Does it matter how you dress your kids? Yes. The Figthin' have Brett Myers and son, a sweet little tyke that's probably not being brought up to live in urban areas.
Sparty and Friends is helping a laid-off blogger pay the bills. Or just feel bitter that he's watching the tournament, and you're, well, maybe not.
MLJ wants to know what the point of the WBC is, considering that Davey Johnson seems to be constantly talking about forfeiting. Personally, I think that we should all be giving Johnson his props for pioneering new ways to lose.
An excellent point to be made here people -- don't hate Duke because they enjoy same-sex relations. There are much better reasons!
Perhaps the gift of the year (century?) for that guy in your fantasy league who always wastes your time with nonstop trade requests. Let him know that you're ready to support him in his good fight. This ranks right up there with an Owens or Favre jersey for Cowboys or Jets Fan...
Jose Reyes is the most exciting Spanish speaker in baseball. Now, if he had only followed up with, "Tell me how my ass tastes," he'd have won me over...
Major League Jerk with your WBC update, because we can't be bothered to watch the silly thing. But on the plus side, the USA punked Canada, and I can't stand those freaking Canucks evcer since the start-up with Canadian management, two start-ups ago. Screw you, hosers!
The top image today is a real live report from a student who didn't do the homework, but did contribute a moment of genius. Click on it to get a bigger image that you can actually read, kind of. He's got a three-film deal with Fox Searchlight now.
McNugget Denial inspires three calls to 911. You will be amazed to learn that this opinion was cited in the schlong of America, the state that gave us George Bush. Saw it off! Barney Frank wants to legalize sports gambling. Many of the people reading this site, for the first time, want to kiss Barney Frank. Chastely, of course, until he delivers. After that, it's Campaign Contribution Time. (Cue the funky '70s riff.)
They are camels. They are angry. They are in a car. And yes, the camel's people already have a 3-picture deal with DreamWorks, with a merchandising tie-in that's making the cigarette people giddy. (What, you thought the camels were that mean naturally?)
Snooty film critic disses comic book readers in the midst of dissing the movie that the comic book readers might like. Blogger then takes snooty film critic to task for, well, taking a cheap swipe at the audience, rather than focusing on the freaking movie. Rest of world wonders when film critics became less geeky than comic book readers. And all-snarky sports blogger sits back, comfortable in his Man Space, secure in the knowledge that while these numbnuts are in the real-life equivalent of the AV Club, we're hanging in the school newspaper office, where we have our own desk and everything.
It's MLB picture day over at the Sports Hernia. The Brewers going all emo does not bode well for their chances, I think.
Today's Moment of Blasphemy from the Onion is particularly trenchant, especially if you're wearing those shoes.
Major League Jerk is starting a fantasy baseball league against their commenters, and the winner gets a shirt. The FTT lawyers will be in touch, since that's so our move.
Epic Carnival ran a sports story? Kind of? I need to encourage that. Besides, there's NSFW Unit Hate. Or that this is one of those memes the Internet kids are into these days.
Oh noes! Trail Blazer and Seahawk owner and my one-time lying sack of guano employer Paul Allen is going to lose control over one of his biggest holdings in a bankruptcy! How will I ever wipe the smile off my face? (Special Note to Seahawk Fan: Your owner is the reason why the refs were in the tank for the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Special note to Blazer Fan: Your owner is the reason why Greg Oden keeps getting hurt. Special note to Paul Allen: Karma's a bitch, isn't it?)
Simon on Sports gives the time and dates for when Peyton Manning will erase Brett Favre from the record books, thereby provoking an even more pathetic comeback from the Gunslinger. You're never getting away from these people, folks.
Poor banking dears in NYC just can't live on $500K a year. If you can read this without wanting to set some rich prick on fire, you're a better man than me. Or is that worse?
Nick Underhill goes down the A-Rod / Selig path and finds them all reprehensible. I applaud his brave stand.
SSR visits with our old friend Fred Mitchell, the very devoted Fed Ex customer. Yes, I'm still wondering what the Eagles would look like with Reggie Wayne instead of him. And with that, it's off to cry myself to sleep yet again...
Time to open up the crack pipe of connecting things that aren't sports to sports, folks. Buckle up.
Today in politics, President Obama proposed a salary cap on the financial industry. Their executives will have to make due on a half million dollars a year, so long as they are on the dole. (I'm not going to get into the merits or demerits of the move, so please save the frothing hatred of Wall Street Fat Cats and the Obama's A Commie comments... though I am highly amused by the idea that by capping their salaries, these firms might lose the oh so valuable talent that led us into this abyss, or that the Toxic Talent will be able to just walk to some other Safe Company, like those still exist, and make their old bank. Anyway, moving on.)
What interests me is the fact that sports teams -- and more than a few of them -- also take government dollars, usually at the local level for their stadium welfare construction projects, but also sometimes through luxury boxes and other goodies.
So, well, a precedent is set.
I've joked about this before, but if the Mets are taking Citi Dollars, and those Citi Dollars are coming from taxpayers, then the taxpayers deserve a say in how the Mets are run. I'm thinking they won't go to the $25 million a year price for Manny Ramirez.
Now that you've gotten your head in the realm of athlete salaries being capped by an outside force, and public sponsorship of what are supposed to be private, for profit enterprises... let's talk about organ donations and harvesting. (Yes, I know, we're a long way from dick jokes and titty here. There's a reason why this blog isn't popular, kids.)
Every year in this country and others, people who could have decades more to their lives die while waiting for a kidney, heart, or other relatively small piece to the human puzzle. Those lives wouldn't be lost in a society where donation is presumed, rather than chosen. Also, many of these people are highly educated, drawing high salaries, and providing a lot of value (read: tax income) to the shared burden that are nation states.
Which, of course, leads you to the rather unfortunate specter of individual people -- which is to say, um, you and me -- being viewed as a resource late in life, rather than the 100% focus of continuing care. (Or not so late in life when we go to The Nazi Place, which is where all long-winded blog posts eventually go.) Which, absent any complete body religious needs, is the great fear of being selfless at the close; the idea that, dammit, I should be able to own *something* in this world. My skin.
(For the record, I'm an organ donor. Moving on.)
Let's pull this back around to sports. What is an athlete who plays hurt when they don't want to, really, but a man or woman who is not in full ownership of their body? And, since you and I have a small stake in who wears the laundry, given that our tickets and gear purchases make up a portion of their salary... is there something, well, less than emancipated about all of that?
I realize this is all disjointed and not nearly Sport Enough, but here's the takeaway: we all like to think that we all have Some Control, and for the most part, we do. But in the greater scope of things, assuming you draw a paycheck for something other than fun (or have dependents, or pay taxes, or have friends rather than minions), that control is far from absolute.
Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be on a train and a subway, no matter how cold it is, or how little sleep I get from staying up late on this little foray into the void. The amount that I make from that is more or less capped by the market and this economy, regardless of performance; even if I have an absolute genius day/week/month/year, my salary is going to look a lot like what it does now. And the same goes, of course, for athletes, with the only difference is that there's a lot more air in that balloon, and a very big grain of salt as to whether the enterprise fails if you bring in someone else at replacement level.
So, in summation... our next stop in the economic spiral is a salary rollback for top paid players from teams (and maybe even leagues) failing. Hard to see people not cutting back on ticket purchases in a bad economy, folks. (Note: Super Bowl tickets went down from $800 to $500 this time around, though some of that probably was just that only one team had fans that would travel.)
And a hard cap on how much any one player can make. Just like in the real world beyond sports.
Your accusations of socialism are welcome in the comments...
The Onion Sports Network debuts. I am ready for the intense heat of The Final Sweat... and deeply covet their production values. It looks like they took over the Lemur.
Next link is behind a firewall, so let me just clip the relevant bits here.
Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and three other executives are expected to appear in court in Milan on Tuesday to face criminal charges stemming from an offensive video uploaded to the company's site.
Fleischer and the other company officials are accused of criminal defamation and failing to control personal data, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals. The executives face a maximum penalty of three years in jail.
The case stems from a 2006 incident in which a high school student posted a three-minute clip of himself and three others bullying a 17-year-old with Down syndrome. The clip, which went live in September, was taken down Nov. 7, within 24 hours of Google receiving complaints about it.
Consequently, for the health and safety of the blog, I'd like everyone from Italy to close their browser now, since your government is, um, completely freaking batshit. Can't you people get to work on hanging the prosecutor from his heels in the public square?
"Slapshot" is being remade, not as a straight to video sequel that can be easily ignored, but as a big budget monstrosity that Variety compares, favorably, to that Adam Sandler turdmake of "The Longest Yard." Just kill yourselves already. Please. For the children.
NESW is all over Gatorade's remake of "Monty Python and the Knights of the Round Table." This moves a sports drink.... how?
Prophet Fighting gave some love to a recent post of ours, so here's the give back. If you're down with the fisticuffs, this should be on your short list, and their profile of the late great Ingemar Johansson was nails. Ah, for the day when the world feared big Swedes.
In my day job, I work in advertising, which means that right now, I'm about as happy as a pig in boiling oil. In January, consumers in the U.S. cut their spending for the sixth straight month, and that streak shows no sign of ending anytime soon. That's the longest period in 35 years. Even with a few extra bucks in our pockets from lower gas and oil prices, very few people are spending money with any kind of serious intent right now, and personal savings have gone through the roof. It all makes a fellow who, well, encourages people to buy things a mite antsy, though I'm still pretty convinced I can separate fools from their money. (Hey, you're reading this, right?)
However, every cloud has a silver cliche, and the true one is that art improves in bad times. Similarly, there are nice moments to be had for our little backwater of sports. And here they are! 10) Network shadenfraude. Do you yearn for a return to simpler days, when every game didn't have it's own theme song and enough talking heads to fill a particularly slow fraternity? Hard times just might save you, and by you, I really mean me.
Hey, networks -- how much are you paying those fifth through tenth irreplaceable talents on the pre-game show? Because I guarantee you that there isn't a single human being alive who decides whether or not to watch your show or not, based on that extra body. Besides, cutting the headcount down is the only way we are going to get Bill Cowher back on a sideline, and help speed Tiki Barber on his way to that homeless shelter that we all now is right around the corner.
9) Cheaper seats. As a one-time paying spectator for your Philadelphia 76ers, I have a word of advice for anyone thinking of paying full price for their seat: you, sir, are getting boned without lube, and not just by your .500 team. I get near constant last-minute deals to beg me to come fill the seats for up to 60 percent off face value. So in all likelihood, the people to the left and right of you paid less - a lot less. Ready to re-up your season tickets? Yeah, I didn't think so. Which means that the team is going to have to start pricing these things realistically. A man can dream.
8) Off season jobs for players. And I don't mean appearing in awkward ads for the local car dealership, assuming you still have one. Those lower ticket prices are going to eventually mean lower salaries, and alimony and paternity bills just don't go away. I'm hoping for stuff that allows them to get their cardio in. May I suggest grave digging? It's a good look, especially for a defensive player...
7) Clique Factor. In the mid '90s, I lived for a time without cable. So I spun the antennae in my Philadelphia hovel until I found something - anything - to take my mind off my surroundings. On a low powered UHF channel, I found old school ECW.
ECW was a super low budget wrestling federation comprised of lunatic stuntmen and women who would do anything for crowd reactions, including beat each other with whatever the crowd handed to them. The mic work was similarly freaky. Here's a clip.
It's hard to imagine for anyone who watches the neutered version that the WWE puts out now, but believe me when I tell you that this was frequently great. It was also, as far as I could tell, damn near a state secret. And that made it so much more fun to watch and root for. It was like, by watching it, you had ownership.
Now, think about your relationship with your favorite MLB, NBA or NFL team. Doesn't quite feel like that, does it? It's a business, you know it, and part of you has to hate and ignore that on a daily basis to get your enjoyment out of it. It also means that, on some level, you envy people who like college sports or English Premier League soccer, since they've got a little exclusivity thing going on there.
Besides, let's face it... there's frequently a Groucho moment about being a fan of a certain team. I was happier being an Eagles fan on the West Coast, where I didn't have to endure so many, well, Eagles fans. The ones that blame Donovan McNabb for everything start at tiresome and only get worse.
6) We'll all get tougher. Think about your grandparents, or anyone else that you may have ever met that lived through the Depression or World War II. Do you think they would ever go hard for Terrell Owens? Um, no. They'd hate Terrible for every single day of his life, even on the days when he was helping their favorite laundry win, because his value system is just so repellent to people who lived through an era of shared sacrifice.
There are a million little TO's out there, mostly playing wideout. Can you handle an NFL without them? Yeah, me too.
5) Owner shadenfraude. How much would you pay for various sports owners to hit the skids? I'm talking full bore, sell your fillings while appearing on Cash 4 Gold ads, make Leonard Tose look like a winner, 100% nitro-burning funny car flameout. Imagine Mark Cuban broke. Or Daniel Snyder. Or Donald Sterling. Or Jerry Jones. I think I just got wood.
4) Stadium improvement. This one is already starting, with Citibank finally making waves about getting out of their ridiculous deal with the Mets, but I'm looking for this to go further. Let's go back to naming stadiums after entities that don't, well, go out of business three years after getting the rights. Or, better yet, we all just stop agreeing to call them whatever the corporation that bought the rights wants us to. After all, did they pay you?
3) Luxury box removal. A year and a half ago, I took the Shooter Mom (who is, in all likelihood, a bigger football fan than you) to Lambeau for the Eagles-Packers game, because it was her birthday and because every NFL fan should go there at least once. What makes the place special, among the history, is the plain and simple fact that the best seats in the house are for people on bleachers who actually are blue collar enough to make noise when their team needs it. Luxury boxes are at the top of the place, where they belong, for people who don't care enough about the game to freeze their ass off.
If corporate spending falls off and luxury boxes go unsold, I'm dreaming that these abominations will actually be removed, because teams will have no better option than to, well, try to get a real home field advantage again. And I know, I'm dreaming, but how corporations can get away with buying these things in a crap economy is also dreaming. A bad dream.
2) Small market boom. If the money drains out of the games, eventually it will bleed faster out of the big markets, just because there's more air in their balloon. Maybe we get to a point where baseball teams don't have nearly $200 million of difference between payrolls. If it's $100 million, that's got to be better, doesn't it? And if that means that some teams go away or move, so be it. A century of watching the Yankees outspend people is enough.
1) A friendlier international profile. Imagine you are a baseball fan in Japan, or a basketball fan in Europe or China. How happy are you, really, to see your best players leave you high and dry for the NBA and MLB? Sure, the first few guys that went over had to be encouraging, because they showed that your best could compete at the highest level, but at this point, you are probably feeling the same about the MLB+ teams as the other poorer teams.
Maybe this is a small thing, but after many years of going our own way as a nation, I kind of like the idea of other countries feeling less bent at us. And if that means rich teams don't have a de facto second farm system, I'm OK with that. Assuming you aren't a fan of an MLB+ team, I suspect you are too.
Hope is, of course, the triumph of optimism over experience, and spare me a moment from the usual business of the blog to hope that things will get better from the transition of executive power in Washington today.
There will be time, years of it I suspect, for everyone to go back to rooting for their political team as if what's going on there has no real impact on our lives, or the lives of our present and future kids. Just as we will have far too much time to express our disappointment in what happens there. I was on the winning side last time, and even I'm not naive enough to think that will change.
But for this brief time ahead of us, when over two-thirds of the country has come together to offer our best wishes to the new suits, let's just pretend that things are actually different now. Is that really so hard, to take a holiday from our usual, fairly crappy way of being?
Because, kids... once you get to A Certain Age and start to realize that you (a) aren't going to be able to do what you are currently doing forever, and (b) aren't terribly likely to achieve everything in life that you might have dreamed of from doing it, a honeymoon from being right about how awful it all is... really doesn't sound all that bad.
We now return you to your usual programming, and await your condescending comments and/or passive-aggressive apathy. Damn, there goes the mood already.
You are looking at Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who decided that in the lead-up to this week's AFC Championship with Baltimore, he needed to change his name to Steelerstahl. Or, at least, start the paperwork without completing it, because he's going to just renege on this on Monday amd get back on with his life. Frankly, having shown that his name isn't worth more than a cheap laugh, I don't know why he doesn't just go through with it. or cut to the chase and go to Luke McVotewhore.
Similarly, one of those Gil Thorpian can't avoid reading moments in the sports pages is to read up on the Mayor's Bet, that always tiresome collection of foodstuffs that the tools who rule us rattle off in an oh-so-original bet.
Here's an idea: instead of your quaint regional "food," put some teeth in this bet. Have the loser paint City Hall in the opposing team's colors, and leave it that way for a year. Swap out the use of your spouse or kids. Get a Tyson-esque face tatoo of the opposing team's logo on your neck. In other words, show that you've got a set.
I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror. - Former Bush attorney general and de facto criminal Alberto Gonzalez, currently unemployed
A few choice quotes from Mets' chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon about the fact that you, me, and the rest of our fellow taxpayers will be paying the Mets $20 million a year for the right to name their new stadium after Citibank.
(If you came in late, the Saudi scumbags who can't make money running a credit card company -- no, really -- are going to pull in $45 billion of our money to not fail and cause a greater financial crisis. But they can't, ahem, get out of the Mets' stadium deal. Nice.)
“The company is still an ongoing company and a vital company that is doing business around the globe. The taxpayers are backstopping what’s going on in the global economy. It’s not really Citi’s fault that they’re in this problem... We have a deal with Citi that is good for them, good for us...I understand where they’re coming from. I understand that there’s some upset-ness in the marketplace. But we don’t agree with it.”
I see Wilpon's point.
And if someone wants to kill Wilpon with their bare hands for his jaw-dropping arrogance and standard rich guy obliviousness to public outrage over indirectly subsidizing his profitable business during an economic meltdown... well, I understand where they're coming from.
But I don't agree with it.
I mean, he's probably got a pretty damned thick neck. Using a gun would be easier.
Allow me some post-drunk rambling. We'll get back to Teh Funny soon enough.
Four years ago tonight, I was in a Reno casino, watching an immense bank of televisions that showed the slow crushing horror that was Bush II. It was after a 16-hour-day of driving, canvassing, and feverish acts to try to get John Kerry votes, the last act of four months of fever work.
I worked like a dog for John Kerry. I canvassed for a thousand hours or more, gave him the full amount allowed by an individual, and, in the words of many of the people I read in the lefty blogosphere, left it all on the road.
And only now do I realize that I did it all wrong.
You see, I didn't really love my candidate. I just hated his opponent. Eventually everyone else did too, it seems, but in 2004, my pure motivation was to just get That Man out of office.
That doesn't describe Barack Obama's supporters.
They disdain the current Administration, of course, as well as the ugly little campaign that its failed successor ran. (Kudos for the gracious concession.) But Obama's supporters had more than that fuel. They had a true admiration, even a love, for their man.
I wasn't able to do that. My service was lacking.
Because of that, and ineffective campaigning, Swiftboating and more, the nation endured four more years of Bush pain. And my indifferent candidate sat on a significant amount of money, rather than fight for the office.
After the 2004 experience, I did no volunteer work, gave no money, and did nothing more than wish the now-President-elect well. Hell, in 2005, I tried like mad to get a job offer in New Zealand.
Barack Obama didn't need my help. That's OK -- it wasn't up to his standards, anyway.
Barack Obama is not a guy I'd want to drink a beer with. If he showed up at my poker table, I'd take my chips and walk away.
The reason why is because he's a better man than I am, on a lot of levels.
Presidents should be.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled petty snark, timewaste, and whole-hearted obsession about sports, for a very long time, I hope. The grown-ups are back in charge.
Three of my relatives threaten to move to Heaven, thanks to that Rapture thing from the Antichrist being elected. (Oddly, they haven't donated to the McCain campaign or volunteered to work for him. Guess they just aren't that invested in the planet.)
Make your own predictions in the comments. I'll keep track, and the closest will get a Mysterious Prize Of Dubious Value.
A fun little list for a fun little guy tonight, folks. And rather than give you a dour little image of the Hitlerian second sacker, I went with a great little guitar tune. We can't be seen together, indeed.
Well, we all knew that the Dems had the gay vote sewn up. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
(And in the interest of Equal Time, Dolphins owner Wayne Huzienga says he's selling the team if Obama wins, due to those hideous tax raises on middle-class NFL owners. Given the Fish's overall record under the Blockbuster Cockblocker, I think this also counts as an endorsement...)
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Major League Baseball has moved back the scheduled start time of any game 6 of the World Series so Fox can also air the half hour Barack Obama spot on Oct. 29.
A network spokeswoman confirmed the buy and said MLB had agreed to the network's request for the delay.
Fox now joins CBS and NBC in airing the half hour program, whose content the Obama campaign has declined to describe. The decision means that the Obama campaign is now spending close to $3 million to air the program from 8 to 8:30 p.m. that night on at least three networks. ABC didn't immediately return a message asking whether it too has now agreed to a buy, a move which would create an unprecedented roadblock of the nation's biggest commercial networks.
What's notable here, really, is that Barack Obama seems to be the last company in America to have money to spend on ads.
Say it with me, folks... Land. Slide. Land. Slide. Land. Slide...
Today's link is a festival of silver lining hate, and a fever dream for some noxious sports team owner to go tits-up. Seriously, how cool would it be to see some notable swell to lose their team? Mark Cuban in tears, Donald Sterling kicked to the curb, Daniel Snyder crying, any of the Oklahoma Sonic thieves having to face some nasty, nasty reality...
Well, taking delight in the misery of others is, y'know, bad and stuff. But if I'm going to watch my meager retirement savings disappear, and spend the rest of my life in harness, I'd just like some company. Well-heeled, thoroughly disgraced, possibly suicidal company...
If you want us to link to your blog, ask. If you steal content from FTT, Baby Jesus will cry, and your blog will become nearly as unpopular as this one. If you think we've violated copyright, tell us nicely and we'll probably stop. If you read this, either out loud or just in your own mind, you agree to Not Sue, buy our T-shirts, click on the site ads and spend your every waking hour furthering the Cult of FTT. It's not a nice cult.
Does it matter how you dress your kids? Yes. The Figthin' have Brett Myers and son, a sweet little tyke that's probably not being brought up to live in urban areas.
