eat an entire bowl of poutine while watching curling and see what kills you first: boredom or severe artery blockage.

S-p-e-l-i-n-g S-u-k-s

As a sports fan, I love this time of year. It’s the time of year when I start cheering against the LA Lakers and the Detroit Red Wings and the nation is captivated by America’s Pastime (pretending to like baseball). But don’t forget one of the truly great sporting events of the year: the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Some of you are asking if spelling is a sport. Well, to decide that, I use this rule of thumb: If I can’t do it and it’s on ESPN, it is a sport, so spelling is definitely a sport. For those of you who have never watched the National Spelling Bee, you should stop having a life and watch one. The first one I can remember watching was in Mr. Day’s English class in high school. I don’t really remember why we were watching ESPN instead of doing work, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with several of us claiming it had to do with English and Mr. Day being close to retiring and not really caring at that point.

Anyway, it gets pretty intense. These poor children stand up there in front of this huge crowd with cameras and bright lights in their face and have to spell a word that the officials clearly made up five seconds ago. Most of the kids get this stunned look of fear and confusion; if you’ve ever seen my face while someone is explaining the concept of catheters (I’m assuming here that you haven’t) then you know the face. But it’s embarrassing to just come out and say they have no idea how to spell the word, so they stall by asking questions that clearly have nothing to do with how the word is spelled, like “What is the country of origin?” Often they ask the same question twice. Of course they always ask the judges to use the word in a sentence, but the officials always choose a sentence that doesn’t help you at all, like “Bobby opened a book and saw the word guerdon,” or “Bobby was asked to spell the word guerdon,” or “Hey look! It’s not a guerdon!” Finally, the kid’s time runs out and he tries his best to spell the word but inevitably fails, and the crowd goes “awwww,” and the kid tries their hardest not to cry. And it was always a word that was pronounced simply enough but for some reason (once again, I blame the French) contains way to many b’s, x’s, and h’s. For instance, the word will be pronounced “Ball” but it will be spelled “Bhauxle.”

Of course, some kids manage to somehow get these words right (my guess is steroids). This year’s winner was Kavya Shivashankar, who correctly spelled Laodicean, which is some kind of city in Asia (although I always thought that they couldn’t give you proper nouns; or at least that’s what I contended when I misspelled Tennessee and Connecticut in a middle school spelling bee). For some reason, Indian children tend to be really good at Spelling Bees, probably from all the practice they get trying to spell each other’s names. Last year’s winner was named Sameer Mishra and one of this year’s runner-ups was named Aishwarya Pastapur (but then again, the other runner-up was named Tim). Another thing that all of these children have in common is that they are all from boring little states where there probably aren’t a whole lot of things to do and practicing how to spell words is considered a jolly good time. For instance, kids from Kansas win a lot of these things. Just take a look at the states that the top six spellers this year are from: Kansas, Virginia, two from Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. If you told me I could either take a month-long road trip to these states or stick my foot in a bucket of live eels the next thing you would see is me running off to Chinatown barefoot.

Needless to say, people in Hawaii rarely have a rooting interest in these things (although I would like to see if Kavya can spell Kaahumanu and Liliuokalani). But this year, one speller, eighth-grader Talmage Nakamoto managed to place eleventh despite being from my hometown and going to the same school system I went to. This of course is a great source of pride in town, which happens every time someone from Konawaena does anything remotely intelligent (which is not as often as you would think of a school system that produced such a super nova of intelligence such as myself). This of course brought back memories of my days as a speller in middle school. Yes, believe it or not, I once tried to compete in our school’s spelling bee, and I, like Talmage, had dreams of competing under the bright lights. Unfortunately, that dream ended when I was unable to spell the first round word, which was (brace yourself): spaghetti. I am completely serious, I didn’t know how to spell spaghetti (actually, I still don’t, but when I just typed it in the red squiggly line appeared under it so I auto-corrected it; I’ve also used auto-correct every time I have used the word unfortunately in this story). Now, my excuse was that I don’t like spaghetti and rarely eat it, but for some reason the judges didn’t care. This whole situation is sad on several levels. For one thing, it shows you what kind of school I went to where “spaghetti” is even in a spelling bee. So obviously, my failure at the spelling bee was just the start of a life-long trend of failing at sports. Which is ironic, since I work as a sports journalist. Kavya may be the National Spelling Bee Champion, but I can spell Wally Szczerbiak from memory.

Skins Game

Last night I was looking through the night’s sports scores when I stumbled upon a golf story that made we wonder why I didn’t just go to sleep like I should have. Apparently, for one reason or another, one of the golfers took a shot – wearing nothing but his underwear. The first thing I thought was that for some reason ESPN started covering strip golf, which isn’t a bad idea when you think about it. I’m pretty sure all those southern hick golf courses would start letting women in if they could play strip golf.

But this was a big tournament (Tiger Woods himself was playing in this tournament) and the golfer in the tighty-whiteys was Henrik Stenson, who is the seventh ranked player in the world. As it turns out, Stenson hit a shot into a muddy area, and apparently he did this before and got really muddy. So instead of getting his nice clothes muddy, he just took them off and hit his shot. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but his caddie is a woman (I swear I am not making this up), so you never know. Regardless of whose idea it was, I think we can all acknowledge that it was a bad idea. It’s one thing if Tiger Woods did it. Tiger Woods is actually an athlete who walks around in tight red muscle shirts that rip when he pumps his fists (I think it’s ironic that he does such a manly looking act after doing an act that requires so little strength they set up putting courses for two-year old girls). But most of the golfers on the tour look like, well, they look like white guys who golf all day. They have tan lines where there visors are. This guy was so white you couldn’t tell where his underwear started and his skin ended. What’s worse is that he got a bogey on the whole anyway (for those of you who don’t know how golf is scored, it doesn’t matter).

This act did however make me happy in a way. You see, the one thing that I don’t like about golf is the dress code. I remember when I was young, my mom took me to a golf course to help with a charity tournament. I tried to get onto the course, but I was yelled at by the angry woman running the place that I couldn’t golf in shorts, slippers, and a t-shirt. Needless to say, I became deeply upset and from then on I hated playing on golf courses. So this guy is my new hero. If I had my own private golf course, I would probably golf in my underwear. Although to be fair, if I had my own private anything I would probably walk around in my underwear in it, including (but not limited to) basketball court, theater, and paintball course. I hate almost anything that won’t let me wear shorts, slippers, and t-shirts (work, weddings, funerals, exercise, the entire state of Colorado, Canada, etc.). Which is too bad, because I like everything else about golf. You get to go out in the sun, take leisurely strolls through scenic areas with nice grass, and drive golf carts. This past winter break, two friends and I got bored one night (as happens every night in a small town like Kona) and decided to stop by the local driving range. It was great, because it was at night, we were the only ones there, and we could wear whatever we wanted. So we rented a pair of drivers and a bucket of balls and teed up. Within seconds, I had sent a ball sideways into the dividers and nearly nailed one of my friends in the face. You see, I forgot to mention I am about as good at golf as amputees are at Twister. Regardless, we had a great time.

I also like to watch golf on TV. It is surprisingly relaxing to watch it; it moves at such a leisurely pace, you get to watch scenic shots with fake bird music in the background and the announcers are very quiet (I still don’t get why they have to be quiet; it’s not like they are anywhere near the golfer). But golf is coming off a down year without Tiger Woods (apparently his knee was injured so they had to take him to whatever factory they built him in and get him new parts). So I have a new idea to get people watching golf that I’ve already mentioned earlier in the story: strip golf. Golf already has a pro-ams (where celebrities compete) and they already have skins games (I don’t know why they call them that; do I have to explain everything for you? Go look it up on Google). So after we combine the two we get: “Golfing with the Stars.” What we do is invite hot celebrity pairs to go golfing, and the loser of each hole has to remove an item of clothing. I’m sure FOX would air it. Jessica Alba can be one of the first contestants. Here’s to hoping she is at bad at golf as I am.

Phelps' Secret Swimming Formula

In case you don’t keep up with all the latest celebrity scandals, a picture of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps smoking marijuana out of a bong has surfaced (haha pun). Story is that Phelps just showed up to some college party doing what all young males are doing when we show up for parties: looking for chicks, drinks, and drugs. Apparently Phelps found at least one. I’m sure this is not the first time that he has done this; I mean he’s Michael Phelps, he could get into any party he wants.

But this party was ruined by “that person.” They are the people who apparently think it is a great idea to take pictures of everybody at parties and then post them up all over the internet. Okay, so a lot of people probably took pictures with Phelps that night. But those pictures were just to take out for the grandkids to convince them that at one time you were cool. “See, I once got wasted with a 16-time Olympic medalist. What have you done with your life?”

My first reaction to the photo was “Well DUH!” I mean, of course Michael Phelps smokes dope. It would explain so much. I mean, have you ever listened to the guy talk? He sounded stoned in all of his interviews with NBC. Plus, have you ever seen how much the guy eats? You thought that was because of his strenuous workouts? No, it’s because he always has the munchies from smoking the green. Besides, Phelps was pulled over at the age of 19 for a DUI, so this is not his first run in with the law.

Some people are thinking that this will tarnish his image, particularly as a role model. I don’t see this as a negative for society overall. You just know that after the Beijing Olympics, tons of helicopter parents began signing their children up for these ridiculously expensive swim programs in the hopes of making their kid the next Michael Phelps. The parents of the kids who don’t make it in one of the cash sports always need an obscure sport to enroll their child in so they can someday hope to watch them on TV (how else do you explain lacrosse?). Maybe now that parents have become disenchanted with Phelps, they’ll go back to raising their children in rabbit cages in the hopes of creating the next Shawn Johnson.

If anything, this whole scandal just increases my opinion of Michael Phelps. I used to swim competitively in high school, and I have seen swimmers who could swim non-stop for hours struggle to swim in kiddie pools after smoking dope. Swimming is not a sport you can do stoned. If you’re high in soccer, yeah you stumble around and fall down, but they will just think you’re faking an injury, which soccer players do all the time. But in swimming, you just drown. So if Michael Phelps is swimming stoned, he is truly amazing. Even more outstanding is that Phelps owned up to his mistake. Sure, he was dropped by Kellogs as a sponsor (even though I bet a large portion of people that consume cereal are stoned college students) and was suspended by U.S Swimming, but this whole incident just makes him feel more like us: a goofy college kid who just happens to swim fast. Besides, it was the offseason. I’m sure every athlete in the world smokes pot in the offseason.

ALERT: ANTI-TIM TEBOW RANT:

Except of course, Tim Tebow, because Tim Tebow is perfect (that sound you hear is me vomiting). For those of you who don’t know, Tebow is the quarterback for the University of Florida Gators. I have never hated an athlete more than I hate Tim Tebow. Everybody seems to think that Tim Tebow is the pinnacle of human evolution or something, even though I think he looks closer to Neanderthal than Homo sapien. Everybody keeps talking about what a great and humble kid he is, yet he talks more trash than anybody. The reason I first didn’t like him was when he started talking about how he thought Colt Brennan of the University of Hawaii was a system quarterback and that he didn’t deserve the Heisman. Nobody talked about this, but when UH Coach June Jones said exactly the same thing of Tim Tebow, the media pulled its groin leaping to the defense of Tebow.

When Tim Tebow was flagged for taunting in the title game (while backing away from the other player might I add), the announcer had the nerve to say “I bet that’s the first thing he’s done wrong in his life.” He earlier had said “If you spend 15 minutes with Tebow your life will be better for it.” Blehh. The guy is a talentless hack. He does what any 6’5’’ guy would do when given the ball; he runs straight forward and runs over small cornerbacks and celebrates like he just cured cancer. I’m pretty sure he is legally retarded. This is what’s going through his mind on the field:

“Haha, Coach gave Timmy ball. Timmy run with ball. Why people chase Timmy? Timmy no do nothing wrong. Now Timmy mad. Timmy hurt mean man with scary mask. Hey, that man dressed like zebra. Timmy like zebras.”

END OF TIM TEBOW RANT ALERT

So in short, let’s give Michael Phelps a break. At least he’s not Tim Tebow.

The Superbowl Shuffle

Tomorrow is the best day of the year. Forget Christmas, forget New Years, even forget National Mustard Day. (Which, by the way, is the first Saturday of August. No really, look it up.) This is Superbowl week. Over twenty weeks of yelling and eating and spitting have come down to this one day. Of course, needless to say, my team (the Jacksonville Jaguars) is not playing in the Superbowl. Judging by the way they played, they were not playing from about the fourth game of the season.

But then again, the Jaguars have never been to a Superbowl, and I’ve still watched the Superbowl since before I could read (fifth grade). Technically, only two groups of fans see their teams get to the big game every year, and yet we will always watch. Think about it, everybody watches the Superbowl, even certain people (cough… women… cough) who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the Denver Broncos and the Backstreet Boys (hint: there is none). But that’s okay, cause in an ideal world, the women will be in the kitchen talking about feelings and all that other unimportant stuff while making food for the men watching the game.

But what is it about the Superbowl that everyone loves? Sure it’s a football game, but it’s more than that. It’s a celebration of everything uniquely American: football, greasy food, watery beer, big TV’s, and commercials. A lot of commercials. In fact, that’s what many people claim is the most interesting part of the Superbowl. These aren’t just any commercials, these companies spend more on thirty seconds that nobody will remember in a week than you and everyone you know will earn in a lifetime.

Which is good in a way, because then they put some actual effort into making the commercial. During regular season games, all you see is truck commercials that appear to have turned into reality shows, with trucks and truckers (with rugged stereo-types like Fireman and Construction written on their shirts) going through Survivor type challenges. Why is it that all car commercials show cars speeding around on empty highways overlooking ocean vistas or rambling through the woods? None of us do that. A real car commercial would show cars going to McDonalds at 2 in the morning or being stuck in traffic.

But if you think those commercials are bad, imagine the commercials that get rejected by the networks. With TV standards now-a-days, you have to put something pretty strange on TV to get people outraged. So I’ll give you three guesses at who got one of their Superbowl commercials rejected by NBC. It’s my longtime nemesis: PETA (I can’t even get through a note about the Superbowl without bashing PETA). The ad is flaunting some study that shows that vegetarian’s have better sex than everyone else. I don’t know who is in charge of PETAs marketing, but I would be willing to bet it is a guy, because every ad PETA has appears to have half-naked women running around. If I had no idea what PETA was and saw their ads, I would think PETA stood for Prostitutes Eat Tomatoes and Artichokes. What we need are more ads like the E*trade baby. I love that guy. I would trust him with my hedge funds. They should also bring back the Quizno’s rats,

Then there is the halftime show. Last year, one of the greatest bands ever, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played at halftime and I couldn’t have been happier. But this year, some idiot thought that people actually like Bruce Springsteen. Well, outside of New Jersey and parts of his immediate family, nobody likes Bruce Springsteen. Studies show that Americans would rather listen to radio static than Bruce Springsteen (data courtesy of PETA). Okay, so I might be a bit biased, because I do not like Bruce Springsteen, and I might actually walk out of the room during halftime. Of course, last year I could have watched the Lingerie Bowl at halftime. For those who don’t know what the Lingerie Bowl is (once again, I am referring to women), it used to be a football game played by models in lingerie. It probably set the feminist movement back fifty years, but sadly it was canceled this year. Not that I’ve ever watched it (it’s pay-per-view), but somehow, knowing it occurred made me feel better about the world.

As for the game itself, I don’t really have a rooting interest, I just hope the game is a close one. And just for the record, my prediction: Steelers 31 – Cardinals 17.