Category Archives: Random tidbits

Rex Ryan exposes gut, inspires ridicule

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Look: I’ve made plenty of fat jokes at Rex Ryan’s expense. Scores of them.

But I’m not going to beat the guy up for what happened Tuesday night, when he accidentally exposed his gut to the crowd while changing jerseys at a Carolina Hurricanes game, inspiring a New York post news story in the process.

Because it’s not like he pulled up his shirt and did the truffle shuffle for the crowd. Cheerleaders came and brought Rex a new jersey, and I’m guessing he was up on the Jumbotron, under all sorts of pressure to change jerseys immediately, plus he was wearing an undershirt, so he made the switch.

Revealing himself like he did, that’s embarrassing. And unlike devouring tons and tons of food every day, it wasn’t something he was doing consciously. So I just kind of feel bad for the guy.

And in sympathy, I’ll share a story:

I’m no stranger to gut ownership. The size fluctuates depending on the season, how active I’ve been and how much Taco Bell I’ve been eating, but it gets pretty damn impressive at times. Not quite Rex Ryan impressive, but sizy nonetheless.

And it was probably at its largest during my junior year of high school, when my friends first got cars so we first had near-unlimited access to Taco Bell.

That same year, a ski mountain my family used to frequent added something called “tree skiing,” a bizarre and, in retrospect, terrible idea that was exactly what it sounded like; basically they just cleared out the brush from the mountain’s off-slope forest and let people ski among the trees. Awesome.

I was sixteen and so, despite my girth, eager to try all of the dumbest and most dangerous activities available to me, so tree skiing was about the most intriguing thing imaginable.

The place, presumably to minimize lawsuits, didn’t allow skiers to tree-ski from the summit, so you didn’t use the regular chairlift. Instead, you had to take a J-Bar — an antiquated type of lift normally reserved for bunny slopes — which sort of hooks under your ass and shoves you up the mountain while you stand there like a goon.

I’m a decent skier, but I’ve always sucked at negotiating ski lifts. Don’t know why. Maybe I don’t have the patience for it, or I have some sort of mental block.

Regardless, something happened on the J-Bar that day about halfway up the slope. I slipped a little, I guess, and the hook part of the J-Bar — the curl of the J — lost its grip on my ass and started sliding up my back.

Thanks to gravity, I began sliding backwards down the mountain while the J-Bar was still driving forward.

The hook snagged my jacket, pulling me to the ground and somehow yanking my coat, shirt and undershirt up over my head,  exposing my pasty gut to the world as it dragged me up the mountain with my bare back against the snow.

It sucked.

And it would be embarrassing enough just knowing that it happened, and that it was happening, and that the person behind me on the J-Bar might see it all go down. But of course, there was a regular chairlift overhead, and so everyone on there was clapping and laughing and having the time of their damn lives.

I’ll fully admit that if I were in their place I’d have been doing exactly the same thing, because fat people falling makes for some of the world’s strongest comedy. It’s basically the driving force behind the movie The Great Outdoors, which is hilarious.

And so I can’t really fault people for laughing at Ryan’s expense. But I’ll say that inadvertent public gut exposure, when yours is the exposed gut, is not fun at all, and so excuse me for taking it easy on Rex just this once.

For the life of me, I can’t remember how I got up from that precarious position. Maybe whatever happened was so scarring and humiliating that I’ve blocked it. It’s a shame, because if it was that terrible, it was probably also something that would be pretty hilarious to remember now.

Where I went

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My apologies for the sudden disappearance and relative lack of posts here yesterday, and the forthcoming lack of posts this weekend. I’m in our national’s capital for the weekend to catch the Georgetown-Villanova game, and I ended up leaving work in a huff in a (successful) effort to beat the blizzard that ultimately pelted this area.

Turns out I actually made my best-ever time on a New York to DC trip, just under four hours. No idea how that happened.

There’s lots of snow on the ground here now, and DC completely panics and bails whenever that happens. The trek to the Verizon Center should be awesome.

I’ll be back with a full head of steam on Monday. Until then, geaux Saints.

My second favorite sport

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Yesterday at Big League Stew, ‘Duk asked:

If you were on ‘Jeopardy!’ and the final category was baseball, how confident would you be in making your wager?

I think about stuff like this all the time. I watch Jeopardy! every night, and most nights I pause the DVR when the Final Jeopardy! category comes up to determine the smartest possible wager for the three contestants. I’m convinced there must be some way to devise a sabermetric-style approach to playing the game, making the strategic decisions at each turn mathematically shown to best improve your chances of winning, but I’m not smart enough to pull that off. I imagine it would require a lot of observation, and still come down to some vague way of rating your own confidence in the category.

As for ‘Duk’s baseball question, his point is a great one: All the sports questions on Jeopardy! are, to an actual sports fan, incredibly easy. I have noticed this myself, and always hoped to take advantage of it should I ever get picked to be on the show.

But I could never bring myself to make a Cliff Claven wager on a Final Jeopardy! clue in a baseball category, just from fearing the professional and social embarrassment I would face if I blew it. ‘Duk’s post passes along the 10 most recent final answers with “baseball” in their category, and indeed, I missed one of them — I had no idea the Cubs trained in Catalina.

I would certainly bet aggressively, though, and I would definitely start with the $800 or $1600 choices if there were a baseball category in the opening or Double Jeopardy! round, as contestants sometimes do. It seems like control of the board is a very important, underrated aspect of winning Jeopardy, and starting with the more difficult questions in a category would be a good way to avoid ceding control to an opponent who might get the $200 question and move to a different category.

Because the last thing you want to do if there’s a baseball category is leave the most expensive answers up on the board. That’s free money for you.

There was an episode last February in which there were categories titled “Cy Young Award Winners” and “Can I Buy You A Sandwich?” Needless to say, as a current baseball writer and a former longtime deli employee, I knew all the questions in both. The latter featured a Daily Double.

I cursed fate for not having put me on that episode. Especially because I realized how hilarious it would have been to hold a commanding lead, but regardless boldly “make it a true Daily Double” in the sandwich category.

I’ve since taken the online Jeopardy! test, but I fear this was not my year. Those questions come fast, and there weren’t nearly enough about baseball or sandwiches.

Great middle fingers caught on video

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Note: The following videos are unsafe for work, if you somehow work someplace where you’d get fired for watching videos of people getting flipped off.

This is the greatest moment in math-teacher history. Every high-school math teacher secretly reveres Edward James Olmos:

Also, great Lou Diamond Phillips work in that scene. And in every scene. My buddy Scott’s email address is LouDiamondPhillips@ — well, I won’t say which because I don’t want him getting spammed, but it’s one of the major email providers. And I think it’s hilarious to consider Lou Diamond Phillips trying to register for email, and being like, “oh, what the f@#$?” and then having to sign up as LouDiamondPhillips2.

Here’s a great moment in sports-franchise owner history:

So much genius in one take

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Rainn Wilson, via Twitter, posted this list of the 20 greatest extended takes in movie history.

It made me think of the following clip from the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, which has got to be the greatest single take in sketch comedy history. It’s vaguely inappropriate and probably not for the easily-grossed-out, but it’s hilarious. Ian Roberts is awesome:

Ass Pennies – watch more funny videos

Various things about groundhogs

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Apparently PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has called for Punxsutawney to replace Phil, the world’s most famous meteorologist groundhog, with an animatronic stand-in.

OK, I’m all for the ethical treatment of everything, and I happen to be a huge fan of animatronic rodents — it’s a big part of why I love Chuck E. Cheese so much — but this is ridiculous.

After all, as Bill Deeley, the president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club points out, Phil is “being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania.”

After all, there’s a Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. And it has an Inner Circle. This rat is pampered all year long for ten minutes of stress from the “large, screaming crowds” PETA describes, because obviously Punxsatawney Phil gets mobbed by lunatics as soon as he leaves his burrow, like the Beatles in Hard Day’s Night.

I have to imagine Bill Deeley probably wanted to add, “also, he’s a f@#$ing groundhog.”

Seriously, has anyone thought to consult Phil about all this? Because look at that thing. Are groundhogs supposed to be that fat? He’s living in the lap of luxury, and I gotta figure if Phil could talk, and someone asked him if he’d rather move to a sanctuary somewhere, or be released back into the wild, Phil would politely decline and go back to eating his giant mound of delicious nuts and berries.

Actually, I’d bet if Phil could talk and someone asked him just about anything, he’d say, “nuts and berries, nuts and berries, nuts and berries, nuts and berries.”

And furthermore, the Wikipedia tells me that groundhogs and woodchucks are the same thing. Who knew? Apparently they’re also known as whistle-pigs and land-beavers, too.

Also, one time I saw a groundhog while driving in Westchester. Apparently there are groundhogs in Westchester. I nearly pulled off the road, all, “lordy me, I believe that was a whistle-pig.”

And lastly, Groundhog Day was a great movie. Everyone knows this, and nearly everyone who has seen it frequently ponders its various philosophical ramifications. Plus it’s one of the great vehicles for character actor Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned Ryerson in that film and also Werner Brandes in Sneakers. (“My name is my passport?”)

The Wikipedia confirms that Tobolowsky now plays a character also named Ryerson in the Fox series Glee. So that’s interesting. But it’s not about groundhogs, and so it strays from the point.

In conclusion, Groundhog’s Day is cool, as a concept and as a movie. And while I support animatronics in general, I don’t really think a robot groundhog would be able to accurately predict the weather. And that’s what’s important here.

Come at me, PETA.

Grizzled old-man baseball stories

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Somehow I got myself on some list of people who might review sports books. I don’t know how that happened, since I’ve never reviewed a book, but it’s wonderful. Now people send me books all the time, for free.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning for a while to hold up my end of the bargain, since I usually do read the books and I often very much enjoy them.

One such book is Leo Durocher’s autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last, written with Ed Linn and recently re-released by University of Chicago Press.

I’m about to liberally excerpt from this book and I have no idea if that’s legal, so here’s my attempt at making good with the ol’ University of Chicago Press: Buy this book.

Seriously, it’s awesome. I’m only halfway through, but it’s the best baseball book I’ve read in a long time. It’s an amazing collection of grizzled old-man baseball stories, including tales of Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean and Jackie Robinson, plus long-forgotten but inarguably hilarious drunks like Van Lingle Mungo and Boots Poffenberger. Those are both real people. Baseball players in the 1930s had far more ridiculous names than they do now.

Take that, Milton Bradley. Come back when you’re Boots Poffenberger.

It’s also fascinating to read the book now and consider what such an old-timey baseball guy would say about the issues we wrestle with today. He says, for instance:

When you’re playing for money, winning is the only thing that matters. Show me a good loser in professional sports, and I’ll show you an idiot. Show me a sportsman, and I’ll show you a player I’m looking to trade to Oakland.

Later, he adds, “Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it.”

So I wonder where he’d stand on the whole steroids thing.

He also demonstrates a sharp take on several of the issues I frequently grapple with here. He says, pretty explicitly, that talent is the only thing that separates a guy labeled a fun-loving buffoon that loosens up the clubhouse and a guy labeled a drunk.

But the book’s best parts, easily, are when Durocher details aspects of the games themselves. The guy managed for parts of 26 seasons, so I guess that makes sense; he probably knows his way around a game. And he sort of wraps his life story around baseball lessons, which I guess also makes sense, since his life story is sort of a giant series of baseball lessons.

It’s well-written, too. I don’t know if that credit should go to Durocher or Linn, but it makes for an enjoyable read.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt I transcribed, from his chapter about second-guessing himself while managing the Dodgers in Game 4 of the 1941 World Series. His best relief pitcher, Hugh Casey, had recently endured a series of bizarre meltdowns — some his fault, some otherwise — but threw four innings of shutout ball after taking the mound in the top of the fifth.

With the Dodgers leading 4-3, Casey retired the first two batters in the ninth, but the third, Tommy Henrich, reached base when catcher Mickey Owen dropped the third strike. Next, Joe DiMaggio singled, bringing up lefty-hitting Charlie Keller, and prompting Durocher to consider pulling Casey:

Given everything that had been happening, the situation screamed for me to replace Casey with French. I did nothing. I froze. Casey slowed himself down, made two good pitches, and once again we were only one strike away. And now I had a thought of going out to remind him to brush Keller back with the next pitch. Maybe even the next two pitches. Not because I thought he needed to be reminded but only, again, to slow him down. Just as quickly as I thought about it I dismissed it. With Casey seeming to have settled down so nicely, I told myself, what was to be gained by going out and getting everybody jumpy? Defensive, timid thinking, it will kill you every time. Instead of going out, I did what I normally did. I whistled sharply to get his attention and drew my hand across my chest.

Hugh wound up and threw the ball right down the middle, the kind of pitch that Keller saw about once a year. His eyes opened wide as watermelons, his bat came jumping forward and the ball ended up high against the right-field wall. Suddenly, we were a run behind. Right there was where we lost the ball game.

I don’t know whether Casey had grown mentally weary from the long, pressure-packed season or whether there was a latent instability in him that had been brought to the fore. Or whether he simply made a couple of very bad pitches at a very bad time. Except for that one stretch, he always seemed at least as stable as the average player, and I know that he had all the guts in the world.

The only thing I can tell you about Hugh Casey is that a dozen years later he committed suicide. Stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

I love that even as Casey’s manager, Durocher couldn’t venture a guess as to whether it was some psychological meltdown or just a bad pitch.

The note about Casey’s suicide took the wind out of me, so I included it here. But looking at Casey’s baseball-reference page, I notice that he missed the 1943-1945 seasons. I’m no detective, but I’m going to guess what he was doing then provoked a whole lot more psychological trauma than anything that happened to him on the baseball field.

And I should point out that, while Durocher wonders if he should have brought in lefty Larry French in the spot, he didn’t actually have French to bring in. French pitched a third of an inning in the fourth. The memory is a funny thing.

Regardless, it’s an awesome book. Read it.

British people continue seeing members of Oasis practically everywhere

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Courtesy of Emma Span, via Twitter, I found this tremendous bit of absurdity. Apparently some British guy believes he has captured an image of Liam Gallagher from Oasis in a fireball. Check it out:

What’s most hilarious about this, obviously, is that normally when people see something that looks vaguely like the image of a man someplace where it’s obviously not supposed to be, they assume it’s Jesus.

Unless, of course, they happen to be lorry drivers from Alcester, Warwickshire. Those people know it’s Liam Gallagher.

I actually think it looks a little like Dave Grohl, but I guess it’s all about perception.

Sports!

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I fell asleep on my La-Z-Boy around 7:30 p.m. yesterday after a day spent moping around the house feeling awful. At some point I managed to take my contacts out and stumble into bed, I guess, and I woke up at 7:30 a.m.

I ate breakfast and showered, and sat down on the couch, fully rested and refreshed. And then I remembered:

Sports!

The Georgetown Hoyas, the mighty, frustrating, talented Hoyas, take on the stupid, evil UConn Huskies today at noon, a matchup between two of the best teams in what is certainly college basketball’s best conference, no matter how little coverage it receives on ESPN.

And that’s just the undercard. At 4:30 today, for the first time in three years, one of the professional sports teams I root for will be playing in the postseason. So exciting. I have nothing interesting to say about it, other than that I’m geared up.

I don’t know if it’s the 12 hours of sleep, or whatever was ailing me yesterday passing, or it just finally sinking in that the New York Jets are back in the playoffs, but I am elated. I have no idea what will happen in either game today, but right now, with nothing settled and everything possible, life is good.

The only problem is I want the damn games to start already. And my wings to get here.

Delicious wings and sports.

The phone is ringing, Mark Sanchez. It’s destiny calling again. Pick it up.

Does anyone have a free car to give me?

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You know what? Living in Brooklyn was the balls. There was a ton of cool stuff around, and you could walk to all of it. Plus you could walk to the subway, and from there, you could walk to all sorts of other cool stuff.

In the suburbs, up in Westchester, no matter where you go, the first stop is your car. Out the door, to the car.

And so your car becomes like a weird extension of your body, kind of how I imagine a turtle feels about its shell. And you start keeping stuff in the car that you know you’re going to need when you’re outside of your home, because anytime you’re outside of your home you’re going to have your car. That’s suburban living.

Some parts of it are good. With my car, I can get to Taco Bell and 7-11, and they don’t have those things in Brooklyn. Those places are awesome because they have Volcano Tacos and Slurpees. I missed them so. Plus, like I said, I can use my car for storage, so I don’t have to carry around a backpack or a manbag or anything like that.

But a car is also a giant, resource-sucking pain in the ass, especially when things start going wrong. Matt Cerrone pointed out to me not too long ago that a car is basically the only major investment we ever make that starts losing value as soon as we buy it, but at least the first couple of years are fun.

My current car is pretty clearly hitting the breaking point at which all the little minor repairs required for its upkeep start adding up to more than the value of the car itself, and at some time soon it will no longer be worth spending any more money on.

I realize I should probably suck it up and invest in a new or newer car, but I, like the Mets, tend to hang on to my things for too long, trying to coax every last bit of value out of it before I move on. So I’m driving around in the Luis Castillo of automobiles, thinking, “oh, but it got me to DC and back just fine a month ago, it’s got to be good for at least another road trip, even if all the red flags are there.”

Is cash for clunkers still going on? Did I just miss that? Crap. If anyone has any suggestions for a good, inexpensive car, I’m all ears. I’m still trying to figure out how to make a Segway work for Westchester, but those things are unreasonably expensive, even if they’re also completely hilarious.