We do a lot of soccer bashing around these parts, but in this case we’re willing to put sports prejudice aside and acknowledge true greatness. Cheers to you, Turkish soccer fans. It’s only somewhat bittersweet because the only way the NFL would allow this to happen would be if the troll face were an American flag. And the flares burning the holes in the banner were torches from mini Statues of Liberty.

This year’s Oscar field might be the worst ever. More like Extremely Lame & Incredibly F*cked, amiright? Even the years that crap movies like Crash or Dances with Wolves won, they beat out good competition. Do I care if someone upsets The Artist? Not particularly. The greatest drama of the night for me will be whether or not Macho Man makes the death reel. His turn as Bonesaw in Spiderman was truly life-changing.

That said, if we learned anything from the Grammys, it’s that the less consequential a major awards show is, the more entertaining it is to watch. Freed from caring about whether anything worthwhile might win (DRIVE FOR BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING!!!!), the viewer can concentrate on the more pressing issue of self-satisfied gay Hollywood pinko liberal elite mockery. The best place to engage in such hate is, of course, FilmDrunk, where Vince Mancini and crew will guide you through an overlong broadcast with the necessary amount of booze, dick jokes and Nic Cage photoshops. So do yourself a favor and blow off your friend’s Oscar party for FilmDrunk’s night of demented anti-social lulz.

[FilmDrunk Oscars Open Thread]

I don’t know Anthony Federico, the ESPN editor who lost his job after coming up with the now-infamous “Chink in the Armor” headline about Jeremy Lin. I wish him no ill will of any kind, and I respect his desire to clear the air after the firestorm his ill-conceived headline incited. I do not, however, have to like the way he went about it, and I like even less that members of the media are calling it “powerful” and “moving.”

Here’s what I have a problem with:

Actions speak louder than words. My words may have hurt people in that moment but my actions have always helped people. If those who vilify me would take a deeper look at my life they would see that I am the exact opposite of how some are portraying me.

They would see that on the day of the incident I got a call from a friend – who happens to be homeless – and rushed to his aid. He was collapsed on the side of the road due to exposure and hunger. They would see how I picked him up and got him a hotel room and fed him. They would see I used my vacation time last year to volunteer in the orphanages of Haiti. They would see how I ‘adopted’ an elderly Alzheimer’s patient and visited him every week for a year. They would see that every winter I organize a coat drive for those less fortunate in New Haven. They would see how I raised $10,000 for a friend in need when his kids were born four months premature. They would see how I have worked in soup kitchens and convalescent homes since I was a kid. They would see my actions speak louder than my words. They would see that these acts were not done for my glory, but for God’s. They would see that each day I live and will continue to live a life of joy and service.

There is something distasteful about listing your charity work as a defense when your colossal public fuck-up offends millions of people and costs you your job. It demeans the act of volunteerism — as if those hours dedicated to a good cause were just going on your emergency resume, placed behind glass that reads BREAK IN CASE OF RACIAL SLUR. (“Hey everybody, sorry about saying ‘faggot,’ but I did rescue a litter of kittens from the kill shelter last year!”) It strips the altruism from an act of kindness, and that depresses the shit out of me.

I have no desire to make or keep Federico a villain, for he isn’t. He’s a person who made a stupid mistake, who committed a fireable offense (and yes: on-air talent has been excused for worse; that doesn’t mean others should be excused for the same behavior. Life is, was, and will continue to be unfair). I’m merely saying that, given the overwhelmingly positive response to his TwitLonger apology, he shouldn’t be praised any more than he’s been vilified. We’re all human. We do good things. We make mistakes. We apologize and move on.

I have nothing but admiration for Federico’s dedication to Haitian orphanages, Alzheimer’s, his homeless friends, premature babies, and premature homeless albino orphaned babies of endangered species, but I can’t help but wondering: if Federico’s as dedicated to God’s glory as he says he is, why is he so concerned with people judging him? I thought only God could do that.

Here’s a travel note for Peter King: I only slept about 30 minutes on the redeye I took back from the West Coast on Tuesday night. I was in bad shape the next morning, but not as bad as the man in front of me WHO DIED DURING THE FLIGHT.

It wasn’t a complete shock: he was an old, old man, a veteran judging by his camouflage Army cap — old enough certainly to have served in Korea, probably in World War II. He was in the front row on the aisle, having arrived there only with the assistance of crutches and the flight attendants. Swollen ankles bulged from his sneakers, suggesting that blood circulation was not his heart’s strong point.

At one point during the flight he was snoring like a 19th century logging factory, and the flight attendant had to wake him up out of deference to the other passengers. When she went to wake him again as we began our final descent, she was less successful. “Well, he’s breathing,” said a second flight attendant summoned to the scene, but I doubted her diagnosis. From my vantage point in the second row, I could see the flight attendants exchange worried glances and hushed communiques over the phone to the cockpit.

When we landed, a pair of NYPD officers were the first responders. They carried the old man off the plane, and that was the last I saw of him. I suppose it’s possible that first aid and medical attention revived him, and now he’s back to his previous state of poor health, but I doubt it. I think I flew on a plane with a dead man.

Now, somber situations like this are not my forte. I only became a blogger when it became clear — to both me and all prospective employers — that my complete inability to feign seriousness made me a poor fit for the normal working world. And the normal world in general. With that in mind, here are some handy ways to break the ice when people are all upset that someone has died on your cross-country flight:

• ”Don’t bother my friend. He’s dead tired.”

• (to flight attendant) “Suddenly, getting hit in the head with falling luggage doesn’t seem so bad, eh?”

• “Ugh, I hate redeyes. I feel like death warmed over.”

• “Thank God no one realized he was dead until the final descent. That would have been crazy inconvenient if we’d had to do an emergency landing in Pittsburgh or Buffalo.”

• “Well, at least we won’t have to wait for our luggage at the carousel.”

• “People dying on airplanes is a lot more exciting in the movies.”

• “Too bad it’s not ten years ago. We could have blamed the airline food.”

• “This is why I never go anywhere with my grandparents.”

• “Oh, come on! He had friends who died at D-Day. He got, like, 65 extra years of life.”

(original photograph by twoeightnine)

Many of you sent nice emails/tweets/comments to veterans and fallen servicemen for Memorial Day, and I’d like to take a moment to thank those who shared their appreciation. Personally, Memorial Day is always a more subdued affair than Veterans Day for me: it belongs less to the lucky survivors than to the men and women who have died in the line of duty. It’s a chance for me to remember young Marine lieutenants like John Wilt, Brian McPhillips, and Andy Stern, each of whom was smarter and more proficient than I was. Chance, circumstance, and the unforgiving nature of hot steel are the only reasons they’re memories while I get to be some jackass typing on a laptop.

One such person to remember is John Glaser, a Kansas firefighter and former Marine who recently died in a burning building, leaving behind a wife and two children. You can read more about his story here, and Joe Posnanski also wrote about Glaser. If you want to donate to the John Glaser Memorial Fund, you can do so at any Bank of America branch, or mail it to the following address:

Bank of America
175 Clairborne Road
Olathe, KS, 66062

One last note while I’m rambling on about the military (hey, it’s the off-season — it’s this or nothing): Dan Lamothe, who used to write the sports blog Red Sox Monster, is presently in Afghanistan writing a blog called Battle Rattle as an embedded journalist for the Marine Times. He is probably the only blogger on the planet of whom I’m jealous. Just last week, he took a picture of a Marine gunnery sergeant who has a tattoo of Sarah Palin on his ass:

Read the rest of this entry »

Nike Golf yesterday debuted this unsettling and cynically timed ad featuring a recording of the late Earl Woods speaking a few vaguely relevant questions about learning from mistakes while Tiger is filmed in black and white blinking. As with anything this ripe for parody, the wags set to work applying every wry twist and vulgar reference at their disposal. We applaud their efforts, however irrelevant to football they may be.

Jimmy Kimmel was the first to strike. You know Bill Simmons isn’t still writing for this show because Mr. Miyagi wasn’t worked in to their spoof.

Hey, wouldn’t it be great if Tiger talked to Tiger while the listening Tiger blinked? Blinked hugely and quickly?

And lookie here! Even I made one! I am a very topical maker of jokes!

Oh man! Slate totally did one of those Coors Light press conference wiseacre things! They went there, Home School! It might be a tired concept, but not as tired as you think!

CELEBRATE THE GAY SUPER BOWL WITH THE NON-HOLLYWOOD GAY MAFIA. A couple folks asked, so might as well make it clear: yes, there will be a liveblog for the Oscar broadcast on Sunday. Because I’ll need someone to convince me not to chug Draino if Sandra Bullock wins Best Actress and I don’t trust my family to put in a wholehearted effort. I haven’t checked the nomination list, but I hope the Japanese guy from last year is up for at least a dozen awards. He can’t sank me enough.

UPDATE: I’ll be hosting the liveblog at Edge, the pop culture site I also write for, so as to minimize the amount of unrelated film dorkery in this space.

When I was ten years old, I was a member of a swim team at a local country club. This is the sort of thing you do when you are a fairly well-off white child growing up in Minnesota. That country club was the setting of the single weirdest incident of my lifetime. This is what occurred.

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Of all the celebrities who didn’t get the chance to blow me off in Miami, Andy Rooney is the one I’m saddest of all that I missed. Actually, I totally forgot that he goes to the Super Bowl every year. But luckily, before dotage claimed what’s left of his memory of the event, he was able to provide us with the gripping tale of his Super Bowl experience during last night’s 60 Minutes. Basically, he did what Conan fake-did to NBC, only with more entertaining senility. To recap:

This man is a cultural treasureforce. Yes, that’s the portmanteau I have coined in his honor. Andy Rooney: Treasureforce.

DIRECTOR: Alright, everyone are we ready? Great shoot so far, everyone! People are really going to love this new Value Meal commercial. Alright ready lights… ready camera…and–

[cell phone rings]

Ahh, dammit! I have to get this. Everybody take five, alright? [crew disperses] Read the rest of this entry »