It was probably worth every penny. The NFL took their sweet fucking time before deciding to fine Santonio Holmes $10,000 for using the ball as a prop while celebrating his Super Bowl winning touchdown catch. DOES THAT MONSTER HAVE NO SHAME? Truth be told, the fine was levied not because Holmes used the ball as a prop, but instead because his celebration was an homage to LeBron James’ asinine chalk toss. I guess what I’m trying to say is that LeBron is ruining sports as we know it. [Schefter's Blog]

Saturday Night Live might be 85% crap, especially portions of the show that include Kenan Thompson, but once in a while they manage to surprise everyone by not sucking for nearly two consecutive minutes. Quite the feat these days, it must have taken them hours on end to write. If Seth Myers is hard up for more Steelers material he could probably buy some of Ape’s Hines Ward material. Fred Armisen does a great Asian stereotype.

The episode’s best moment came of course from another Lonely Island Digital Short, featuring T-Pain. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure you can get T-Pain to sing whatever the fuck you want in exchange for a shiny new hat. Needless to say this song was immediately short-listed for next year’s Grammy nominations.

If you thought the 19-0 shit was out of hand last year, you might want to sit down for this one. Somebody in Pittsburgh has already deemed Super Bowl XLIII a foregone conclusion, and started a line of apparel that…um…well…just read the fucking blockquote:

A Pittsburgh-area printing company is releasing its newest Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt today to area retailers. All Pro Embroidery and Screen Printing is releasing its “On The Road To Sixburgh” T-shirt to retailers as the Steelers attempt to be the first franchise to win six Super Bowls.

Steelers MVP linebacker and NFL Defensive Player Of The Year James Harrison is featured on the shirt.

Their next line of shirts? Hopefully something like, “Big Ben Has Full Recovery From Concussion.” Dickbags.

[WPXI]

SCENE 1 — Anthropology Lab, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh

Professor: (studying printouts) Fascinating.  Tom, look at this.  (motions to graduate assistant)

The Steelers and Cowboys are the NFL’s two most popular teams.  I can account for the Cowboys’ popularity — Dallas is the nation’s 9th largest city, and for a long time it was the only team in the entire southwest United States.

Tom: Mmm-hmmm.

Professor: But I can’t seem to connect the dots on the Steelers’ fan base.  Pittsburgh’s population is just a little more than 300,000, and it has regional competitors for fans in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Washington, and Baltimore.  I’d like to attribute it to the team’s massive success in the 1970s just as the steel industry failed, displacing fans across the country… but that simply doesn’t account for the numerous Steelers bars in every American city.

Tom: Mmm-hmmm.

Professor: It almost seems to be a pervasive, debilitating personality trait, in which seemingly intelligent people find ways to justify their fandom of a team they have little or no regional connection with, just because cheering for a team that tends to win more satisfies some aspect of their malformed personalities.

Tom: I see.  So, yinz watchin’ the Stillers on Sunday?

Professor: Wait.  You’re from Florida.  Your father is a 49ers fan.

Tom: (waves yellow towel) Here we go, Stillers, HERE WE GO!

Professor: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SCENE 2 — The National Security Council War Room

Scientist: Mr. President, it’s worse than we imagined.  This pervasive personality disorder exists in every American city, and it spreads further every time the Steelers win.

President: What are our options?  Can we quarantine?

Four-Star General: Impossible.  We don’t have the manpower.

President: A vaccine?

Scientist: We’ve tried, sir, but Steelers fandom is extremely resilient.  And WAY douchey.

CIA Director: Why don’t we just stop the Steelers from winning?  Maybe a snatch-and-grab of James Harrison and Troy Polamalu?  Keep them in Guantanamo until after the Super Bowl?

President: We can’t take that chance.  I’ve got Pittsburgh in the office playoffs pool.

Four-Star General: Sir, I think it’s time we looked at eliminating Ground Zero of the problem.

President: You mean…?

Four-Star General: Yes.  I mean an atomic attack on Pittsburgh.  (pauses) Mr. President… are you ready for some football?

President: Fuck yes!  That place sucks!  (launches nuclear strike)

SCENE 3 — New York City, the following Sunday

Joey: Shame about Pittsburgh, huh?

Mark: Not really.

(they high-five)

Joey: Man, I am SO looking forward to watching Chargers-Steelers in a sports bar without a bunch of jackasses waving cheap hand towels and screaming at the TV.

Mark: Me too!

(they enter bar)

Zombie Fan 1: Nnnnggguhhhh… Kordell GAY!

Zombie Fan 2: Grrrrraaaaahhh… Fire Bruce Arians!

Zombie Fan 3: Mmmmugghhh… One for the… first finger on… second hand!

Joey: Fuck!  Those cockroaches survived!  Mark, we gotta get outta here!

Mark: Aw, c’mon, Joey.  The game’s about to start.  Besides, you gotta be impressed by dere loyalty.  Look, even all the Stillers chicks got jerzees on.

Zombie Fan 1: Damn… Neil O’Donnell… Gaaarrrrggh… Must continue to bitch… despite team’s success.

Joey: Mark, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?  You can’t really be serious about watching the game with these assholes, can you?

Mark: You better redd up that mouth, neb-nose.  My favorite aunt was a Stillers fan!  I growed up rootin’ for this tihm!  Kind of!  When they won!  I know all about dere great historih from before I was born!  I studded it on Wicker-peedy-er!

Joey: No!  They got you too!

SCENE 4 — The White House, Washington, D.C.

President: Hey, how ya like my jersey?

Chief of Staff: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(dials emergency number)

Secretary of Defense: Hello?

Chief of Staff: Mr. Secretary, we have to re-schedule the inauguration for RIGHT NOW!  It’s about President Bush, sir.  We’ve… we’ve lost him.  He’s more dislikable than ever.

Secretary of Defense: I’m afraid it’s too late, Junior.

Chief of Staff: So that’s it, then.  This is how our republic falls.

Secretary of Defense: Not yet.  We still have one last hope.

Chief of Staff: Are you saying…?

Secretary of Defense: We better ask somebody.

SCENE 5 — The San Diego Chargers Locker Room

(a phone rings)

Marmalard: THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  Yes!  Do it again!  And some more!  Excellent!  Yes!

Awwww, poor Steelers fans.  How dare the referees call All-World demigod James Harrison Chris Hoke for simulating the snap count on a field goal!  Why, if they hadn’t done that, Ben Roethlisberger wouldn’t have turned the ball over four times, and the Steelers surely would have won!   This is so unfair!  Referees are only supposed to make game-changing calls in favor of Pittsburgh!

/watches .gif 700 more times

Will Leitch is a wonderful human being.  I enjoy his writing, and I don’t particularly disagree with his assessment in his weekly power rankings that the Steelers are the best team in the NFL at this moment.  (I don’t particularly agree with it, either, but that’s because power rankings are gay and exist only for people to argue pointlessly about something that the playoff system resolves for us.)

What I take issue with is Leitch’s foolhardy sentiment that accompanies the ranking:

1. Pittsburgh Steelers (11-3). Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the world’s only likable juggernaut franchise. I’m not sure why nobody hates the Steelers they way they hate the Cowboys, or the Yankees, or the Red Sox, or the Lakers, but they just don’t.

AU CONFUCKINGTRAIRE, mon backwater frere.  They just DO.  The Steelers are likable in precisely the way that the Yankees, or Manchester United, or the Wehrmacht is likable.  The Steelers are the cancer of football teams: it usually wins, it’s a depressing pain in the ass, and anyone who cheers for it is an asshole.

Go ahead and count me as Pittburgh Steeler Hater Number One.  I fucking LOATHE the Steelers.  I despise them far more than any other franchise on the planet.  And that’s saying a lot, because if the Italian national soccer team’s chartered jet collided with the Yankees’ team plane, I’d happily burn my penis jerking off on the flaming wreckage.

And you know what’s most irritating about the Steelers?  It’s that Leitch’s statement has an element of truth: the team itself is, indeed, somewhat likable.  Now that Joey Porter’s taken his fucktardery to Miami, Pittsburgh doesn’t have much in the way of egregiously repugnant assholes on the roster.  Polamalu’s hair is annoying, but I like the way he plays.  James Harrison is a badass.  Hines Ward is annoyingly, quietly good.  I dislike Roethlisberger, but mostly because he sheds sacks so easily.

No, what makes the Steelers the most loathsome team in all of sports are their dickface fans.  The front-running fucks who fill up sports bars in their jerseys all over the country.  Funny how Pittsburgh is one of the smallest markets in the NFL, penned in regionally by teams from Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia,  and yet its fans are miraculously strewn all over the country in large numbers.  Why, it’s almost as if most of them only became die-hard fans because the team is so successful!

These are the intellectual midgets who will point out that I, as a Seahawks fan, am only bitter because of Super Bowl XL.  To which I say, FUCKING GODDAMN RIGHT.  And I will be until the day I die.  I’m entitled to this bitterness.  It’s what Seahawks fans got instead of a victory parade.  Because, you know, some fans cheer for teams that DON’T go to the playoffs every year, some fans DON’T bitch about the offensive line’s play when the team is 11-3, and some fans DON’T still bitch about Kordell Stewart a decade later when other fans suffered through Kelly Stouffer at quarterback.

FUCK YOU, Steelers fans.  Fuck your shitty city, fuck your shitty field, fuck your excellent football team, and FUCK YOU.

WHAT’S PISSING US OFF ABOUT THE STEELERS THIS WEEK

I saw Zach and Miri Make a Porno tonight and I’m drunkenly reporting that it was pretty all right. It’s one of those movies that Hollywood makes where they take a supposedly outre subject and use it as the racy patina for a generically saccharine love story. Kind of like Hard Candy.

Anyway, there’s a scene midway through where the movie pokes fun at Steelers fans (it’s based outside Pittsburgh) and thought I’d pass it along. Not really a critical scene, so it’s not spoiling anything.

Are we supposed to believe that he’s from Detroit or something? I find that pretty hard to believe. I’m sure I would have heard something about it by now.

Late breaking news today that 7835 Myroncope, an asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter, has been named for the late Steelers broadcaster. Because the Steelers are endlessly mockable and because we need to pass the rest of the afternoon, we served up an array of astronomical gags. The asteroid is occasionally referred to as a comet, because we don’t know the difference between the two.

That asteroid is six months younger than Rooney

It’s actually easier to find a job on that comet than in Pittsburgh.

Got any more after that joke shower? Let’s have ‘em in the comments.

Steely McBeam didn’t ask to be created. He was thrust into a world not of his making; a world where those he was designed to amuse instead heap scorn and derision upon him. Steely quickly grew to loathe his creators for condemning him to a tertiary existence—not quite dead, not quite alive.

By and by Steely had a notion. If they could create Steely, then they should also be able to create a helpmate for him. Someone with whom he could share the travails of this frightening plane of existence. Someone he could lie down with at night, safe and secure, and wake up with in the morning– ready to face whatever lay ahead.

With his hardhat humbly in hand, Steely went to his masters. Please, he implored them, make me someone to love; make me someone who will love me. Steely’s creators took pity upon the wretch that they had made and knew that something must be done. They worked feverishly night and day for months– toiling to avoid the mistakes they made with Steely, yet mindful not to make something so different that it too would be repulsed by Steely’s angular visage.

Today we bear witness to the unveiling of the Bride of Steely McBeam. Look upon their works, ye mighty, and despair…

HT: The Burgh Blog via Mondesi’s House.