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Top 10 Videos of 2011: 5. “Tiger Woods Fails to Qualify for Sex with Dive Bar Waitress”

January 14, 2012 | Comment

5Back in January of 2011, the reliably hilarious satirical web site The Onion branched out into broadcast TV. Onion News Network was renewed for a second season and can be seen on IFC. A second show, Onion SportsDome, appeared on Comedy Central but was cancelled in June. SportsDome can’t be called a total loss, however, because it produced at least one terrific segment which has continued as a weekly feature on the web.

GOOMF masthead

“Get Out of My Face” (often referred to by the delightful acronym “GOOMF”) is a brilliant parody of the dick-swinging, rapid fire sports pundit barking match shows which have become a staple for ESPN — ones like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.1 The Onion’s first installment of GOOMF appeared in the summer of 2011, and it laid me out laughing: Read the rest of this entry »


Pro Football Hall of Names: First Team

October 19, 2011 | 2 comments

Whereas my Second Team Hall of Namers were football players whose names are merely amusing, these First Team designees are ones whose names seem to independently declare, “this guy is an effin’ football player, my friend!”

I must admit, this one was tough because there are so, so many great candidates. Especially from the mid-century era: randomly looking at the roster of the 1947 Chicago Cardinals reveals such minor gems as Plato Andros, Babe Dimancheff, Pop Ivy, Buster Ramsey, and Walt Szot. With the purely arbitrary nature of this little exercise in mind, here are my favorite favorites.

NOTE: an asterisk after a player’s name denotes a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

FIRST TEAM: NOW THAT’S A FOOTBALL PLAYER NAME

  • Bieniemy-thumb
    Eric Bieniemy
    pronounced “bee-EN-uh-mee”RB • San Diego Chargers (1991-94), Cincinnati Bengals (1995-98), Philadelphia Eagles (1999)

    We can all be grateful that Bieniemy chose not to attempt a post-football hip-hop career under the name B-Enemy. I can only imagine the various mockeries he must have heard on the playgrounds of his childhood: “Eric B. Enema,” “Eric B. Anthony” (from women’s suffrage history enthusiasts), etc. ESPN’s Chris Berman probably rendered any other nicknames moot when he famously dubbed him “Eric ‘Sleeping With‘ Bieniemy.”

    • Read the rest of this entry »


Pro Football Hall of Names: Second Team

October 14, 2011 | Comment

Confession time: I wrote the bulk of this post a year ago, at the beginning of the 2010 football season. It grew into a long enough opus to fall by the wayside because of my mercurial re-editing tendencies. Before I knew it, the divisional playoffs were upon us and I decided that the post and I needed some time apart.

But now football is back, baby, attended by two of my favorite ancillary activities: trash-talking my friends in our fantasy league and contemplating the funny names of players. The former I have mentioned in this blog before (although not lately), and the latter is the basis of this post — which is now a series of posts. That’s how many unusual, distinctive, or just plain funny names I have dug out of the annals of American football between the 1920′s and the present. So enough pre-game, let’s kick this thing off!

2ND TEAM (MILDLY SILLY)

  • atari-bigby

    Never played this Atari

    Atari Bigby
    DB • Green Bay Packers (2005-10), Seattle Seahawks (2011- )
    He claims that his first name is Japanese for “attack,” although that doesn’t account for the fact that Bigby is a defensive player. I think it would be cool for Bigby to celebrate his interceptions by forming himself into a triangle, rotating in place and ‘firing’ at larger players with a “pew-pew-pew!” sound. It would probably draw an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, of course. The refs might even tack on an additional five yards for copyright violation.

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The Best of Twitter

July 14, 2011 | 6 comments

Does anyone ever look at the “Favorite” tweets on other people’s Twitter profiles? Until that question occurred to me the other day, I don’t know if I ever had done so. Admittedly, the “Favorites” feature on Twitter is one I tend to forget about periodically. If my hunch is correct and people seldom look at each other’s favorite tweets, then what good is this collection of favorites that I’ve been compiling in fits and starts?

twitter-stampSo hear this: I have some favorite tweets — and damn it, attention must be paid. I am boldly risking my reputation by giving the following tweets the imprimatur of my favor. 1 Lastly, I should mention that the embedding code for these tweets was generated by socialditto.com; I tweaked the CSS format a little to blend with the design of this blog.

@paulapoundstone Paula PoundstoneYou know, my CD is available on my website. I feel silly saying, but it is, and Flag Day is coming up, so you’ll be looking for gift ideas.Jun 3 2009 via web

@LauraJSilverman Laura SilvermanSomething smells like pee. I think it’s near the spot on the rug where my dog was standing when she looked me square in the eye and peed. Jun 3 2009 via web

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Top Ten Videos of 2010: 6. The Daily Show, “Male Inequality”

January 2, 2011 | Comment

2010 was a big year for Jon Stewart, and thereby for The Daily Show. I didn’t think Stewart could top the October 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear he and Stephen Colbert led, which drew a crowd of over 200,000 to the National Mall in Washington.

billboard

Billboard welcoming RNC attendees to
Minneapolis in 2008
(Photo: Flickr/The Zeppelin)

As it turned out, Stewart outdid himself in December with an impassioned shredding of Senate Republicans’ unconscionable filibuster of the Zadroga Act to provide medical and financial aid to afflicted Ground Zero emergency workers.1

In 2010 The Daily Show also continued to do one of the things it has done brilliantly for several years: point out and mock people who claim to be oppressed, but clearly aren’t. Examples of such people might include certain investment bankers, Christian mega-churches, professional athletes, or many others that generally have it pretty good. In the case of my number six video of 2010, this treatment is given to a richly deserving group: middle-aged white men.2

Samantha Bee, the Daily Show correspodent in this segment, has long been one of my favorites. She had a few things of her own going on in 2010, most notably the publication of her memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You? Her promotion of the book included a wide-ranging interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and a cute feature piece in the New York Times Magazine. Daily Show video clips featuring her are here; among those that especially crack my shit up are “Shame Parade,” “John McCain’s Air Quotes” (start at about 2:03 into the clip), and “Long Island Wants to Secede.”


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