Layup FAIL

Stormtrooper FAIL

Civil Rights FAIL

Proper Perv Technique FAIL

Fellatio FAIL

Parenting FAIL

3Rs (reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmatic) FAIL

Mad Handles FAIL

Too Classy Reginald Blackstone FAIL

Second Amendment FAIL

There’s actually nothing wrong with this last one.  Isn’t that right, Pipez?

Brett Fav-re!  Brett Fav-re!  Brett Fav-re!  What a few weeks. I actually stopped hating him* during the Dallas game because he was so incredible (twss, and by “s” I mean your mom, and “s” was referring to me). I also felt bad for the exorcism pouding he took from the Saints. It was a strange feeling I had, like empathy wrapped in a bbq potato topped with nerds rope. Because that’s what was in my stomach at the time. And then he went and Brett Fav-red the whole thing up with that classic INT. It’s sad. It’s like when fat chicks try to get away with being fat, even though it’s totally against the law. You feel bad for them, but you’re a law-abiding citizen and you hope those criminals don’t eat you.

*I really do hate him, but don’t know why – he’s self-serving and whiny and an attention whore, but then again I write for a blog and you read a blog and then bottom post some inane crap about where high school seniors are going to matriculate. So we don’t really have any room to talk. It’s not Brett Fav-re’s fault ESPN wants to have sexual relations with him, or that a lot of companies want to pay him a lot of money to endorse their products. You wouldn’t say no to this, either. Oneton has an endorsement deal with Depends, and Chad rocks the Vagasil even though their corporate office call-blocked him. So why do we hate on Brett Fav-re for getting free Wranglers for the rest of his life? We hate him because we are jaded and feel strangely compelled to hate on something. It’s a symbiotic relationship and says more about us than about him. I’m guilty, too, of hating him with no good reason. Not that has ever stopped any of us before. Screw that guy. Motherscrewer.

On a related note, you remember the scene in The Rock where Nic Cage goes diving for the green bombs as they roll off the edge of the cliff, threatening to destroy everything in a hundred mile radius (2:48 of the clip below)? If we got to choose people to not catch the green bombs (think like jury selection), Adrian Peterson would be my number one choice. Here is a collection of The Life and Fumbles of AD. And if you need a primer on The Rock, well then…

I should probably talk about Houston Sports now…

Coogs: Our 3 uber-geeky fans are going nuts that we haven’t yet mentioned Brian Stewart (nickname: Stewie?) as our Defensive Coordinator. Simmah down, nah! I did put it below the fold just to screw with y’all. Chad has already gone on a 3-state murder spree like in Natural Born Killers, so maybe my choice wasn’t the best for society overall. In any case, our crappy defense got a crappy defensive coordinator from the worst team in America. I know he’s crappy because he lived in Dallas. Anyone from Dallas…hey, what’s this breaking news from The Examiner?

Prior to joining the Eagles, Stewart served as the Dallas Cowboy’s defensive coordinator for two seasons. Under his watch, the Cowboys’ defense collected consecutive top-10 rankings in overall yards allowed and top-three rankings in sacks.

A league-high five defenders (DeMarcus Ware, Roy Williams, Greg Ellis, Ken Hamlin and Terence Newman) made the Pro Bowl during Stewart’s first year in Dallas (2007).

Stewart was the secondary coach for the San Diego Chargers from 2004-2006. In his final season on the West Coast, the Chargers collected a league-high 61 sacks.

Holy crap, this guy is awesome!  He’s going to juvenate the defense in a way we’ve never seen (because rejuvenate means it used to be that way, and we both know our D has always sucked, and yes, twss). Cue Alleluia Chorus!

I’d write more here, but you should just refer to the 81 subsequent bottom-posts by 3 people. Over/under for Big Hitter is 20, Oneton is 30, and Chad is 168. So maybe there will be more like 200 bottom posts. Take that as a challenge, fanatical UH geeks! See if you can break our record of 42 bottom posts. Go!

Texans: If you’re looking for upside, we done pretty well with our mid-round pick last year, even though some people accused him of roiding up and/or man tits. I’m for moving up and drafting Eric Berry. That’s what I’ll be doing in Madden, and Madden strategies always work out in RL (says the Redskins front office). Also, Tim Bulman is doing a live chat on Thursday, so please feel free to ask questions like the following:

“Mr. Bulman, you’ve often said that your motor is high because if you don’t get a sack you feel like you are going to die. Isn’t there cognitive dissonance between the aforementioned statement and the fact that you haven’t yet died even though you have fewer than a dozen so called “sacks” in your various and sundry years as a professional footballer? Zing! I shall now call you Mr. Bulshit. Your response, sir?”

Rockets: Out-scrapped by the Hotlanta Hawks, 102-95. First time the Hawks have won in Houston since the ’90s. The game kind of sucked, with the Rox only shooting 23% from 3 and Josh Smith and Jamal Crawford going a bit crazy. But mostly it was Mike Bibby looking like the trick ass ho he always looks like. If he played in a larger market, he would be the most hated PG in the game. Don’t get me wrong – I loved him in ’02 with the Kings (mostly because I hated the Lakers, but those Kings were a super-fun team to watch). But over the years the headband and the high socks and the constant bitching and moaning and never becoming a great player got to me. He’s a d-bag and we really should hate him more. I remember an article about how he took 500 shots a day in the offseason, which seemed like a lot until word got out that Kobe took 2,000. Plus Bibby has been known to lay down when his team isn’t clicking. He’s the ultimate headband guy but no one seems to realize it.

Pipez: Says he took a sabbatical to become certified as a nuclear waste technician. Horsecrap! Photo evidence says otherwise. Pipez has been rubbing hisself all up and down with the peanut butter and cheering on 18 year old boys. Seriously. That picture looks just like Pipez, if he drank less and worked out more.

Astros: Arbitration with Wandy. Word is, the mole on Wandy’s face wants a 4- year extension.

Gary Coleman: Was arrested. Oh Noes!!! What are you talking about? Willis? Willis?  WILLIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????

Playoffs? Playoffs? Playoffs? Who wants a recap of the weekend’s football? Get it, Aaron Rodgers? Football!  Foot ball!!! Here you go!!!

What, the coffin fail wasn’t enough analysyzinging for you? /ingrates. That video was actually the best analysis one could hope for. Excepting the Cards and Pack, the weekend was full of competitive fail, starting early on Thursday with Gs Up, Horns Down. But this Smear shall be about professional footballing, not burnt orange bloodletting.

Caution: This isn’t going to be brief, so go ahead and get a cup of coffee, go to the bathroom, make sure you don’t have any meetings in the next 2 hours, etc… You’ve been fairly warned.

Side Note of Personal Privilege: The NFL Playoffs are a special time to the Random Family.  The Random Baby was born 2 days before the last Super Bowl, which we watched from her hospital room at the Women’s Hospital of Texas, which true to name does have a lot of women. If you’ll indulge me with 2 “then and now” pics, and then we can get on to the motherlovery. Thanks.

Then...

Now!!!

Cards at Packers: Holy crap, that was the crazyassest thing I ever done see. Starting with Aaron Rodgers throwing one little pass to his brother from another mother, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, it looked like the game was going nowhere fast, but ended up going fastwhere fast, knowhatimsayin? There are too many things to analyze, so I’ll analyze none of them and instead in homage to Rex making overcomplicated dumb nicknames ala Chris Berman, I’ll make overcomplicated dumbass nicknames. Kurt “Time” Warner “Brothers” had the best game anyone could expect from God’s chosen son. The news about him possibly retiring isn’t surprising, given that God’s other son, Tim Tebow, is coming in the league next year. This is just like the plot of Little Nicky. Or Highlander.

There can be only one (son of YHWH).

Aaron Carter Rodgers had himself a fine game besides the 1st and 5th quarters, too. Steve “My” Breaston”Brings All the Boys to the Yard” was supposed to be the guy who stepped up in the absence of Avon Barksdale Anquan Boldin, but instead Early Doucet kept his pimp hand strong with 2 first half TDs. I’d make up a name for Early if he didn’t sound like a gunslinger from Deadwood. Hey Early, 1789 called – they want their name back! Lolololololol. I also don’t have a name for Darnel Docket, but just know that he goes on the list of “guys I least want The Random Baby to date in 2030″. That list looks a little something like this:

• El Rat
• Darnel Docket
• Pipez
• Any of you aholes

Is the one on the right supposed to be classy? It does have a handkerchief.

Here are some other terrible nicknames before moving on:

• “My Name is Ghetto Twilight” LaRod Stephens-Howling
• Antrel Rolle”ing with the Homies”
• Chike “Monkey” Okeafor
• Neal “Nice” Rackers
• Donald Driver “Ms. Daisy”
• Larry “F. Scott” Fitzgerald
• “I’m Black Even Though My Name Isn’t” Ryan Grant

Ravens at Pats: It’s all about Ray Rice “Girls Are Ugly“. Actually the linked Facebook page really pisses me off. Rice Girls Are Ugly is the intellectual property of myself and TortillaZorro and I guess El Rat since he “mined the claim” by making the t-shirts for half a decade. MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, MOTHERLOVERS! Seriously. We came up with it in 1998 and our first t-shirts were 1999 or 2000. I’m like one of those starving artists whose genius won’t be recognized until 50 years after I’m dead. Let’s get back to the crappy nicknames. (TortillaZorro, can we sue that Facebook page?  Call me.)

• Derrick Mason “Dixon”
• LeRon “Not the Presidential Runner Up but Might be the Guy from Die Hard” McClain
• Tom “I make Joel Przybilla’s Name Look Rational” Zbikowski
• Dominique “You Might be a Redneck” Foxworth
• Matt “A.C.” Slater
• Gary “I Like” Guyton”s”
• Sebastian Vollmer – I’m not giving him a crappy nickname, just wanted to rep for the Coogs
• “I Sound Like Some Hot Southern Belle from Gone With the Wind Mated with a Taunton” Tully Banta-Cain
• This is getting boring. Let’s drop the shtick and move on.

That picture is so 2009. Don’t make me link to the Moveon poster. Too late. General Petraeus or General Betray-the-Coogs?

What happened yesterday yesteryear is inconsequential. The important thing is – breaking news, broken here first! – The University of Houston Men’s Football Team is undefeated in 2010! Our sterling record of 0-0 gives us an unfathomable winning percentage of infinity. Beat that, BCS!

Houston Sports Updates…

Coogs: Undefeated in 2010! Also – breaking news, broken here first! – Jackson Jeffcoat just committed to UH! In Pipez’ 2011 NCAA Football dynasty.

Rockets: Undefeated in 2010! And beat the Mavs last night, Dirk’s Sampson-esque hair notwithstanding. Shane Battier do what he do (11 timely points). Dirk didn’t resort to dentistry, and Aaron Breezey continues to make a push for an All Star snub.

Texans: Undefeated in 2010! Let’s hope this year is more Chris Brown and less Rhianna. Too soon? Not soon enough? I’m not here to talk about the past.

Astros: Winless in 2010.

Fourth and Fifty: Undefeated in 2010! Scoreboard, snitches!

Pic from here. Happy New Year!

Umm, while you're down there...

The song of the day is Onyx’s Slam. Because what we’re going to talk about today involves:

1. slamming and
2. letting boys be boys

But first, we haven’t had a TRG Tangent yet in this post, and I’m about to get in trouble from my sponsors.  In my head. That I wish I had in real life.   I’m cleaning up my act again – no cursing and keeping all jokes to PG-13 – in case a venture capitalist ever happens across our humble blog and decides to give us shfifty five billionty dollars to go big timez.  I’ve also changed my name because the Sports Guy thing was wearing thin 5 months ago and this way, if my boss ever found out I was blogging, she wouldn’t be able to easily go back and say, “what is wrong with you, child?”   She would instead say “I don’t get this blogging thing at all, but I’m not worried about our brand because you keep it pretty clean.”  Yes, my boss may or may not be Chad OchoCinco.  So I’m changed my name to, well, my real name – Josh Being Josh.  Let’s hope she doesn’t follow the bread crumbs and read this post specifically.

Back to slamming and such, Pipez and I started submission wrestling a few weeks ago at a gym out in Pearland.  We both almost puked, but the natural euphoria that came after we were done was like a runners high times 10. Plus almost every submission wrestler/BJJ practitioner I’ve met has been a super laid back, super cool dude.  The sport lends itself to not being a meathead.  The same cannot be said about many other sports, including cycling – those guys are primadonnas like you wouldn’t believe.  Every BJJ guy is nice, humble but confident, friendly, etc.  I can’t overstate how important this is when a 285 guy is laying on top of you trying to choke you.  The closest thing I can figure is:

1. The sport is between two people, and it is intimate in a very masculine way – you can’t be a primadonna and still easily find guys that give you their time to roll with you.  Sports you can practice by yourself tend to appeal to (or create?) egocentricity.  Sports that are wholly reliant on a partner foster competitive cooperation.
2. You’re too exhausted to be a dick.

Here is another thing – the mind does some very interesting things when the body is physically overloaded.  Sometimes it shuts down to focus on basic motor skills, and other times it seems to tap into parts of the brain typically dormant.  I’ve had a problem at work for 3 months that I’ve been losing sleep over.  I’d been circling around an answer for weeks but couldn’t see it.  The answer appeared in front of me 30 min after I got home from the class – the answer was just waiting for me like Ralph Wiggum waiting for a valentine’s day card.  It choo choo chose me?

Here are some basics for your meatheads:

2 Dudes, 1 Mat:

Submission wrestling (also known as submission fighting, submission grappling and No-Gi Jiu Jitsu) is a formula of competition and a general term describing the aspect of martial arts and combat sports that focus on clinch and ground fighting with the aim of obtaining a submission using submission holds.

The sport of submission wrestling brings together techniques from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Folk American Wrestling (Catch-as-catch-can), Luta Livre Esportiva, Freestyle Wrestling, Judo and Sambo. Submission fighting as an element of a larger sport setting is very common in mixed martial arts, Pankration, catch wrestling and others. Submission wrestlers or grapplers usually wear shorts, skin-sticky clothing such as Rash guards, speedos and mixed short clothes so they do not rip off in combat.

That may or may not be cut and pasted from wikipedia.  When Jeff the Triathlete read about the speedo part, he immediately signed up for the next class.  That is a double entendre to most of you, and a triple entendre to those of you who unfortunately know Jeff well.  Enough talk, more with the moving pictures:

My fave is #8.

There, I do sportz.

Best New Blog of Houston, 2009

Best Houston Sports Blog, 2009

Excellence in New Media Journalism, 2009

Don’t call it a dynasty; we just got here.  Onepeat!  Here is a picture of Rex accepting the Excellence in New Media Journalism award on behalf of all 5.5 of us:

Flames = Scoreboard!

More to come later. JBJ Out!!!

This image is as old as the guy that did the top 25 list (below).

Ed Note – Hey!  This is the first time I’ve ever done an editor’s note!  Scoreboard, snitches!  Allow myself to introduce… myself to introduce… Bill S. Liston, Esquire.  Bill loves lists, and he is a doctor in RL – a doctor of jurisprudence.  Being as such and the like, his lists are measured, thoughful, and nuanced.  Perfect for us to stomp a mud hole in.  What?  What? What? (I just cracked open two beers and extended my middle fingers in the air.)

Without further ado, here are Bill S. Liston Esquire’s Lists of Jurisprudence. WHAT?

Top 25 Sports Moments of the Decade (Ed Note – the decade doesn’t actually end for another year, but if you want to pander to folks with IQs of 75 or lower, feel free to do the list.  WHAT?)

25. Rise of UFC- Holyfield/Lewis I killed boxing in the late 90′s. This decade saw the dawn of its replacement. I’m not a huge fan of the sport, but its impact and growth is impressive. I think they need to get away from the rolling on the floor wrestling, and I might come around.

Sure – take the fastest growing sport on the planet and put it at #25.  UFC is disrespected like Mr. Tough Guy thinks the Coogs are disrespected.  Tremendously.  List is off to a very bad start.

24. Yankees Threepeat- The decade began with the last leg of the Yankee threepeat, and ended with their latest title. The 2000 title should be respected because very few teams have the chutzpah to go back to back to back.

By “chutzpah”, I hope you mean “eleventy billionty dollars”.  Fortune favors the rich, not the bold.  Baseball is the worst amalgamation of capitalism, socialism, and donkey procreation all rolled into one.  That’s like saying “the Lamas kids have the chutzpah to do reality TV”.  No, they are effed up and have an effed up semi-famous dad.  This list is going nowhere fast.

23. Peyton Avoids the “Marino Taint”- Manning wins the Super Bowl and his reputation changes overnight. He goes from being the “numbers guy” to being talked about as possibly the greatest QB ever. Brady has three rings, but Peyton seems to have taken the mantle simply by virtue of his one.

Or how about the primacy effect?  Peyton won his ring 5 minutes ago.  Let’s see if he doesn’t win another for the rest of his career if we don’t start double second guessing him.  Kevin Kolb is the greatest QB ever.  

22. Celtics Return to Glory- After Len Bias, Reggie Lewis, Bird’s bad back, missing out of Tim Duncan in the draft, surviving the Pitino years, missing out on Oden/Durant, and generally stinking it up for twenty years, the Celts get a little help from their old PF.  Kevin McHale delivers one of the fiercest competitors in the NBA, and a dream season/title ensues. Good thing. The NBA is better when its premier teams are good. Now if only NY would do something…

NY is doing quite a lot.  Mostly female interns.  What more could you ask a team to do?  Manage your expectations, BS Liston Esquire.

21. Uconn Dominates Bball- Men’s and women’s titles in the same year? Okafor/Gordon are around Stoors, but Diana Tirasi is STILL the Big Man on Campus. Impressive stuff.

Read our thoughts on womens’ basketball here.  DO IT.

20. Rulon Gardner- It wasn’t that an American won. It was who he beat. Rulon went up against a guy who hadn’t even lost a hand of poker, let alone a wrestling match. That guy was the entire Cobra Kai Dojo wrapped in one package. Gardner only made story better by being a humble and affable fellow.

I have no idea who # 20 is.  It sounds like a product The Random Baby Momma wants me to use to keep the weeds out of our yard next spring.  Or maybe it’s the fat guy from My Name is Earl?

19. Lakers Threepeat- Again, the threepeat is always tough. It is even tougher when the two captains hate each other. Think Lewis and Clark would have made it to the Pacific had Clark talked about Lewis behind his back to Sacagawea? “Hey, Lewis. How does my ass taste?”

Got no problem with this one, but would a Lamar Odom “my wife’s body looks like a gummy bear” joke have killed you?

18. Patriots Upset Rams- A 00’s dynasty began early in the decade with Adam V.’s FG (he got screwed out of the Super Bowl MVP award, btw). Drew Bledsoe goes down and an unheralded backup named Tom Brady channels Joe Montana.

It was like Any Given Sunday with the whole “one inch/yard” thing, except no one lost an eye and LT wasn’t carted off saying “I’m worth one million dollars!”

17. UH Top 25 in Football- If I didn’t have SOME dignity, this would have been #1. Ok. If they hadn’t lost to three CUSA teams and fallen to the Ft. Worth Bowl, I would have put this #1.

Mr. Tough Guy will now commence stalking you until you put it #1.  I’m not even joking.  You might want to consider hiring one of those private military corporations to protect your family, like rich people in Latin America have.  Again, I’m not joking.

16. Jason McElwain- Feel good story of the decade. An autistic ball boy gets his chance to play on his high school hoops team and drains three after three. The best that sports has to offer.

Kid was a ballhog, and everyone knows it.  I’m just the only one not afraid to say it.

15. Florida Owns Both Team Titles- There was a time where Florida sophomores had known nothing but victory. The basketball team becomes the first to repeat since the Laettner/Hurley Duke teams of the 90s and Urban Myer plants a football title in the middle. My first three years at UH, our record was 4-28. I hope everyone at Florida during this legendary run contracted herpes.

Damn you for bringing up Laettner/Hurley – I lived in Kentucky during the Pitino era.  Our collective quality of life fell from a 92 to a 4, just like in Saving Silverman.  On a different note, it will be interesting to see how history remembers Jesus Christ Tim Tebow.  Last, if I owned an NBA franchise, I’d trade immediately for the entire Florida team – Noah, Brewer, etc… and see if their magical collegiate synergy can translate to the pros. It’s hard to hate on a place and school like Florida.

14. Usain Bolt- Bolt, which is the greatest names for a track star, started the race, stopped for a nap, and still shattered world records. Most of the time, the hare whoops the tortoise.

Greatest name for a track star ever is DJ trackstar: http://twitter.com/Djtrackstar

13. Giants Upset Patriots- An undefeated season is broken by Eli’s heroic scramble and one amazing catch. Much as the Patriot dynasty began with a David over Goliath, toward the end of the decade the gods of karma turned the tables.  Plus, I won a $1000 in my squares pool.  So there’s that.

I haven’t made $1,000 in my entire career.  Rub it in, jackhole.  Everyone did become Giants fans for one fateful late afternoon, which was weird because normally New York isn’t thought of as “the little guy”.  That Super Bowl was a “I hope the stadium collapses on both teams like the 1991 World Series…what?  Too soon?” game.

12. Astros’ World Series- We didn’t win. But there was not a cooler moment in the history of Houston sports than those magical runs to get the playoffs in back to back years. What was even cooler was that Phil Garner lived down my street at the time. I went home for lunch every day just as he was leaving for the park. Even if I had to hang out in the driveway, I made sure we exchanged waves, and the winning continued. I personally don’t take all the credit. The players did a little bit.

Do you take the credit for the World Series sweep?  It works both ways.

11. Red Sox World Series- It was good if only so we don’t have to listen to them freaking whine about 1917 and the Curse of the Bambino any more. If only the Cubs could win, and then we could all move on with our lives.

Trust me – I used to live in Boston – they are still whining.  Now they are whiny and entitled.

10. Brazil Wins 5th Cup- I’m trying to be international here. Even if you don’t like futbol, a 5th world cup is pretty huge. That’s even more impressive that winning 5 Super Bowls. They only play this every four years.

Brazil has two exports: soccer and promiscuous women.  Never fall in love with a Brazilian, unless you like heartbreak and STDs.

9. Argentina Wins Gold in Athens- This actually has an American twist despite being an international item. Let’s praise Ginobili, Scola, Nocioni, and Oberto for their killer teamwork. But this event was significant because it was the first time the US had lost an Olympic title since the introduction of professionals; and only the third time ever. The 1972 finals was rigged, of course. 1988? Well Sabonis was one of the best players in the world.  The guy you saw playing for the Blazers in the 90’s?  He was the 1988 version plus a decade, two knee surgeries, and two packs a day.

I’m not counting any sport with a trapezoid in it, like the international basketball games have for the paint.  A real man does 90 degree angles.  Good Sabonis pull, tho.  Tons of aggro.

8. Tiger at the US Open- Playing on one leg, Tiger beats a popular competitor in an 18 hole playoff. I know he has had some bad press of late, but the guy can play.

I think Rex might have some thoughts on the subject…

7. Federer passes Sampras- Federer is considered the greatest at his sport ever, and is still under rated. The injury of Nadal may let the Federer era last longer than expected.  Even Federer’s losses (to Nadal in Wimbledon) speak to his greatness.

Tennis was great - when I was 11.  What’s next – more soccer?

6. Kerri Walsh and Misti May Traynor Rolling in the Sand- Not the beach volleyball victories themselves, but the aftermath. This clip on YouTube was the substitute for pubescent boys whose parents put good anti-porn software on their computers.   They should show this footage to guys trying to get out of military duty under don’t ask, don’t tell to verify the claim!

No problems with #6.

5. Vince Young Scrambles- Despite now living in Longhorn country, I despise UT. But a great game, and a great finish, warrant praise. This is probably the greatest college football game ever played.   Reggie Bush thinks he can lateral on the Horns and looks like a chump.  Then Vince takes it to the house in the closing seconds.

FaF hates UT as much as anyone in Houston, but it was a great game and a great performance by VY.  Has there ever been a greater collection of offensive talent (VY, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Fat LenDale White) that didn’t pan out in the pros?  Since VY has turned it around lately, maybe there is hope for the rest.  I cried a little before the draft when we learned about the Mario contract, but again that’s why you, me, Bill Simmons, and the Vice President of Common Sense don’t make decisions.  Reggie Bush still had one of the great Madden seasons of all time on my Xbox that year, out of pure spite.

4. Lance’s first yellow jersey- Sure, he added six more, but that first one was so impressive. To come back from testicular cancer and dominate a grueling sport is epic. I just hope we never see any evidence of steroid use that the French so desperately want to find.

If we end up going to war with France, the French conspiracy against Livestrong is a good enough excuse for me.  Who is with me?  USA!  USA!  USA!  I’m serious – we could whoop their ass – it would be good for morale and the economy.  Cheese eating surrender monkeys.

3. 2006 World Cup Head butt- Another soccer listing. How global of me. TWO soccer references.  French national treasure Zidane becomes a late night joke for pounding his opponent with a head butt that would make Sid Vicious proud. He gets tossed, and Italy takes the cup. Word to the wise. Don’t sass the man’s mama. Had Zidane been around in the 30′s, Hitler would have been a minor footnote in a Western Civ text book.

The headbutt is a staple of any “best of youtube” compilation.  May it live forever on the interwebs.

2. Chinese Olympics- I think I am colored by the fact that I visited their stadiums six months after the games, but man was this a special year for the Olympics. The opening ceremonies were an art expo writ large. The geopolitical implications of the event went well beyond the sports world. Twelve years old or not, the female gymnasts from China kicked ass. Of course, the star of the event was…

The star of the event was the lip-synching girl. The #2 star was the fact that China shot the sky to make it rain.  If only Pacman Jones had thought of that.

1. Mr. Phelps dominates- When a sport like swimming captures the consciousness of America, you know something big is going on. Kind of like when you knew Harry Potter was big because Americans were actually, you know, reading. I watched one of his big wins at the bar in a restaurant and for that one minute no one was served as much as a glass of water because everyone in the place was gathered around cheering. Well, except for my friend Lucille.  She was rooting for her native French team (many of the French swimmers were her friends, as she swam collegiately at UH). What a day. American dominance AND a pissed off French person!

One of our Faffers is lighting a doob in Michael Phelps’ honor right now.  We don’t condone such behavior, but to each his own.  Now if any Faffer is drinking Heineken out of a plastic bottle, we got beef like Biggy and Tupac.

That concludes the list.  Thanks to Bill S. Liston, Esquire, for the ammo.  WHAT? Next up is how real men do lists.

Maybe I am... AND MAYBE I AM!

Dear Longhorn Fans,

I’m getting pretty sick and tired of you with your 3rd grade literacy levels and your  overconfident braggeration and your sports entitlement.  We live in Houston, and the 40 acres really isn’t that special to begin with – it’s large, but size doesn’t equate quality.  At least that is what your girlfriend keeps telling you.  Actually, what she tells you is – don’t worry, it happens to a lot of guys.  Vince Young isn’t the reason the Titans turned it around – all he does is hand the ball off to Barry Sanders 3.0.  Everyone keeps talking about his maturation because he studies film now instead of showing his nipples off in the club.  If he’s matured, then why does he still have a double chin?  Colt McCoy isn’t General Patton reincarnate.  He’s a system quarterback, just like everyone who comes out of Texas Tech.  ESPN did a Heisman vote online and then broke down the results state-by-state like it was electoral math.  Our state actually had the gumption to vote for McCoy (Chris Simms 2K) because of idiots like y’all.

Stop taking up all the airtime on our sports radio stations.  I’ve reverted to singing November Rain to myself in the car because NPR only has 30 minutes of unduplicated news and I can’t stand listening to all the Longhorn crap on the radio.

Quit thinking you’re hilarious with your seasonal sweaters.  We were doing that years ago.  Pipez has been doing it since ’93.  You’re not original and hilarious.  You’re 2 years late to the joke.  Look at these guys below – probably a combined IQ of 65.  $20 says they go to UT.

Look how ironical I amz!!!

My question to you is – are you at least self-aware of your baggery of d’s?  Don’t pretend like you’re not.  Let me put it another way.  Are you a d-bag?

Maybe you are…AND MAYBE YOU ARE. (It’s really upsetting that there isn’t a single Dog Show video on the entire internet that I could find in 10 minutes.  I blame this on UT, as well.)

That will be all.

TRG/JBJ (this might be one of those Marshall/Eminem things)

Dog show pic from here.

If you’ve never seen Vision Quest, well, don’t really worry about it because it isn’t as good as Goldfish says it is.  Here is the movie and here is the wiki native american definition.  The movie is about a high school wrestler who goes for it all regardless of consequences like bloody noses or possible homosexuality.  (As an aside, the 80s were a magical time when a tv/movie director could still have an “the evil gay guy that tries to seduce the innocent child/teenager”.  Because all GLBT were obviously pedophiles.)  Anyway, the wrestler goes on a modern vision quest, defined by the very wiki page I referred to earlier:

In many Native American groups, the vision quest is a turning point in life taken before puberty to find oneself and the intended spiritual and life direction. When an older child is ready, he or she will go on a personal, spiritual quest alone in the wilderness, often in conjunction with a period of fasting. This usually lasts for a number of days while the child is attuned to the spirit world. Usually, a Guardian animal will come in a vision or dream, and the child’s life direction will appear at some point. The child returns to the tribe, and once the child has grown, will pursue that direction in life. After a vision quest, the child may apprentice an adult in the tribe of the shown direction (Medicine Man, boatmaker, etc).

What does this have to do with Baby Jay Penn?

BJ Penn might be one of the most talented martial artists of our generation or any time in recent history.  He also happens to be Hawaiian aristocracy, which means he could be very successful at anything in life without trying very hard.  He ran through a Who’s Who of MMA without seemingly ever truly dedicating himself.  He was an all time great, but his ceiling was higher.  He won most and lost a few (inevitable in MMA, which unlike boxing doesn’t protect their elite by having them continually face low-level talent).  But his was a pre-pubescent soul in a post-pubescent body.

Then he woke up one day and began his vision quest.  Saturday Night, UFC 107, might have been when he returned to the tribe, a child grown.  He beat a very game opponent in Diego Sanchez, and he did it handily.  That in itself wasn’t terribly surprising.  What was surprising, nay, astonishing, was BJ’s demeanor in between rounds.  MMA is physically and emotionally exhausting, and it is all fighters can do to hold themselves together between rounds.  BJ looked focused, fresh and most importantly at peace with himself and his environment.  The focus was mental stamina, the freshness physical stamina, but the “at peace” component was new.  You can see it on his face in the third picture, above.  Now, don’t get it twisted – BJ did his theatrical “slap myself in the face and chest and then lick my opponent’s blood off my gloves” routine. But then he became peaceful again.  When he hugged Diego, it was maybe the first genuine hug I’ve may have ever seen BJ give an opponent.  The post-fight hugs – the true hugs – are what makes MMA so unique.  It isn’t just a fight – it is brotherhood and it is a right of passage.

Did you know that according to my faith tradition wrestling was the first sport?  After brother-killing, of course.  Jacob wrestled with an angel in Genesis and fought him to a draw, leaving Jacob gimpy for the rest of his life.  The angel renamed Jacob “Israel”, or in the proper form Yisra`el - “one that struggled with the divine angel”.

This might be getting borderline ridiculous, but BJ just looked different on Saturday night.  It might look like Peace N Blessings to someone like Rex, but to me it just looked like peace.  I’m not saying he wrestled with the divine, but something certainly has changed.  He completed his vision quest.

Pics from here, here, and here.

I FIRED COMCAST!!!!

Fresh from battle, I hold the head of my vanquished foe (the DVR boxes I need to return to not get charged) over my head, blood batteries dripping down on my head like mana from the heavens.  The clouds above me part (on my web browser) as Athena herself smiles from above.  Athena from Cam With Her.  A tinge of copper in my mouth reminds me that I shouldn’t be chewing this battery of my comrades that fell valiantly and died glorious deaths.  Exhausted, I sink into this throne ($89 from Office Max) and say a silent prayer.

That prayer is:

FUCK THE COMCAST

FUCK FUCK FUCK THE COMCAST

YO YO

FUCK THE COMCAST

FUCK FUCK FUCK THE COMCAST

YO FUCK ‘EM.

Get in mah belly!

So since I don’t sportz, and since the boss took a major sabbatical, and since Pipez is holding it down like woah, let’s talk about how awesome I am.  Again. The context is video games, and the game is Dragon Age.

WARNING: DON’T SPORTZ AHEAD

Yes, TRG is going to rambulate about video games again.  That’s ramble and ambulate put together in one synergistic package.  What do you want?  We gave you the Madden review, which literally almost killed Goldfish, and only 4 people read it.  Assholes.  If you’re such a fratboy that you need to get your rocks off to only college football, go back to our ECU post, where we talk shit about a fictional state in the Union called East Carolina and their hillbilly fooseball team.  The rest of us adults are moving on.

One thing first, and this is Inside Baseball for our long-time readers.  Pipez really has been stepping his pimp game up lately.  Do we even need Rex?  Power to the people.  I would recommend a bloodless coup d’etat, except it kindasort already happened.  Pipez is the fucking future, what y’all ninjas can’t see the facts?  Once Wanks finishes amortizing his prenup and  2CRB finishes his current steroid cycle, they’ll be major forces.  I am, and always will be, the self-aggrandizing court jester.  Moose Knuckle will show up every time Tigah Tigah Woods cheats on his incredibly hot nanny wife.  But for now – who you haters think you talking to?  Pipez the fucking boss.

Start calling Rex “Emo Wally Pipp“, because he ain’t getting his job back.  Maybe he can learn to play outfield or something?

GAMEZ REVIEW – DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS IS GO

Anyway, this isn’t about them, it’s all about me and Dragon Age.  Here is how superior I am to you – even my video games have gravitas.  Yes, I just went there, and screw your human-situation lecture in its ass.  The doctrine of preemption, bitch!  I’m such a good Republican.

The video games you play are cotton candy for pubescent teenagers.  NCAA.  Madden.  Halo.  Modern Warfare.  Fun games, those.  You should be proud of yourself for taking up residence in the gaming zeitgeist.  You’re also taking up air.  Here is what Goldfish has to say on the subject: “Like a la bimbo, these idiots need to get the fuck out and stop diluting my medium.”  True that.

Grown ass men play games like Dragon Age.

Yes, it has swords and dragons and +5 to eternal virginity in RL.  It also happens to be the first game I’ve ever played that has real choice.  Bioware has been doing “good/evil path” games for a while, most notably with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.  Do you want to be a good little Jedi, or do you want to be a badass Sith lord?  Choose for yourself.  Everyone copies Bioware on this stuff, but Bioware itself has been trying to evolve from this good-or-evil milieu.  Life is grey, and art should reflect life.  Yes, I just went there again.  Screw your cultural-analysis-of-the-Renaissance lecture in its ass.  Preempt +2.

Dragon Age is maybe the first game I’ve ever played where the player needs to take time and weigh all the options before making a decision.  The path beyond the choice isn’t clear.  I have no idea how it is going to turn out and am making decisions without gamer precognition.  This is nerd-revolutionary.  I’ll be concrete for you lizard brains.

Typically in a role playing game, you get 2 choices.  Choose A and D, E, and F happen.  Choose B and X, Y, and Z happen.  The game doesn’t overtly tell you this most of the time, but it isn’t rocket science.  Gamers have clairvoyance, which actually diminishes from the playing of the role.  That’s bad because, after all, it is a role playing game.  In the defense of game developers, it’s hard to make a game where things are fun and have mass appeal but still have subtlety.  Most gamers don’t want  subtle.  They want a bigass bastard sword to fuck up some ogre and then get the phat lewt he drops.  They like the sword because it is on fire (literally) and they get to say “bastard”.

Dragon Age has that - check out the screenshot at the top.  But it also has real choice.  One example (and a tad bit of spoiler but not much).

Bow to your sensei. All 4 of them.

First, you come across a ransacked village.  People are living in abject poverty and are literally starving to death.  There is one vendor with food, and he’s inflated his prices faster than a 3rd world country.  They can’t afford the prices and want him to give away the food for free.  The villagers ask you to interject so they can get their grub on, but he says he’ll leave the village if he has to give it away, and then there won’t be any food at all.  You can just tell them “screw you guys, I’m going home”, but it’s more fun to work it out, right?

When I came across this, I called Goldfish and said “holy crap – it’s the prisoner’s dilemma and the macroeconomic theories of government argument wrapped up in one!”  And he said “whaaaaa? it’s 5 in the morning.”

What do you do in this situation?  You can’t do what TortillaZorro does in real life – let them die and then skull fuck their rotting carcasses.  The game presents options, but not that one.  I think.

Do you go commie red?  Appropriate (nationalize) his food, feed the people in the short run and ensure starvation in the long run because you’ve failed to recognize that liberty and capitalism go hand-in-hand?  Do you go Ron Paul libertarian and say “that’s what the market will bear, homeslice”, and watch some of them starve in the short run?  As economists say, in the long run, we are all dead.  Besides, he’ll bring some of his prices down eventually, otherwise there won’t be a market.  The market will correct itself, after some people die.

Of course there is a middle way and that is to mediate a fixed price structure where neither side likes it, but they can both live with it.  Get it?  ”Live” with it?  Never mind.  I took this Keynesian approach.  If the masses gave me lip, I would have left them to try to deal with it on their own (and die).  If the vendor gave me lip, I would have kilt his ass with my bastard sword and taken all his shit that wasn’t food, and sold said “shit” for gold to buy me some more phat lewt.  Wisely for both sides, they agreed to my  deal.

Now, there wasn’t a dialogue option that said “Keynesian approach”.  It took several minutes of conversation to get to that point, and I wasn’t sure it was going to be there.  After I solved that problem, I was very proud of myself, so I went and fucked up some darkspawn (bad guys) and took money off their corpses.

That’s a good ass game.

Whenever I need my dog, I call my dog. Thanks, dog.

And that was the easy dilemma.  Now I have this dwarf problem (small spoiler) where the absence of leadership has left a power vacuum and the infighting is preventing me from solving my problem, which involves world domination by a bigass dragon unless I can stop it.  I’ve spent an hour learning dwarven politics and still have no idea what to do.  If I accidentally get in a fight, I can probably handle it, but fights should be my choice, not some drunken dwarf’s.

I think Dragon Age might actually be rocket science.

The game is making me smarter, and it can make you smarter, too.  Not as smart as me – I got an 800 on my SAT for fuck’s sake (total), so good luck with that one.  But you can become a smarter you.  And kill bigass ogres and dragons and elves.

And oh yeah, one other reason you should get this game…

…ZOMG BOOBIES FTW!!!111101101

That’s my review.  Peace n blessings, peace n blessings.

Someone needs a haircut. It isn't the werewolves.

Posted in Off the Cuff Tagged: choice theory in games, Dragon age boobs, Dragon Age review, Dragon Age rocket science, Dragon Age social commentary, prisoners dilemma, Ron Paul video games ]]> http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/dragon-age-review-i-dont-not-video-gamez/feed/ 26 Josh Being Josh http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/faf-looks-super-gay-on-the-iphone/ http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/faf-looks-super-gay-on-the-iphone/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:01:24 +0000 Josh Being Josh http://fourthandfifty.com/?p=5306 ]]>

Much like Lil' Wayne, I approve million dollar deals from this device.

And by “million dollar deals”, I mean “no dollar deals”.

If there is anything that sums up Fourth and Fifty, it has to be the title of this post. We are spiritual successors to the Maquis de Sade. We write beautiful prosety on the inside walls of our jail cells. Our tools? Our minds and our feces.

Too bad the title phrase was written by Pipez and not one of our readers. Come to think of it, until Rex went on sabbatical Pipez was one of our readers, right? He is the OG Chad, the original bottom-poster, re-writing smears from the comments section with flair. He didn’t stop doing this until Chad stole him power like a Sith apprentice killing his master. Anyway, that’s Inside Baseball.

Here are some people with a sense of humor:

1. Us
2. You

Here are some people without a sense of humor:

1. Coogfans
2. Clutchfans
3. Anyone so singularly devoted to a specific sport or team that they spend 6 hours per day on a message board whose name ends in “fans”
4. People that use their full, proper name, great punctuation, and decent diction

Guess what, Coog/Clutch/Any Other Fans? You may be happy and content to talk about verbal commitments from cornerbacks in their junior year of high school. Serious times call for serious people, right?  But I don’t want. Your life.*

It’s not our niche, tough guys.  See the bottom of this post.* Our niche is nicely summed up by my new mentor, Scott Whitt, in his review of our (non)review of The Book of Basketball:

In the movie The Comedians of Comedy, Brian Posehn did a bit about the new Star War films. He compared them to hanging out with your uncle and turning around and he was putting his wiener in your face. This article was the print version of your uncle putting his wiener in your face.

Fourth and Fifty: Putting our Wiener in your Face since early 2009.

That’s all there is to say about that.  I’d like to ramble about a few other things now.

Dear Kroger and Randalls: No one knows the difference between the two of you. If someone asks you “do you carry product X?” Please do not look down your nose at them and say, “Of course not, that’s Randalls (or Krogers).  Try them.” Motherlover, I hardly know what store I’m in to begin with! There might be some sort of Hatfield-McCoy bloodfeud going on, but to us laypeople there is absolutely no distinction. You might as well have the same brand. People know the difference between Macs and PCs.  They know the difference between Reality Kings and the rest of the nudie websites on the internet. No one knows the difference between Kroger and Randalls!  I feel like a much less funny version of Seinfeld right now.  Whaaaat is the deal with Kroger and Randalls?  Are they two different stores? Does either one carry a Kroger or a Randall?

Don’t Be Mad at the Texans. This isn’t our year. I thought from the beginning the best thing that could happen to us in the long run is to lose a lot of close games, get a decent draft pick, and use the “shoulda woulda” frustration to bust ass this offseason and make a real playoff run next season. If we’d ended up 10-6 this year, it might have been contra-motivational in the long run.  You saw this with the Coogs – we jumped up the rankings too quickly, got too full of ourselves, didn’t understand how big the target on our back got, got humbled, and then spent the rest of the season busting ass, not taking anything for granted, and now we’re precisely where we should be. Good thing about humble pie is it is chock full of protein. And HGH. So simmah down, Battle Reddites.

Treat this season like being dumped by a mediocre girlfriend. Get in the gym, put on 20 lbs of muscle, and when you get back into the bar scene don’t wear sunglasses on an Affliction shirt. In fact, rip that Affliction shirt in two like a hulkamaniac. Economists say that in the long run, we’re all dead. If you ever see an economist, put him in a triangle choke. Maybe long run isn’t the right approach, but neither is short run. So focus on the intermediate run, the “momma bear” run, if you will. And quit your bitching.

Maddox Jolie-Pitt was the tipping point for this 1980s popular culture renaissance.  Don’t think there won’t be 10,000 words about this next week. Don’t also think that DaVinci and the rest of the ninja turtles aren’t rolling over in their graves.  See?  Even that was an ’80s joke.  I’m dead serious about the 10,000 words.

*Your natural retort to I don’t want your life, Mr. “Fans”, might be – “Then quit spamming our message boards!” My counter-retort: that’s not what thingsididlastnight said. Besides, only 15% of the spam comes from us. The rest comes unprompted from people who actually read us. They would like to talk about the minutiae of their favourite sport with levity and silliness and not get drowned out by your incessant patrician paternalism. You might be 52 and remember the good old days when message boards were civil and serious, and you walked 5 miles in the snow uphill each way just to get to the library’s 56k dial-up connection. Guess what? It isn’t 1994 anymore. You have no more right to your serious sports talk then they have to their silly sports talk.

You geriatric fucks just need to die already, or at least get put into a nursing home with no wifi. Move, bitch, get out the way. You might not like Chad, but he’s the future of the interwebs. Actually, his kids are, and if you don’t like Chad or me, just wait until our kids turn 8 and double down on the internet shenanigans. If you can’t handle Chad and TRG, you certainly won’t be able to handle Chadette Jr. and Random Baby.

We the fucking future, what y’all can’t see the facts?

Posted in Off the Cuff Tagged: FaF looks supergay on the iPhone ]]> http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/faf-looks-super-gay-on-the-iphone/feed/ 19 Josh Being Josh photo http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/book-review-the-book-of-basketball/ http://fourthandfifty.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/book-review-the-book-of-basketball/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:18:46 +0000 Josh Being Josh http://fourthandfifty.com/?p=5241 ]]> Simmonz can has worldwide platformz? [Ed. Note - I have nothing to say other than "I'm bAAAAaaaaack, bitches." Yours truly, Septimus Rex.]

ZOMG he SIGNED IT!!!1110010101

Prologue: When you read this, and please do, you’ll say to yourself “this guy isn’t half as clever as the thinks he is.”  I know.  It’s part of the schtick.  It also happens to be true in one of those self-fulfilling prophesy type of ways.  It’s a paradox.  You know what else is a paradox, right?

In the spirit of Simmons’ hyperinflated egocentricity, let me begin by talking about me.  I used to LOVE me some Simmons.  I sent him a ton of stuff under different names so I looked like less of a psycho (which in truth actually made me more of a psycho).  I went to espn.com several times a day to see if he had anything new.  This was in grad school, so I’d bust out 5 pages of research, check for Sports Guy, go to class, check for Sports Guy, barter with my faculty adviser over an elective, check for Sports Guy, wonder why a graduate program that was 96% female only had 3 hot girls, check for Sports Guy.  It’s really sick, now that I think about it [Ed. Note - It was sick back then for all of us because you wouldn't let us stop thinking about it].  I worked his style, and some of his theories, into several of my research papers, even though they’re supposed to be dry, patrician discourses.  I sent him a heartfelt email after the Texans drafted Mario over Reggie/Vince, and a few days later TortillaZorro called me excitedly saying that Sports Guy had kinda/sorta named a theory after me.  I was at a wedding shower, but busted out of there Mrs. Bourvier to find the nearest computer.  There it was, and still is – The Vice President of Common Sense.  Of course he didn’t name it after me, but I was #1 in his mailbag (the holy grail) and could kinda/sorta lay stake to one of his crazy theories.  I was like a teenage girl smitten by Menudo.

I fawned over Sports Guy like Jeff the Trisexual Triathlete fawned over N’Sync before Justin took his solo act on the road.  But enough about me (overtly, anyway) after one more anecdote.  When El Rat convinced me to start Faffing (that looks even gayer than it sounded in my head, so it stays), there was really no other choice than to find a Single White Female name homage to the Sports Guy.

TANGENT – This post might get a little long, so I’m putting tangents in italics so you can skip over them if you want.  Footnotes are self-aggrandizing: this isn’t the New England Journal of Medicine.  It’s a sports blog where we talk about how gay each other are even though we have GLBT friends and a healthy amount of respect and cultural sensitivity in real life.  We also post pictures of animals doing funny things and sometimes links to porn.  Not porn directly, especially after Goldfish and others accidentally opened “2 Germans, 1 watermelon” at work.  Just links to porn [Please assume that link is NSFW... Please] so people can make informed, autonomous decisions. 99% of our porn is heterosexual.  I don’t know why I felt compelled to tell you that.  So, in sum, we don’t footnotez.  

The recent Deadspin book reviews remind us of something very important – before he started crumbling from within like the Roman empire, Simmons was an internet god.  He may not have invented the sports/pop culture corollary, but he perfected it.  He’s one of Gladwell’s Outliers, which I believe Gladwell himself might have said [Ed. Note - Really? Did you really just say that? Wow... Don't make me more happy that I've been on sabbatical for these past couple weeks].  Today the sports/pop culture corollary is the fundamental paradigm by which most of us think, talk, and write about sports, but that wouldn’t have been true if this were 1998 [Ed. Note - UNtrue we ALL talked/thought about sports in this way. It was just Simmons managed to put it on paper on the web and made a living at it. He did nothing different. He was one of us, only with a national medium.] [Writer's Note - Fuck you, editor, get back to being an emo hipster and leave us salt-of-the-earth types alone to romanticize the 90s in peace.]  

Now sports and pop culture live in the same zeitgeist. Remember the SAT? Sports is to pop culture analogy as your mom is to things I did last night. That’s Simmons’ legacy, and we all genuflect at the altar.  Everyone ate that shit up for years.  But then he got a big head about it.  Or did he?  He’s an unabashed lazy homer, a hero of post-modernity [Ed. Note - The most relevant sentence you've ever written].  Did he change, or was he so overexposed that we had no choice but to look behind the wizard’s curtain?  Or, in Simmons-speake – once he went HD, we saw the frozen booger in his nose in 1080p.

TANGENT - When you read the Sports Guy’s VP of Common Sense post, you’ll realize that my name is Josh.  This won’t be a surprise to you because we only have 4 readers that aren’t our college friends, and of the 4, Big Hitter is now a tailgate buddy and Chad is hiding in the bushes outside of my house right now, taking shallow breaths.  To the other 2, my Christian name isn’t The Random Guy.  Hope that doesn’t spoil your experience like when you found Santa Claus banging your mom in 1989.  It’s funny the lengths we went to protect our true names so we could say whatever we wanted without fear or repercussion.  Like anyone cares.  The day after we were threatened with a lawsuit by a guy named Redacted was probably one of the most fun so far.  Good times. You know what?  I’m coming out of the closet.  My name is Josh.  I’m a mid-level manager.  I drive a Dodge Stratus.  People fear me.

This isn’t about the book.  But it is. I hope that blows your mind the same way that Back to the Future did when you started thinking through the time-space continuum logic.  I used to chart it out on graph paper and go “wait a minute…”.  On an unrelated note, I didn’t lose my virginity until age 25.  That makes me morally superior to you [Ed. Note - And way less good at sex. I feel for The Random Baby Momma.].  [Writer's Note - And I feel sorry for your right hand.] Sorry, I promised I’d overtly stop talking about how awesome I am.  A hard promise to keep.  Back to Simmons.

TANGENT – Sorry.  The Vice President of Common Sense thing was about Vince/Reggie/Mario. In retrospect, the Vince/Reggie/Mario debate was Houston’s version of the OJ trial.  Whites and hispanics wanted Reggie, blacks wanted Vince, and no one wanted Mario. It really did divide down racial lines, although I’ll have to ask a Chinese friend how his community felt about it.  Maybe they used an algorithm and came up with Mario?  Anyway, that’s why it’s a good thing neither you nor I nor Bill Simmons’ VP of Common Sense has any sway over any sports team.  Although you shouldn’t use anecdotes to try to prove any point, and as an aggregate body of work Charlie Casserly sucked balls.  

The Peter Principle states that people in the workforce will rise to their level of incompetence.  The guy who is a great sales rep makes a terrible manager because those are fundamentally different skill sets.  They involve some of the same means – high social IQ, empathetic active listening, understanding real politik – but they aren’t the same, and they’re not even that similar.  Maybe the Peter Principle applies to Simmons. He was great at throwing rocks at the establishment, but then (as Deadspin covered pretty thoroughly) he became the establishment.  One might say that this is the point when Simmons’ ego began to overshadow his work.  I disagree.  I think he is slightly more full of himself than he used to be, but only a little.  The difference is two things, IMO:

1. He’s super-empowered like a tenured professor to the point where he’d have to kill someone to get in real trouble.  He’d vehemently disagree because he still wants to see himself as the little guy, and he’ll give you of anecdotes about his censor-bosses, and he’ll use this as justification when he leaves ESPN.

TANGENT - Does he need ESPN anymore?  He certainly doesn’t think so.  He thinks it is holding him back, rather than helping him reach his true potential.  I don’t know either way – the internet is not an efficiently allocated capital market yet.  It’s still the Wild West.  I think he’ll make a shit-ton of money and smarmily refer to his former employee as “those people”, but in terms of reaching his true potential?  Who knows?  That’s also subjective and says more about us than anything about him.

2.  He hit his peak 6 years ago and is hanging on for dear life, even though he won’t admit it to himself.  Shoot, I just gave away the end of the post.  Be a dear and keep reading.

You are not the cosmos.  That was the title of Deadspin’s “bad cop” review of the Book of Basketball.  Clever.  But Simmons’ original premise never changed. He likes sports and pop culture, and he likes telling you what he thinks about those things.  He went a little too Hollywood when he went to, well, Hollywood.  But it’s really second verse, same as the first.  Whether you like Simmons 2.0 depends on whether you hate LA or Boston more.

So what is it about Simmons that I (and maybe you) don’t like anymore?  I’ve put too much thought into this.  Here’s the list:

1. Overexposure, to be sure.  The ennui of the internet means stars burn brighter and faster than any other medium to date.  As a scientist, there is one thing I know: stars burn out.  That’s what they do.  It’s a scientific fact.
2. Everyone knows Simmons is a one-trick pony and proud of it.  Hows about adding just another half of a trick just to keep the Visigoths at bay?
3. One can be proud of being lazy.  But there is a line between “lazy in a endearing, self-effacing way” and “lazy as a motherfucker – can’t be bothered to do your job”.  That line between the two?  He pooped on it.  We young U.S. Americans living in the America and such as love the idea that we could do what he do for a living, which of course will never happen, which of course is the false premise of the American dream.  Or is it?  Anyway, he is setting a terrible example for the kids.  Show some self-restraint from being lazy as a motherfucker, please.
4. And the linchpin.  The Secret, if you will.

Simmons is a townie.  Remember Good Will Hunting?  He might be bright-ish and funny enough, but he’s a townie.  He ran out of real ideas years ago and wasn’t smart enough (or maybe too arrogant?) to surround himself with anyone who wasn’t a synchophant, so his maturation slowed to a crawl.  His contributions over the last few years have been a product of groupthink, and it’s gone as well as the Bay of Pigs, or at least Katrina.  Too soon?  Here is your counterpoint – he reads and interviews people like Gladwell and Klosterman [Ed. Note - Simmons' man-love for Gladwell and Klosterman is only rivaled by TRG's man-love for Goldfish].  Good point, “you”.  My counter-counter point: even so, do you really see maturation in his columns (when or if they ever come out)?  He’ll work in an interesting theory from someone else every now and again, but these are blips on a radar.  Neither evolutionary nor revolutionary.  The editorial process seems to be “cut the jokes that will get ESPN sued and otherwise leave the cash cow alone so he doesn’t get too butt-hurt.”  I’m not saying it is a bad business strategy, but then again I don’t give a flying crap about ESPN’s profit margin.  Which is surely ginormous.

It is actually in convos with the Klostermans of the world (yes, I said convos [Ed. Note - At least you didn't say "conversate" which is a worse herpe on the English language that irregardless (how many times must one thing NOT be regarded) or the invention of the emoticon... Fuck you, emoticon users!!!]) where one can see the intellectual wheels fall off the Simmons bandwagon. It’s not about intellectual rigor vs half-ass tomfoolery, because we love us some tomfoolery.  It’s the sense that Simmons is trying to play in a sandbox that might not be age-appropriate for him.  Sometimes I feel like Klosterman in particular is playing cyber-bully when he destroys Simmons’ fly-by-night theories [Ed. Note - In general, Klosterman has also jumped the shark a bit. He's a fiction writer parading around as a journalist. He hasn't had anything original since Downtown Owl (which was good, by the way). He can't seem to publish anything other than a collection of essays that he's already published. His star has already burnt out... Not that I won't be buying his next book... I will.] and I get defensive for SG.  I want to yell: Hey you! Get your damn hands off him! It would be ok if Simmons were to say “yes, my theories fall apart when you go all subterranean, but they’re fun and I’m rich, bitch!” Instead he uses anecdote to try to justify them.

TANGENT - A writer who uses anecdote to prove anything is lazy, stupid, or both.  For example, if I say “most white people can’t dance”, and Septimus Rex says “that’s not true – I am a dancing machine” [Ed. Note - And, I have the photos to prove it!], Rex is thinking anecdotally rather than empirically. He is thinking inside out, rather than outside in. One can superficially prove or disprove anything one wants using anecdote.  There are a lot of anecdotes that lead to horse-shit conclusions.  Here is another.  The Random Baby Momma was struck by lightning several years ago.  We discovered two months later that she was preggers, and you all know that The Random Baby is the joy of my life as well as a sports savant who is smarter than ESPN.  This sequence of events leads to one of two conclusions.  First, lightning strikes drastically increase fertility.  Two, the baby is actually the offspring of Zeus, and I’m just playing mid-husband like Joseph of Arimathea.  That’s the problem with anecdotes: everything in life is on a bell curve, and you are not the bell curve, tough guy.  Don’t use prima facie anecdotes to jump to large-scale conclusions. That is to be expected from The Random Drunken In-Laws at Thanksgiving, not from a New York Times Best Seller.

Maybe this is part of growing up.  Maybe it is like finding Santa banging your mom on Christmas Eve.  Maybe Simmons ran his course, or maybe I just got older and he’s still the killer app for 22 year olds everywhere.  Maybe it’s a personal taste thing. It’s just somewhat disappointing that he couldn’t make the leap from exciting borderline All Star (Josh Smith) to MVP (LeBron), IMHO.  I shouldn’t have expected this – his ceiling isn’t that high, being a townie and all.

Of course, IMHO is not all that “H” and is by definition singular to me.  Someone else might make just as good of a case the opposite way.

So here is your book review: if you like Simmons and/or basketball minutae, buy the book.  If not, make your own informed, autonomous decision.

Epilogue: You might think that we’re superior sumbitches. Perhaps. Or perhaps we’re self-aware, self-effacing emo hipsters that just love to write satirical blog entries while listening to Anniversary. Here are some of our most flattering reader comments to date:

• Man is this outhouse-of-the-web a waste of time!
• I am sure you are just kidding and realize how stupid you sound, but I just wanted to make sure.
• I would like to thank Septimus Rex and Crew for spending hours trying to come up with sketchy facts wrapped with ignorant opinions…
• …there is absolutely no content what-so-ever… I think that is an insult?
• You guys are a bunch of haters. u guys need to shut the hell up…
• No one told me it was LongAss Post day…I would have brought a lunch…
• I love the lies and lack of research on your blog
• Random musing about my penis? Chalk it up…it’s another gay post from TRG.
• …and in turn when you write you sound like douche bags…
• FaF looks super gay on the iPhone
• …this site is classless and brings nothing positive to the outside world.
• If by “effort” you mean “journalistic investigation” you’ve come to the wrong place.
• fu
• You guys need some fiber.
• What was your comeback to “Fat Latinas in David Robinson Jerseys”? Nothing, because it is true and gross and you know it…
• …oh, and your mom’s dick was awful tasty last night…

and last but not least…

• Thanks for almost getting me fired with your surprise gay porn on your quote unquote sports blog. Idiots.

Pic from here.

That picture really doesn’t have a point or a connection to the theme.  I just thought it was funny.  The worst possible scenario is you show up at the feminbration and get your manhood cut off.  Best case scenario?  ”Not Gina, it’s Gina.  What’s up.  Listen, I’m going to be real honest with you.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been with a man.  I spent a lot of time with the “ladies” and I’m lookin’ to get back up on that pogo stick.  You know what I’m sayin’?  If we could get together and you could tuck your sack back, it would make the transition a lot easier for me.”

Let’s try again…

Like I said, Big Hitter was the first and least crazy of our 4 fanboys. Our first #1 stunna, if you will.  He stuck with us through the lean years, although quite frankly we aren’t exactly feasting now, know what I’m sayin’?  He stuck wit us.  He was recently awarded The Nobel Awesome Prize for Bottom Poster Emeritus by the FaF Nobel Committe for Excellence In Innovation and Awesomeness (by me, just now).  The Nobel Awesome prize is like the peace prize or the economics prize except much more awesome. 

Let me tell you a bit more about Big Hitter:

• Big Hitter killed Biggie AND Tupac.  Screw Eastside and Westside; Southside 4 Life!
• Big Hitter was offered the head golf coach position at UH.  He turned it down because he doesn’t believe in “scholar-athletes”.   He didn’t need “books” to ace med school, and neither should the pansy-ass golf team.
• Chris Brown (the singer) was just trying to live up to Big Hitter’s example.  What? Too soon?
• Big Hitter drinks out of a boot.  But he does not shoot said boot.
• Big Hitter wears Santa outfits in August.  Because he killed Santa and took his damn suit, that’s why.
• Big Hitter doesn’t “have sex” or “make love”.  He repopulates.
• Big Hitter doesn’t get sunburnt.  The sun gets Big Hitter-burnt.
• Big Hitter is naturally left-handed, but plays golf righty to give everyone else a fighting chance.  He’s like Inigo Montoya that way.
• Brett Michaels wrote “Every Rose” about Big Hitter.  Brett Michaels has never even met Big Hitter, he just saw his picture once.
• The Pope offered his job to Big Hitter, but Big Hitter turned it down because it would have hurt the feelings of Buddhists.  Big Hitter is a man of peace.
• Big Hitter actually came very close to acheiving world peace in BC 650, but God asked him to hold off for a few thousand years.  BH is a team player like that.
• November 25th is “Big Hitter Day” in most African countries.
• This guy says Big Hitter is his hero:

For those of you that “don’t wordz”, ennui means “ a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom”.  If you look it up on Urban Dictionary, you get the above picture of Chad and the definition “chronic complainer about a free blog not covering enough of one’s niche sports interests”.  Booyah!

You know what else the internet is great for?  Stay tuned for Rex’s classic rendition of “internet nudie pictures, circa 1995″.  It’ll be like the Renaissance.  When is said classic rendition happening?  Right after he finishes listening to the new Frey and My Chemical Romance CDs, putting lipstick on, and crossing Billy Madison off of his list of people to kill.

Back to the subject, how smart am I for my jiu jitsu maneuvering of Chad et al yesterday?  This smart.

I’m like a savant kitten that understands surround sound.  Chad was set to complain about whatever was written anyway because the internet is a great place to talk about how bored you are with the free blog you’re reading to kill time instead of doing your job that you get paid to do.  Like I said, the ennui of the internet.  So Chad was going to complain about whatever I put up.  What do you do when there is no way out of a situation?  You go further in.  So, back to the jiu jistu analogy, I invited Chad into my guard, let him feel comfortable with his feeble ground & pound, and then BOOM hit him with an armbar and snapped that son o’ bitch in half.   BOOM!

Speaking of  the arts that are martial and mixed in nature, Pipez and I are about to start submission wrestling.  Here is where I sould say “no homo”, but after a few glasses of wine, who knows?  Pipez is known to get a few in him, start biting necks, and saying “I’m going to make some bad decisions tonight”.  Maybe that is the girls Rex went out with on Sat night.  Either them or Pipez, I can’t remember.  Anyway, I’m going to pwn him on the mat the way I pwn his look (he looks like pre-pubescent TRG) and the way I pwnd his seasonal sweater on Sat night.  Booyah!

Let’s talk about sports.  I wish I’d bought NBA 2K10, but my gaming time is limited and Dragon Age is teh roxors and I haven’t even picked up Nate Dogg-approved Modern Warfare 2.  So NBA 2K10 will have to wait.  There, I talked about sports.

Get to bitching about this column, bottom posters.  That’s your motherfucking zeitgeist.