I miss the Olympics. Not the “sports” part, because I don’t know from sports, but all the political news recently has been of the Giant Sucking Hell-Vortex variety, so I miss the novelty-pictures aspect of the Olympics. Stuff like this, as “borrowed” from Go Fug Yourself:
I might need him to tone it down a notch or three. Do I wish I had his hair? Yes. Did I need to see down to his sternum? Not really. Am I concerned he thinks he’s a cross between Uncle Sam, and Steven Tyler? Extremely. Although I guess those guys get more than their fair share of booty — I mean, come on, Uncle Sam’s whole shtick is “I Want YOU” — so I guess Shaun has chosen his nookie idols wisely. Still, at the very least, I think wrapping one’s junk in these pants could count as desecrating the flag.
(Go Fug Yourself is always a nice little pick-me-up when one needs confirmation that even people with unlimited money and access to the finest professional stylists can’t always avoid the Hot Mess arena.)
And this clip is not from the Olympics per se, but… their loss:
*******
Finally, a question for those who do know from sports: Nomar Garciaparra, sweet sentimentalist or stupid posturing narcissist? The reaction in the Boston area seems to be evenly split, so far.
SiubhanDuinne
I thought Garciaparra was a wonderful player. He loved the Red Sox and played for Boston longer than for any other team. I’m just fine with his choosing to retire in a Sox uni — and apparently the Sox are too, or they wouldn’t have signed him for the day. Don’t understand what the fuss is all about.
Cacti
I normally find athletic women attractive, but that Shaun White is one ugly lady.
And the recent trend of re-signing with your former team for a day so you can retire as a ______________ is lame.
fraught
OK, I get it now. I’m a Weirbot.
WereBear
Hi all. I dunno if I’ll be popping in on the Early AM threads, now that I’m not getting up crack of dawn to catch the bus, since our car came back from the dead.
The head mechanic didn’t accept the diagnosis for some reason,and I’m glad of it, because we’re back on the road for a fraction of what it was going to cost us.
I’m never going to take going to the dump for granted again!
Bostondreams
Nomar was the first player whose jersey I bought. I named my cat after him. A great player who even contributed by being traded.
I was happy to see him retire with his original organization! Go Sox!
bob h
Saw a wonderfully funny play by A.R. Gurney, “Sylvia”, about an adopted dog (Long Wharf, New Haven). Sylvia is the dog in question, but is played by an actress by way of showing how we humanize our pets. I am looking at my Rottie in a new light.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear: Congrats on the resuscitation of your car. As much as I sometimes deplore our automobile-centric society, being without wheels can just suck. I don’t know where you live, but bus and train service in metro Atlanta (MARTA) is being scaled *way* back because of budget reasons. Really, really hard on workers, students, etc who literally have no other choices. Anyhow, I’m glad you found an honest mechanic and can sleep in a little now that you don’t have to catch the bus.
SiubhanDuinne
@Boston Dreams: Did you name your cat “GarciaPURRa”?
R-Jud
Go Fug Yourself is my guilty Intertubes pleasure. I don’t know anything about a lot of the people they profile (Tinsley Who? Blake Whatley?), but I enjoy their writing. And as someone who is– not a clotheshorse, exactly, more of a clothesmule– it gives me a safe place to vent my fashion rage.
Otherwise I’d be taking it out on Mr Jud, whose sense of fashion is kind of stalled in “1989 Eurotrash Student” mode. I’m sure it’s still in somewhere, but not on a 42-year-old man.
beltane
The Olympic judges seemed to have a strong dislike of Johnny Weir. And as to Sean White’s flag pajamas (that’s what they look like to me), they look a little tea-baggy but no worse than any of the other desecrations our flag endures at the hands of celebrities.
Can’t say much bad about Sean White. My nine-year old thinks he is the coolest athlete ever in the history of the world.
GReynoldsCT00
Thanks for the Johnny fix Anne Laurie! I never get tired of watching him skate.
Good morning all!
David Berliner
I clicked the Garciaparra link with interest, as I hadn’t seen any Red Sox coverage of the one-day contract that was negative. Following the link, I found a column by… Dan Shaughnessy.
Wow. You’re clearly not a Bostonian, then; I don’t think it’s physically possible for Shaughnessy to say anything about the Red Sox that their fans would agree with. I suspect every member of a Red Sox roster in the last ten years has threatened at least once to punch the CHB in the face, and if it ever happened no Boston jury would convict.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne: In the interests accuracy, I should amend what I said about MARTA. The cuts in routes and service have been *proposed* but AFAIK they have not yet been enacted, and I’m sure there are people exploring other ways to deal with the budget shortfall.
edmund dantes
Ya know what… F*@K the media. They’re part of the reason why Nomar was no longer tenable in Boston. They never liked him, and he never played their games. He didn’t make their job easier so they went after him. There are also fans that have this weird belief that players have act and behave exactly how the fan would. I’ve never understood people’s belief that players need to play and react in a specific manner or they aren’t out their contributing.
I’m happy to see there are people out there that still get what really happened that day with Nomar. I saw a guy that was pissed he couldn’t be out there on the field.
The one good thing about that night was that gave Theo the ability to trade Nomar without his head being on a platter. It’s amazing how quickly Nomar went from untouchable to tradeable due to overblown media reaction to that night.
It’s classic though. If you play nice with the media, give them juicy quotes, etc they’ll treat you like “gods” and fawn over you even if you are a complete narcissistic asshole like Brett Favre.
P.S. Go back to the replays of that Jeter play night and you’ll see two similar plays. One made by Jeter and one made by Pokey Reese. One was much harder than the other, but one gets replayed over and over again. Hint the harder play with less room between the catching of the ball and the wall was not Jeter’s.
P.P.S The sad part is that my intense dislike of Derek Jeter comes from the media attention he gets. He is actually a great player. He’s just not the god that National Media and Yankees fans like to make him into.
Plus Jeter and Joba are the only Major League or pro sports players that I can pick their parents out of the lineup due to the incessant need to always show them to us whenever they play a game. It’s sad.
Napoleon
Without knowing all the particulars of the Nomar Garciaparra matter (I am not going to bother reading the story but I know they signed them and he retired immediately) that is hardly the first time a team has done that (I am almost 100% positive that the Cleveland Indians or Browns here have done it in the last 10 years but without doing a search I am not entirely sure which players may have done that).
Anyways I think it is a classy move on the part of all parties. It is unusual for a player (particularly a real good player who has a real long career in one city, but hopefully here in Cleveland Lebron becomes the exception to the rule) to be from that city and with free agency most of those players then end up retiring from some other team, so to me it is a way for the player to tip his hat in honor of the city he is associated with and their fans and the team to honor the player as being one of theirs, even though he may have gone somewhere else. I can not see what people could find objectionable. It is a little island of sentimentality in a business that is a big sea of mercenary, even though the business trades in a sentimentality of a sort.
SiubhanDuinne
@Napoleon: Beautifully said!
sbjules
I loved Nomar when he played for the Dodgers(after all he was born here, he’s one of us). He loved Boston, I think it’s great he retired a Red Sox. I pity the haters.
Liz
The FUG girls rule-they make my day on regular basis.
I was happy about Nomar, being from Boston and all. But then again I’m one who likes to put the past behind and move on. Plus I love Mia.
sw
Go Fug Yourself is also my guilty pleasure – where I go to get away from the blogosphere; when I’ve just read one too many outraged headlines about Glenn Beck’s goofiness. Their writing is quick and sharp and is the General Foods International Coffees of blogs.
geg6
If I was Shaun White, I wouldn’t give a damn about what people say about my clothes and hair. I’d remember that I have my very own half-pipe and they don’t.
As for Johnny Weir…
Well, I love him. Love, love, love, love him. Cannot believe those jealous assholes didn’t give him a medal. Johnny is too good for those assholes that run the International Skating Union.
I have been obsessively watching his show, “Be Good Johnny,” on Sundance. Episode 7, featuring the Grande Prix event in Japan, might be the most entertaining 30 minutes of television I’ve seen in years. Love him. Can’t get enough of him.
Weir-bot. Yes, that’s me.
Lee
What Napoleon said.
This is not unusual at all and is about sentiments not narcissism.
mellowjohn
i’m having curling withdrawal. what other sport combines the excitement of shuffleboard with the physicality of sweeping up cat litter?
p.s. i really like nomar (although my favorite sox are white and not red), but even the two years he played with the hated cubs weren’t enough for them to become anything other than the hated cubs.
p.p.s. signing a one-day contract so you can retire a member of your original team is fairly common, i think. frank thomas did it with the white sox earlier this year.
ellaesther
Oh Anne Laurie thank you for that clip! That was, in the words of the ever-delightful Ta-Nehisi Coates, awesome-sauce!
Stogoe
This, several times over. Shaun White also has the advantage of having licensed video games of him that are actually well-made. So he’s even got one up on Superman.
fraught
@mellowjohn:
The sport of life. Mine, however, has mostly the excitement of the litter sort and I compete with myself to excel at it.
Persia
@Stogoe: Pretty much yes.
And oh, Johnny Weir. Everything figure skating should be. Did you see his French press conference? All class.
Molly
My greatest joy of the Olympics was my discovery of Johnny Weir. What a TREMENDOUS talent.
YellowJournalism
I love Go Fug Yourself so very much. I used to read the gals when they posted at Television Without Pity and followed them to their own site. Their live blogging of awards shows are the best. They also did a hilarious take on the ice skating and ice dancing costumes from the Olympics.
I want to see a Go Fug Yourself movie someday, complete with George Clooney cameo. (But only in voiceover, like Charlie from Charlie’s Angels.)
And thank you for the treasure that is a Johnny Weir clip. Made my morning. If he’d done a few of those moves at the Olympics, he may not have won, but he probably would have made the judges’ heads explode, which would be just as good.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Nomar could be both sentimental, and a jerk.
But nobody could be more of a self centered jerk than the typical Boston Red Sox fan.
So it all evens out.
canuckistani
The Tim Horton’s Brier is running up here in Canada, if you can find TSN on your local satellite. It’s province against province, and I am so cheering for Newfoundland, even if I am from Toronto.
twiffer
the only fuss i’ve seen is a dumb column by borges in the herald and the slew of yankees fans in the comment section.
and now, i see you linked to shaughnessy. who is a dickhead and not worth reading.
as a die-hard sox fan, i think it’s great & i’m happy for nomar to get the closure he wanted. the always contrarian columnists can write whatever the fuck they want, doesn’t change a thing. the simple fact is that nomar never recovered from his wrist injury. it was tough to have him traded, but necessary. the dust has settled enough that he can go home to retire. i don’t think he ever wanted to be traded, despite what the media would like to believe.
twiffer
not to harp on it, but this is a better take than shaughnessy. the asshole takes, you’ll notice, are from those who complain that nomar didn’t want to talk to the media. boo-fucking-hoo.
gypsy howell
There are days when GFY is the only place I might visit more than BJ. And I never leave pissed off at the world.
Full of awesome sauce.
Linkmeister
Nomar hit one of the most memorable home runs in Dodgers regular-season history. His expression of joy as he landed on home plate is one I’ll remember for a long time.
Here’s the description from that link at Retrosheet: the Dodgers entered the 9th down 9-5.
DODGERS 9TH: ADKINS REPLACED CUST (PITCHING); Kent homered; Drew homered; HOFFMAN REPLACED ADKINS (PITCHING); Martin homered; Anderson homered; Lugo flied to center; ETHIER BATTED FOR SAITO; Ethier popped to shortstop; Furcal flied to right; 4 R, 4 H, 0 E, 0 LOB. Padres 9, Dodgers 9.
PADRES 10TH: SELE REPLACED ETHIER (PITCHING); Roberts lined to center; Giles doubled to left; Gonzalez was walked
intentionally; MCANULTY BATTED FOR ALEXANDER; McAnulty flied to center; Bard singled to right [Giles scored, Gonzalez to third]; Cameron walked [Bard to second]; Blum flied to right; 1 R, 2 H, 0 E, 3 LOB. Padres 10, Dodgers 9.
DODGERS 10TH: SEANEZ REPLACED MCANULTY (PITCHING); BELLHORN REPLACED HOFFMAN (PLAYING 3B); Lofton walked; Garciaparra homered [Lofton scored]; 2 R, 1 H, 0 E, 0 LOB. Padres 10, Dodgers 11.
nicteis
How does it matter whether Nomar is a stupid posturing narcissist (on which I am not fan enough to have a real opinion)? His one-day return was deeply gratifying to any fans who are sweet sentimentalists; anyone who is not a stupid posturing narcissist will agree that the fans matter infinitely more than the players. Ergo, he is objectively a sweet sentimentalist.
Mark
Shaun White has a cover shot on Rolling Stone with him pissing/jizzing lighter fluid on burning snowboards. Hurts me head. Do not understand.
Jim Once
Nomar was a student of an Advanced Placement English teacher I knew in Bellflower, CA – that teacher was also Nomar’s soccer coach. He said Nomar was one of the best student-athletes he ever taught-coached, garnering five AP exam scores of 5 – something accomplished by less than one percent of those who take the exams. When he came back to visit his old school coach, Nomar asked to go out once more to the soccer field, where he told the coach it was past time for a new facility. He then handed over a check for just that.
Based on this, and a few other things I was told, I’m pretty sure Nomar’s one of the good guys.