Posts Tagged ‘urban meyer’

Weekend Roundup

December 19, 2011

[UPDATED]

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, my 3 y/o stopped taking naps in the afternoon and it’s been quite a shock to my schedule. I’ve been unable to blog or work out and I’m about 13 weeks overdue for a haircut. When you have toddlers, afternoon naps are an oasis allowing you to clean call your parents read make dinner go to the bathroom by yourself and adjust fantasy football rosters. When they stop napping it’s like having to do double duty because your asshole coworker calls in sick EVERY DAY. Anyway, as my wife candidly observed, with my “wingy” hair I’m starting to look like a middle-aged, tranny Farrah Fawcett. On that delightful note, let’s get started:

Don't start making out with each other! GAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

1. Listen up Hollywood, enough with the incest storylines. First you traumatized us in Boardwalk Empire with Jimmy being seduced by his mom [my screams woke up my 2 kids making me feel like a TOTAL ASSHOLE]. And now Dexter and his sister are on the verge of getting frisky, making me want to give myself the Machine Gun Kelly treatment. Dexter’s killed roughly 10k people since the show premiered, but can’t he do something a little less scandalous, like eat a dead or burn down a nursing home? I don’t mean to get all Rick Perry on you, but what kind of country do we live in when a man can’t even sit on the couch at midnight in his boxers eating a sleeve of Ritz crackers watching a show about a serial killer without being subjected to offensive material? Anyway, I think we can all agree the two actors should get divorced in real life just to ease my sensibilities.

The one storyline I love this season is Batista’s 1978 Trans-Am, and not in a trendy, pretend-I-like-drinking-Pabst kind of way. I’ve always loved old cars, maybe it’s a lingering idea that guys who drive fast cars are TOUGH and KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE LADIES. I distinctly remember hanging out in a Pizza Hut parking lot on a random evening in 1990 after a football game with some other freshmen dudes [in a related story, we were all single] when a guy pulled up in one of those mini trucks and parked so that he intentionally took up two spots. We all agreed that the guy, in his late 20s with lines shaved in the side of his hair, definitely got laid ALL THE TIME.

2. I’m a huge fan of Always Sunny, but the most physically-grotesque character on that show is not Frank Reynolds, but Dee. She always looks like she just returned from a 8 week heroin binge with Steven Tyler. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST ON A STICK EAT A GOD DAMNED SANDWICH ONCE IN A WHILE YOU EMACIATED, ANDROGYNOUS PREYING MANTIS! Look, this is a serious issue and I hope someday to have the opportunity to address young women about eating disorders. Maybe I could go to different boarding schools on the East Coast and spread the message of my 10:1 rule (i.e., it’s better to be 10 lbs overweight than 1 under). Hooking up with Dee Reynolds and all the other chicks who look like they donated blood 40 days in a row would be awesome…if dudes who run cross country make you randy. [To the women reading this right now, why aren't you taking notes?!]

3. The Crossroads Classic

Given the Sandusky allegations isn't it a little tone deaf for Mike Brey to dress up like an Armenian porn wholesaler?

IU remained unbeaten on Saturday beating an Irish team that resembled a WNBA franchise headed for the draft lottery. At one point Notre Dame went over ten minutes without a field goal, it was like watching Larry Flynt trying to fuck the statue of Liberty. The Papacy cannot be happy with this collection of talent-less hacks in South Bend who, to be fair, look quite similar to the venerable ’09 IU team that lost to the likes of Lipscombe. After watching notably unskilled ND center Jack Cooley nearly concuss himself trying to secure a rebound, I think it’s fair to include tall men along with hot skanks in the DNA Lottery Club. If you’re a high school kid over 6′ 8″ tall, it’s a veritable lock that you’ll earn a college scholarship. [Similarly, attractive women are literally allowed to kill babies]  As someone who fantasizes about being both, I burn with envy seeing these gangly sasquatches earn BMOC rights merely by having over-active thyroid glands.

One quick note on America’s football team: apparently Urban Meyer is tearing it up on the recruiting front and making some great hires. It’s a sad reality of college sports that a grown-ass man such as myself has to obsess over the decisions of 18 year-old boys, but there it is. Anyway, what I find hilarious is this emerging storyline that it’s going to take Urban a long time to install his spread offense. This assumes we had one in the first place! Ohio State’s offense under Tressel/Bollman had three plays: (1) off-tackle right; (2) off-tackle left; and (3) stare down one primary receiver for 5 seconds and if he isn’t open, then run. Look, I’m sure it will be unfamiliar for OSU players to have to read an actual playbook, but it’s not like asking the ’00 Rams to run Navy’s offense. Okay? Good? NOW EVERYONE CALM DOWN GOD DAMMIT!

4. I can’t improve upon this article about the alleged “end” to the Iraq War. Oh, and it wasn’t even our choice to leave. Our Noble Peace Prize-winning President actually pressured Iraq to allow troops to remain past the withdrawal date. So if you’re keeping track, we lied about invading, lied about the horrors we unleashed AND lied about withdrawing. So it was kind of like all those times your spouse asks you how a business trip was, even though the whole thing was a made-up excuse to leave the State and score some meth & wager on dog fights and you fled the scene of an accident, drunk, after your rental car slammed into a school bus, killing three underage hookers in the back seat. On a serious note, just ponder for a moment that despite what an enormous, vile waste of lives & treasure this was, the only person in jail is that white trash Fred Savage-looking lady who photographed the naked prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, 3 NFL coaches were probably fired in the time it took me to write this post. Okay, I better change the subject before I get too depressed and hide in the garage next to the glue cannisters.

5. Time to update my People-Who-Deserve-To-Be-Kicked-In-The-Junk List! Here goes:

  1. Mark Halperin (and everyone else on this list of media hacks)
  2. Every hack sports pundit who writes hagiographic articles about Tebow.
  3. Irrelevant bloggers who are too lazy to look up a synonym for the word “hack”.
  4. Christopher Hitchens (posthumously) for his blood lust in propagandizing the Iraq war.
  5. Caleb Hanie for being the worst person in Chicago since this guy.
  6. The people who write those “grass roots” political chain emails.
  7. All the animals who slept in their makeshift dens the last time I took my kids to the zoo. “Hey, wake up you lazy bastards! IT’S SHOW TIME!
  8. The zoo staffer who tried to tell me it was illegal to yell at monkeys.
  9. Everyone who send out Xmas letters full of humblebrags.
  10. The actors in Xmas commercials for jewelry stores. Hey, Kay Jewelers: you know what else “starts with K”? Kidney Stones, which are calcium deposits that make the act of peeing feel like you’re smuggling disposable razors in your genitals.

Would you like to pay $5 for some old masturbation jokes?

6. So I finally had to check out Louis CK’s comedy special last week, plunking down $5 to watch it online. On a related note, he was featured in a pretty cool Rolling Stone article that discussed why and how he set up the special to be downloaded (to avoid all the asshole middle men and their fees). I got a vicarious thrill reading about a seemingly regular guy who can finally call the shots after spending decades being screwed over by club managers, agents and producers. As for the show itself? I thought the jokes themselves were just okay, but overall it was still entertaining. I can’t really explain it, but when I have a history with someone who’s really funny, their future jokes/observations start from a higher plane. If one of my really funny friends or Larry David or Dave Chappelle walked in, looked at my shoddy appearance, and asked for a ride to the methadone clinic, I’d probably laugh. If Diane Sawyer made the same (only marginally funny joke), I’d probably cry and run upstairs to shave. But there was one joke from the special that nearly had me bust a rib from laughter. And that was when Louie talked about taking 1970s Bad Company hits from a joint and started singing “here come the jesters: 1, 2, 3!” For some reason it took me back to the first gym I ever worked out at when old school meatheads with their tight shorts and baggy shirts (the opposite of new school meatheads) would be in there rocking out to Bachman Turner Overdrive and Emerson Lake and Palmer, pausing only to admire their acne-scarred delts & traps in the mirror, high-fiving and urging each other to “TCB!”

On that classy/sexy note, have a good day.

[UPDATE]

Check out this article by Charles Pierce (who stands as a bastion of Hunter S. Thompson-caliber journalism amidst a sea of contrarian douchery that is Grantland) on Tebow and the culture war.

Meyer, IU Basketball, Seagulls

December 1, 2011

Oh, um, hey there…I just thought I’d try to sneak back in here and act like everything’s cool. You ever skip so many classes in college that when you finally make an appearance the professor asks if you’re in the right room? Or it’s been so long since you’ve been to the gym that they’ve moved the machines around and you look like an asshole trying to find stuff? Well, that’s how I feel after such an inexcusably long writing delay. So, that leaves me with two choices. One: beg for forgiveness and offer up a host of excuses (kid bullshit, wife hoarded the computer, 9/11, etc.). Two: just pretend it never happened, like how these days Grandpa always forgets to flush the goddamned toilet and so you spend half your Thanksgiving trekking all the way upstairs to find a safe bathroom. Ah, screw it, let’s go for option 2 and get right to the action:

Ohio State fans react to the news of Urban Meyer's hiring.

1. You’ve probably noticed how sports/politics coverage today seems to be a contest for who can be the biggest contrarian douche. To try and get noticed, aspiring assholes will invert logic to write something like “10 Reasons why Urban Meyer is Wrong for Ohio State”, or [Grantland version] “How Urban Meyer Destroyed his Family to Save the NCAA”. Well, I’m gonna give it to your straight, and I nearly LOST MY SHIT when I heard Meyer was going to Columbus. I reacted like one of those giant moms who gets selected to compete on the Showcase Showdown. For Buckeye fans, this season has been a nightmare: the ugly departure of star QB Terrell Pryor, the bungling of Jim Tressel’s termination, and worst of all was the damage done to the  program’s integrity losing 6 games to a dogshit Miami team and the weakest B10 field since players wore those flappy leather Cousin Eddie helmets.

At first, I was excited to see what a new coach could do with Braxton Miller and some talented (albeit, inexperienced) defensive players. But what started out so promising with a win versus Akron quickly fell into the old pattern of offensive ineptitude. It’s like when my dad used to promise to take me to the Tilt arcade in Glenbrook mall (in the early 80s, the older dudes at the arcade had mustaches, smoked AND could play Asteroids for hours, which was pretty much my 3-pronged test to see if someone was BAD-ASS). The day started out so promising! A trip to Wendy’s…a run through the car wash…but then we’d have to go to the post office…and then to his office (ostensibly to get a little work done, but mainly just so he could see if anyone left some stuff in the mini fridge)…and finally the inevitable decree that it was getting “really late”. Anyway, I feel bad for Luke Fickell, who in hindsight was given the task of mere custodian as evidenced by the fact that he had very limited control over the hiring of his own staff.

The entire B10 conference indirectly benefits from Meyer, one of the top 3 coaches in the nation. We are constantly reminded about the superiority of the SEC, which is often attributed to “Southern speed”. But what really separates the SEC from the B10 is the coaching disparity (and over-signing, and the absence of a conference championship ,which allows teams to continue practicing). Last year the SEC featured Urban Meyer, Les Miles, Nick Saban, Mark Richt, Steve Spurrier and Bobby Petrino. What B10 coaches match up? Do B10 fans really think Tressel, Rich Rodgriquez, Bret Bielema, Tom Bradley/Joe Paterno and Kirk Ferentz are on par? Bowl results don’t bear that out. Meyer is regarded as one of the best recruiters and most innovative minds in football. Hopefully he move OSU’s offense into the 21st century which will then force other B10 teams to raise their games in response. Beating a Meyer-coached OSU team will be a big deal. To anyone who doubts the conference needed a boost: on Saturday the B10′s inaugural championship game is between #13 Wisconsin and #15 Michigan State, and to say seats are still available is a giant understatement. So while Buckeye fans build their pepper spray tolerance back up in anticipation of future field-storming post-game celebrations, the conference as a whole will get a shot of innovation and relevance. Which leads me to…

2. Indiana basketball! For the past 5 seasons IU fans have felt like Joe Namath’s liver: beaten-down and attached to a program that hadn’t been fun or relevant in years. Subjected to endless seasons of ineptitude, NCAA violations and scores of the top players fleeing the State, the situation was bleak. But with super-freshmen Cody Zeller, a moderately-talented supporting cast and an assistant coach who looks like Pat Riley with AIDS, it’s refreshing to see the team playing hard and having fun. Speaking of Zeller, for such a storied program, it’s remarkable how few quality centers IU has had over the decades: Kent Benson, DJ White’s ’08 season, and…um, [still thinking] that’s it. Two quality big men in thirty-five years. Toward that end, are there any more Zeller boys in the pipeline? If not, can we book a suite for Mr. & Mrs. at the Sybaris? Anyway, with wins over Butler and NC State I’m cautiously optimistic about the direction of the program. I’m trying to stay realistic, like when your deadbeat relative who always needs $ “to take classes at the Learning Annex” suddenly shows up and he has a nice haircut and isn’t wearing a vinyl jacket with dragons on it. Expect the worst, hope for the best: it applies to watching IU basketball AND visiting gas station bathrooms.

3. Finally, a quick tip of my hat to Ohio State’s basketball team for beating Duke. Now, I’m no fan of that sweaty-dermatitis-gum-chomper Matta and his penchant for poaching Indiana’s best players, but an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend (a little something I picked up yesterday watching Steven Seagal’s masterpiece “Out for Justice”). It’s like when a seagull drops waste on your asshole neighbor. You don’t particularly care for seagulls (who does? they’re filthy and loud as SHIT), but anyone who hangs an L on basketball satan deserves praise.

Anyway, I’ll get back to a normal blogging schedule. In the meantime, check the Twitter feed you bastards. Have a good day.

 


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