- Far too many illegitimate “sports” are getting notoriety, hosting world championships and acting like they actually matter. Yes, I’m looking right at you, poker, rock/paper/scissors, cup stacking and cheerleading. You’re not real sports, but there you are, acting like a) you’re legitimate and b) that you matter. With that in mind, I’m pumped about an even that took place last weekend in Las Vegas, the world championships of a true sport that doesn’t receive enough attention: beer pong. Beer pongers from all over the continent descended on the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, with more than 400 teams from across North America are competing in tournament for the championship. It’s about freaking time that the sport went beyond dorm rooms, frat houses and off-campus apartments and into a playoff system to decide who's the best. Rather than the stupid BCS to determine a phony national champion in college football, the World Series of Beer Pong IV was a fantastic event that awarded $50,000 to the winning team, Michael Popielarski and Ron Hamilton, collectively known as "Smashing Time." The team from New York won the event and took home the crown late Sunday night. For those who don’t believe that beer pong, in which competitors attempt to hit ping pong balls into cups of beer set up on their opponent’s side of the table and force their opponent to drink all of the beer on their side of the table first or pass out trying, listen to the passion from some of the competitors. "I take this really seriously. This is like a sport, it requires skill and practice," declares Felipe Mendoza of North Hollywood says. "My teammate and I shoot about 300 shots a day in the days leading up to the World Series." Mendoza is one-half of Team Kobe, a team that has placed in the top 20 in their two previous World Series says. Just look at the hard work he’s putting in to get drunk when it counts, people. Mendoza’s teammate, Brian Newell, likens the game to tennis. "I played doubles tennis, so I think that that has helped us because the game definitely has similarities to doubles tennis." Oh, and if you think this event is an excuse for people to get drunk, you would be half-wrong. See, the World Series, unlike most games played across the country, only uses 50% beer. The back row of cups are filled with water, a rule that can be found in the 2,807 words that make up the World Series of Beer Pong's rules (yes, there are rules). The funny thing is that to avoid the heat from critics who bash the game for its role in binge drinking, there is nothing in the official rules that says a player must drink their beer. Those taking part do anyhow because it’s an unwritten rule, i.e. an actual rule they don’t write down to avoid getting hassled. This isn’t just some lowbrow event for the slackers from your local community college, either; two Stanford Law students competed and missed 12 straight shots at the final cup while being mercilessly heckled by a crowd of onlookers. Face it, everyone: beer pong is here to stay. More and more bars are setting up tournaments, a documentary film, "Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong," was screened at this year's WSOBP and there is a game celebrating the sport, "Pong Toss,” for the Nintendo Wii. Might as well stop hating, pick up a paddle and start playing……
- Damn you world, look what you and your anti-piracy brigade of nations are doing to the pirates off the coast of Africa! You’ve turned them from the gun-toting, looting, plundering, make-you-walk-the-plank scourge of the seas into….well, into pirates who do things like releasing a French merchant ship and its nine crew members seized off the Nigerian coast over the weekend. Sadly, more of this kind of crap could be in the offing with two Chinese destroyers and a supply ship joining the growing international naval coalition patrolling the waters in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia. Worse yet, the crew members of the Bourbon Leda are all in good health, so these pirates didn’t even bother to rough them up. I realize that some of the blame has to go on the pirates themselves for not being especially pirate-y, but even then you can’t help but be pissed at how this situation is working out. These pirates captured the Bourbon Leda, a supply vessel, on Sunday, and before the week is half over, they’re surrendering control? This kind of crap is contagious too; pirates in neighboring Cameroon seized another Bourbon ship, the Bourbon Sagitta, and 10 of its crew members in October and released the vessel and its crew 11 days later. You’re not helping with your “contribution” of forces, China. Your stupid convoy has already received requests for help from at least 15 vessels, and with a coalition including vessels from the United States, Russia and India, the seas are becoming increasingly unfriendly for pirates, mateys. With this kind of scrutiny, pirates are going to have a tough time matching the 100 vessels attacked and 40 vessels successfully nearly off the coast of Somalia last year. I hope the
U.N. Security Council is very happy with itself, because that group of tools started this sh*t storm by passing a resolution in December aimed at combating piracy along the Horn of Africa by allowing military forces to chase pirates onto land in cases of "hot pursuit." Just wait and see, you’ll be sorry when these pirate are no longer about to loot, pillage, plunder and commit their wacky high seas hijinks…..
- Roll your fatties, jam your best bag of weed into your pocket and prepare to get baked, er, to enjoy a rambling musical extravaganza, Phish fans. The band with the most lovable stoner fans this side of the Grateful Dead (ironically enough, also going back on tour) is beginning to firm up plans for its first tour in five years. While an official announcement hasn’t yet been made, as of Monday, LiveNation.com was listing a Jan. 30 on-sale date for a Phish show on June 18 at the Post-Gazette Pavilion outside Pittsburgh. Couple that with rampant rumors of an appearance at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn., the previous weekend and you’ve got a genuine reason for potheads ‘round the nation to get very excited - well, as excited as a person can be after hitting their favorite bong and crashing on their couch for hours on end. Weirdly enough, the LiveNation.com link has since been removed, but don’t expect that to be a permanent thing. More than likely, someone with LiveNation just jumped the gun on posting it and the suits with the company and/or Phsih’s management had a collective fit and demanded it be taken down. However, Meanwhile, a June 6 show at Great Woods outside Boston is up on Ticketsnow.com, a secondary ticketing company owned by Ticketmaster, so dates are popping up slowly but surely from various sites. Technically, as of now the only confirmed Phish shows are March 6-8 at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Va. The depth and duration of the tour will become clearer in the next few weeks, but what we do know is that this will be the band's first tour since August 2004. Take a hit off the bong for me to celebrate, Phish fans, this is a big day for you……
- I hate hockey. I make no bones about it, nor do I pretend to care about much of anything that goes on during the course of an NHL season. Play a game outdoors at Wrigley Field, play during the day, play at night, throw on retro uniforms - I just don’t care. But that doesn’t mean I won't take time out to rip hockey when something like this happens. In case you missed it, during a game between the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night in Buffalo, video shows Senators player Jarko Ruutu biting the hand of Sabres' forward Andrew Peters. In the video, you can see Ruutu’s mouth closing in on Peters’ hand and the glove on Peters' right hand being ripped off. Also, the skin of Peters’ right thumb was pierced by what is almost assuredly one of Ruutu’s teeth. But at least Ruutu had a good reason for going Mike Tyson on someone’s hand. Either that or he was simply retaliating after Peters forcefully rubbed the palm of his glove in the Ruutu's face. Peters is a noted enfrocer, a guy who makes his living being a tough guy on the ice and fighting a lot of people, so when you watch video and see him shaking his hand and wincing in pain, them immediately going to the bench for medical attention, you know he’s not faking it. Ruutu would have you believe that Peters was faking, because he denied biting anyone and said Peters’ hand was “simply in my mouth, but I didn't bite him.” Uh huh, sure. The NHL didn’t buy that crap, suspending Ruutu for two games. That should make Peters happy, as after the game he sounded more than a little pissed in saying, “It's evident on video what he did and I have all the confidence in the league to make the right decision.” Like I said before, I don’t recognize hockey as a major sport and neither does most of the American sports-watching public, so this isn’t as big of a deal as it would be in the NFL, NBA or MLB, but it’s still bush league and worthy of ridicule. Stop biting people, NHLers, start getting proper dental care and you might be a lot less of a joke than you currently are…..
- No. No, no and no. Those are the only acceptable responses for Congress to the mind-boggling, ridiculous plea by the adult film industry for a bailout similar to the ones handed out by the government to the auto and banking industries. The fact that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis have the stones to ask that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry is mildly impressive, but that doesn’t mean their request is legitimate. First, Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow. Second, how freaking expensive is it to slam a dirty mattress down in some abandoned warehouse in Chatsworth, California and film some cheesy porno. It’s not like you have to spend big money on writing a stellar script for those things, nor is there a high production value. You’re not shelling out millions for big-time talent, so again I ask, a bailout for what? Five billion dollars can buy a lot of dirty mattresses, hire a lot of skanks who like to take some on camera and purchase the rights to a lot of cheesy porno music. Lastly, the banking and auto industries are vital to this country, its economy and its survival. Everyone needs their money and many people need loans, just like everyone needs a way to get where they are going, usually in the form of a vehicle. Not everyone needs a low-class film of two strangers getting after it on camera. But hey, maybe they have good reasoning behind their request, so let’s hear them out. “The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.” What do you mean it’s not for them to determine? You’re asking them for $5 billion, so you’re making it their issue to determine. And since when did, “Everyone else is getting a bailout, so we should get one too even if we don’t need or deserve it” become sound reasoning for requesting money from Congress. Yeah, let’s overlook our growing national debt, fighting terrorism and drugs, building our educational system, working on our nation’s highways, helping poor and needy people, providing medical care to those people and all of the other important issues take a back seat so we can bail out the porn industry. Before I wrap this up (and believe me, I could go on all day ripping these tools), let’s hear from Francis and Flynt themselves. Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people." Cherished? No, cherishing is not a word I’d use to describe what the degenerates who patronize your industry do, Joe. Maybe you should stop evading taxes and filming underage girls in sexual activity before you ask for a bailout, ass clown. As for Flynt, he’s trying to tie the porn industry to the country’s struggling economy and depression. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in a statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex." Hey idiot, you don’t provide sex to people. You provide video of other people having sex. Last I checked, people are still able to have sex and to want to have sex without watching porn. If anything, dudes who watch porn do so because they can’t have actual sex with a girl. In other words, the answer to your request is no and if the government gives you ass clowns even a dollar, I’m looking for the first plane out of this country and never looking back…..
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