Why Must the NFL Suddenly Become Gay For One Week?

So while trying to get the Bug to fallthehellasleep tonight, I came across this rather bizarre lament by Y!S columnist Michael Silver about how gay the NFL Combine has become. There's no hate in Silver's column: he just thinks there shouldn't be a sexual undercurrent in a professional situation.

Which is fair enough, although it's weird to look at a situation where a bunch of young bucks are:

• Asked to strip down to their skivvies so that they can judged like Westminster dogs
  
• Surrounded by speculators who insist on referring to adult men as "boys"
• Utterly unable to control their own destinies, instead waiting for old men to bid on them
  

... and think the apt comparison is to a singles scene. Yes, there's an uncomfortable parallel here, but you can find its antecedent down in Charleston, not Chelsea.

Furthermore, I refuse to believe there's any homo-eroticism inherent in the Combine that isn't inherent in every NFL locker room.

It's pretty indisputable that if you put a bunch of people from one gender together for an extended period of time with no members of the other gender to look at, they'll start looking at each other (You may have heard of such phenomena among prep schools, single-sex religious communities, prison gangs, inner-city gangs, fraternities, sororities, the nomes des blog over at the Powerline blog, Ohio lacrosse teams, Greek philosophers, and the Taliban).

Yet Silver seems to be suggesting if we sprayed Gay-B-Gone on the Combine, the whole league would come off free of the kind of homoeroticism that seems weird to outsiders. But it's notable that the athletes Silver interviewed seem to shrug off any sexual undertones. That may be because each prospect can remember the first old man who took notes on the "strong, shapely ass" the prospect was already developing at age 14. Once you get over that kind skull penetration, it's probably all downhill.

So, do me a favor. The next time the guy next to you at the bar comes up with the wholly original query of "Why do they have to slap each other's asses after a good play?" just calmly explain that they do it because they're athletes and athletes are by and large into that kind of thing. You may feel obliged to add, Don't worry, that doesn't mean you and I have to do it while we watch.

If you can do that, I'll get the baby down.

Column via tMMJD, image by XKCD by the talented Pete Holiday.

"The Wine Was Good. Did You Think of Me When You Drank It? Did You Squirm a Little Bit?"

We all deserve to have our comments judged within context. And in this video, Chris Berman appears to be talking to a friend. Maybe she, unlike the rest of America, did not agida at the sound of these words. I hope so.

But even granting that, and even leaving aside what in the holy feck the "squirm" sentence means, giving someone a present and asking them if it made you think of them Buffalo-Bill-playing-with-his-nipple-ring creepy.



H/T

Sucks to Be Rupert Murdoch, Occasionally

Hillary came in third, and 6,300 people are watching Fox Business. And his company's sports brand just keeps shining brighter.

Proof that all media everywhere sucks everything always.

Media Gossip Always Trumps Africa News

If I were a Chinese official hoping for a minimum of organized Darfur-inspired protest, I'd thank God for every random nutjob who grabbed a microphone with delusions of grandeur.

Enter Hu Ziwei, an Olympic television commentator and husband of another Chinese broadcaster. Hu grabbed the spotlight at a recent event to introduce a Chinse ping-pong champ and went nutso:

Hu: Today is a special day for The Olympic Channel, and it's a special day for Mr. Zhang Bin, and for me, it's a special day too. Because just two hours ago, I found out that besides me, Mr. Zhang Bin has been maintaining an improper relationship with another woman.

This has got everything people like to read about so they don't have to read about foreign affiars: sex, media, sexy media, and an arbitrary treasonous declaration that "We're so far from being a great country." Something like this would keep the American blogosphere humming along for a week.

Via Imagethief.

Well That Daily Show Bit Was For Crap

Not sure if this is what happens when you know too much about what Jon Stewart is discussing, or whether someone at Comedy Central told them they had to talk about Vick. But the show doesn't usually seem so desperately in need of a laugh track.


It is interesting to see Tiki Barber say Vick "will be blackballed, he will not be welcome in any NFL locker room if he bails on other players," since, two nights later, he tried to call out his old QB in an exceedingly poor imitation of a shock jock.

It seems like the radio talk genre demands obnoxiousness. Tiki might want to get out of that business since a) he can't be competently obnoxious, and b) it's going to undermine his TV work. Unless he was wrong about what happens when you "bail" on players. Which would mean he's not good at TV commentary either. In which case we'd probably all be better off if he spent is post-NFL career mastering the art of Flying Fuck, Rolling Donut.

Getting Ink for the "Genocide Olympics": Blame Hollwood

Daniel Large is the author of a report on how China might be backing off of support to Sudan in the run-up to the Olympics. And he seems to know that, even if Hollywood basically agrees with you on everything, you gotta bash Hollywood to get noticed:

"While Hollywood was quick to claim credit for China's apparent change of tack on Darfur, I think we should remember that signs of change were visible before the so-called 'Genocide Olympics Campaign' started in earnest," said Large. "So I think we should set these issues in context and we should be wary of having a short time frame in praising progress or success or failure."

Large is from the Small Arms Survey, an excellent Geneva-based research outfit which I've had the pleasure of speaking with before and which may be frustrated that the news out of Darfur isn't smarter or more plentiful. All of which would be understandable.

But. I don't know who this "Hollywood" Large speaks of is, but he doesn't need to worry. No one of note is ever going to allow "Hollywood" to claim credit for anything in the international arena, certainly not for the minimal moves toward opposing genocide that China has made in the past few months.

In all likelihood, the genocide will keep right on going, the Olympics will go off without a hitch, and no one at the Small Arms Survey or in the stable of talent at MGM will have reason to wear any "We Stopped the Genocide" party hats.

But if he's trying to get noticed by the media, Large has a decent strategy.

I mean, the Cavs' Ira Newble can light flames of protest in Chad with Mia Farrow all he wants. Unless he disses Farrow publicly and hysterically, calling her a limousine liberal who does more harm than good, I doubt any American talking heads are going to invite him on the air to talk about what he's seen.

Or unless he calls out teammate LeBron on those Mandarin lessons. You know he's got to be weighing that option while he's touring Chad and Rwanda.

Baseball Tennis: It's All a Plot to Sell Corn Flakes

So there's this wonderful video out there of these guys playing what FanHouse's Postman R labeled "Baseball Tennis":

When I saw it online, I knew it was a faux-reality commercial in the spirit of those "That's Michael Vick," Powerade ads. But I just saw it on TV, and learned it's part of some Frosted Flakes/ESPN collaboration called "Earn Your Stripes."

I make my living working for ESPN competitor AOL Sports, so take this with extra salt: I'm surprised that a kid's cereal would use that kind of subtle melding of reality and CGI (I'm assuming it's CGI). The SF is smooth enough that the only reason you know the footage is staged is because the footage is impossible.

It strikes me as weird bit of fakery from an advertising genre that usually feels the need to use "part of a balanced breakfast" to cover its chocolate-frosted ass.

But lead-bottomed kids are probably savvy enough to see through the commercial, pour themselves another bowl of sweetness, and then continue their reign as America's glass teat champs.

I Dreamed of Idiots

Ron Artest went to Kenya, and the Kings rewarded him by him by allowing him to be interviewed by a very slow person. Witness:

You were fortunate to attend college and study mathematics. Do any of the people you encountered have the luxury of going to universities?

Leave aside that Artest most likely flew into Nairobi, which claims seven universities. Or that Ron Ron is from Long Island City, a neighborhood best known for the shiny green dong that rises out of the center of town.

Leave it aside, I say. You don't even need to know any of that. Just know that this interviewer thought Kenyans would be thunderstruck by Ron Artest's curriculum vitae. And that he also asked:

While you were in Africa, how did you communicate with the people?

Had anyone ever seen an iphone before?

The people who win marathons are frequently from Kenya. Did you see people running everywhere?

Please note that:

• They speak English in Kenya.
• Kenya probably has a more robust cell phone service than I can get from AT&T in Manhattan.
• Kenya is not a holiday. Ergo, there is no door which Jack Skellington walk through and come upon thousand of people doing stereotypical Kenyan things. When you go there, people are generally eating, reading the paper, and waiting for the goddamn bus. You can go hours without seeing a gazelle.
  

Anyways, Ron tries to explain the subtle difference between these entirely separate countries. He doesn't help matters much.

What is Kenya like compared to other African countries?
"Some countries in Africa, like Sudan and Chad, are at war all the time. It’s war, war, war. But in some places like Kenya and Nigeria, I’ve heard that it can be a nice place to live."

Nigeria? Jeebus. Across the country Binyavanga Wainaia's head a-splode.

He says he's "opening an AIDS clinic out there and will have a school named after me too... It will be Ron Artest AIDS Clinic or whatever."

So, there's a ray of hope.

Via The Hype. On our site. Not on his site, by golly.

Update: Stop Mike Lupica says I've got my geography wrong if I think Artest's home in the projects is in LIC. I'm not sure he's right, but he gives good Kenya-related commenting, which goes along way in these parts.

One Year Until Ixnay on the Arfur Day!

The NYT's George Vecsey is just crazy about Chinese ... Olympic architecture:

Yet there is a tremendous upside to these Games: the exposure to modern China, including the Olympic architecture. Exactly one year from today, there will be four swimming finals in Beijing’s National Aquatics Center, nearly finished and already nicknamed the Water Cube because it looks like a square of sparkling water, instantly frozen, bubbles and all.

Next door is the main Olympic stadium, glowing a bright red and nicknamed the Bird’s Nest because of the steel twig-like prongs woven together. “To promote traditional feng shui balance between fire and water, the venues were placed side by side,” wrote John Powers of The Boston Globe, who recently visited Beijing.

China is near.

That chill up your spine came from someone inexplicable trying to write like Tom Friedman. Or the screenwriter of Highlander.

Vecsey goes on to absolutely wonder at the fact that China seems to have ... yuppies!* Why this is noteworthy, I still can't figure out.

Nor can I figure why, with all the issues surrounding the rise of China, Vecsey decides to deconstruct Olympic architecture like it's the Slusho viral marketing campaign. But in addition to the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube he could have mentioned:

1. The genocide that gets bankrolled by China's do-what-ya-like capitalism.
2. If that's too out there, man, here's a slam dunk: All those Mattel toys that were covered with lead. And the Chinese head of the company who committed suicide after the news about the lead hit. Maybe Vecsey should focus on the feng shui between prominent embarrassments to the country and the corpses that seem to follow. What's going to happen to the Chinese environmental bigwigs when the summer of 2008 rolls around and the air in Beijing still sucks? (Hint: Odds seem decent that they'll die.)
   

*Note to Vecsey: Every country has yuppie elites. Long before I saw any American idiots wearing those Bluetooth hands-free earbuds, I saw Ghanaian idiots** wearing them. They were sitting on the patio next to Busy Internet, overlooking the open sewer and the highway where some poor sap was pulling a cart clearly built for a beast of burden. The open sewer was a better indicator than the earbuds.

**Yeah, Ghana's better off than many. But point stands: Every country has a First Class section.