And we’re back. Again. At least I am. Get excited.

So it’s been a while. Here are some things that have caught my attention recently.

The guy who owns the Utah Jazz’ D-League team wants to stage a one on one game between Michael Jordan and Bryon Russell. He’ll make a donation to the winner’s charity of choice. Tremendously noble. But he thinks that this game should happen during halftime of his team’s season opener. Come on, how delusional is this guy? If Michael Jordan is going to play any sort of basketball game, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it won’t be during halftime of a Utah Flash game.

I drink almost exclusively from two cups. The first is a 7-11 GI Joe souvenir cup with Duke on it. I do have the entire set of four, but the Duke cup is my favorite. The second cup is a Phillies 2008 World Series Champions pint glass. To clear up any potential misconceptions about this glass, I didn’t steal it from a bar. At some point in the night I ended up with it, it became more of an effort to bring it back to the bar than to keep it, so I just brought it home with me. Again, not stealing. Brett Myers would understand. Also, GI Joe and the Phillies? Convince me I’m not an eight year old.

Moammar Gadhafi is saying things. I didn’t read this whole article, because it was boring, but one part of it jumped out at me. Gadhafi wants to get rid of the veto power that the five permanent members of the Security Council have. I hope this proposal goes all the way through, and then at the very last minute we veto it. Fuck him. Also, the capitalization of teleprompter in this article amused me. TelePrompTer. Weird.

I have a new favorite website: http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/. The URL is a little bit misleading. No one is saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I don’t know if Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. But Glenn Beck has refused to deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. So did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990? Probably. Fuck him.

Last week I met someone who claims to have “no emotions.” That just isn’t true. To quote someone who is almost certainly a genius, “it means that she’s so emotional that she can’t feel any one emotion over all the others at catastrophically high levels.” You shouldn’t be walking away from people like this, you should be running.

This story was pretty funny. This coach is setting a precedent that may come back to kick his ass, but it’s still a pretty stand up move. Nevertheless, I still think that Chip Kelly is an asshole, and will continue to think so until he revokes LaGarrette Blount’s suspension. Yeah, Blount hit a guy in the face, but the guy probably deserved it, and Blount apologized like right away. The guy he hit has accepted the apology, so Oregon should drop their self-righteous, draconian punishment and let Blount have at least some of a senior season.

Sunday is International Michael Vick Appreciation Day. (That may not be actually true.) He’s going to destroy the Chiefs. He was holding back during the preseason. He’s going to score like six touchdowns. Adjust your fantasy rosters accordingly.

Oh, hey, look, we still have a blog

Ok, so we haven’t said much recently. Whatever, it’s summer. Here are a bunch of words that won’t really say much of anything.

Right now I’m watching the Mets beat the Cardinals. Thrilling. I’m sorry, but the Mets just are not a good baseball team right now. I don’t see how they’ll make the playoffs this year. Nelson Figueroa is pitching well though, bailing out an injured Jon Niese. Honestly, this game hasn’t been all that exciting. My favorite part so far has been learning that Jeff Francoeur has yet to draw a non-intentional walk since being traded. Also, Pujols has a six at bat hit streak going, with at least two doubles and two home runs in that stretch. In his most recent plate appearance, though, he was hit in the forearm. David Wright better watch out next time he comes up.

Last night Prince Fielder went nuts after being hit with two outs in the ninth, rampaging through the bowels of Dodger Stadium looking for Guillermo Mota. Um, ‘roid rage? Let’s be honest, he’s probably been doing that stuff since he was twelve. Dodgers-Brewers game tonight could be a shit show. Or, more likely, the umpires will warn both dugouts before the first pitch, and the game will be boring.

HBO is offering August Rush on demand through the end of August. It’s such a good movie, I can’t think of anything better to watch when hung over. I think they blew it by not marketing the movie that way.

Cardinals just threw at David Wright’s head! Bottom six, Mets are up 7-0. Wright got out of the way. Warnings issued. Wright grounds into a double play. Last Thursday, some Giants pitcher had the audacity to throw at Chase Utley’s head. Four pitches later Utley put the ball out of the park. I know it’s just anecdotal, but maybe this is why the Phillies are the reigning World Fucking Champions and the Mets are, well, the Mets. And seriously, I can’t overstate how cool Chase Utley is.

The GI Joe movie comes out Friday. I’ve been alternating between excited and terrified. They’ve been advertizing it so much I feel like they’re trying to trick people into going to see it. Whatever, there’s no way I won’t see it. And it’s GI Joe, so it’s going to be good. I just found out today that it was written by the people who wrote Four Brothers. That was a movie that I expected to be awful, but it actually wasn’t bad at all. So I guess there’s hope. The fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow needs to be really bad ass. Really though, I think everything is going to come down to these accelerator suits. If they’re as idiotic as they sound, the movie is probably fucked. But if they’re ok, there’s hope.

Francoeur just drew a walk! Swear to God. That’s probably a good note to end on.

Super Bowl Stuff

Congratulations have to go out to the Steelers (and a hearty “fuck you” to the Cardinals) for winning last night. Obviously I watched the game, and have a couple thoughts I wanted to share.

First of all, yeah, the Eagles probably would have lost to the Steelers the way they played, so I can’t really get all that upset about things. It was pretty painful watching Roethlisberger lead the Steelers on a game winning drive in the last three minutes of the game when two weeks ago McNabb had the same opportunity and couldn’t get it done. Last night made it pretty clear why Roethlisberger has two Superbowl rings and I’m still hoping Donovan gets traded to the Bears.

I loved the roughing the holder penalty called against Arizona. That was definitely something I had never seen before, though I must admit that I would love to see more teams take runs at the holder on field goals and extra points. Football is getting boring; some unnecessary violence could reenergize it.

Santonio Holmes, during all that postgame stuff, had a great line that I think merits some attention. Channeling the ghost of Freddie Mitchell (he’s dead, right?), Holmes declared that he stepped up on that final drive because “I wanted to continue to be great.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Al Michaels said something that really pissed me off. I don’t remember the context, or when in the game it happened, it may have even been after the game, but anyway, Michaels declared that football was the national pastime. No, it’s not. Baseball is. I don’t care about ratings or revenues, football has nowhere near the place in American culture that baseball does. No one writes poems about football, NFL players aren’t in classic songs, there have been maybe three good football movies, none of which measure up to The Natural, Field of Dreams, or Pride of the Yankees. Football is just a sport; baseball is a part of American history.

Even though pretty much everyone watches the Superbowl, other stations still need to throw up something. ABC went with a shitload of Wipeout, which seems like just a more bland, American MXC. A bunch of other stations went with a different approach, showing nonsense like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, What Women Want, and the Devil Wears Prada. I wonder what demographic they were trying to lure away from NBC.

But the best Superbowl alternative, which was fortunately replayed like six times yesterday, was Puppy Bowl V. Basically, they threw a bunch of puppies in a pit that was decorated like a football field, threw in some stuffed animals, and let the dogs go nuts. Of course when Michael Vick did this he ended up in jail, but when Animal Planet does it PETA is silent. Whatever, fuck PETA. Anyway, there were a couple highlights from Puppy Bowl. First, the puppy named Eli got bitched around a lot, legitimately tackled by some other dogs. Another puppy, Griffey, got ejected for just beating the hell out of the other dogs. Hopefully Bad Newz Kennels had some scouts there. But the best part about Puppy Bowl was the commentary. Harry Kalas was doing play by play! And it was every bit as awesome as you would think. Seriously, it’s February, I’ll listen to Kalas call pretty much anything at this point. Pitchers and catchers still seems so far away.

And there were commercials. Meh. The Doritos crystal ball commercial seems to have gone over really well, winning The USA Today’s prize, but I was underwhelmed. Yeah, a guy got hit in the balls, but that’s hardly groundbreaking. Budweiser disappointed too; the horses were awesome when they were playing football; doing anything else is just mediocre. And can we stop with this Great American Lager nonsense? You’re owned by a Belgian company, and no one is being fooled. Pepsi also came up short: the Pepsuber one was awful, and the side by side generation one was only slightly better. Having Belushi and Jack Black side by side was pretty terrible; I’m pretty much a huge Jack Black fan, and I can’t say he’s anywhere near Belushi’s level. Also, fuck Carlos Boozer. He has time to be in an Overstock.com commercial, but not to actually play basketball and be a worthwhile second round pick for my fantasy team? What the hell?

Some other stuff happened this weekend independent of the Superbowl. Sarah Palin came to DC, but blessedly kept her mouth shut. Rush Limbaugh is still an idiot. Scientists cloned the extinct Pyrenean Ibex, but it died in seven minutes. Spaniards are close to cloning a fighting bull, hopefully they’ll have more success. Michael Phelps got caught smoking pot, and people were outraged. But fortunately nothing is going to happen to him, because NBC set Olympics ratings records when he was swimming. If he wants to, he’ll be back in London, WADA be damned. Seriously, all he did for the last four years was swim; if he wants to smoke every once in a while there’s no reason to stop him.

But the biggest thing coming out of this weekend is the first trailer for the GI Joe movie. Oh man, it’s going to be the coolest movie ever. Honestly, I probably would have bought a movie ticket just to watch the preview. Seriously, Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes going head to head, Duke and Ripcord blowing shit up, the trailer was incredible. And the movie is going to be even better, I just know it. Seriously, I’m so excited for this.