For Vice, using Michael Jordan’s terrible basketball team to celebrate not-as-terrible soccer.
Ryan O'Hanlon
Santa Barbara, California
Associate Editor at Pacific Standard
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“I’d like to end up floating on my back with swimmies on, bright orange ones with yellow ducks all over them, with a pair of sunglasses on, lenses empty (obviously), in someone’s backyard pool water (but a pool with it’s cover still on). With two ducks swimming nearby, in the pool-cover pool-water, quacking (but really laughing, it just sounds like a quack to us because we don’t recognize duck-humor) at me.”
— Win or lose, this is where Rangers fans can expect to be Sunday morning
I am the best me, according to me.
That is basically what the English Premier League just said about the current iteration of itself. So, yay! Good for them, being so great. Sure, this year’s version of the EPL has been pretty fun I guess, mainly because Manchester United might not win (/karate chops a Redwood) and mostly ever other team has been really terrible for multiple, significantly-long stretches.
(I’m writing this as a non-biased observer—all non-biased people hate Manchester United—but as a real person, I’d label this year’s version of the EPL as THE STUPIDEST SEASON IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY OF STUPID SEASONS BECAUSE I ROOT FOR A TEAM THAT HIT THE GOAL FRAME 33 TIMES AND MISSED FIVE OF THEIR SIX PENALTY KICKS BECAUSE SERIOUSLY GOD WHAT THE HELL MAN.)
Whether or not 11-12 is the BEST EPL SEASON EVER doesn’t really matter because it’s a stupid, meaningless distinction. It’s just that labeling this year as the best year fits in with the idea—the generally very true idea—that English soccer is best defined by not pace, power, blood, or MEN BEING MEN, but by a complete lack of self-awareness. And that is how you end up with Roy Hodgson managing your national team. I got fake-angry about this for Vice—”fake-angry” because I don’t care enough about English soccer to be legitimately mad. At least, that’s what I tell myself before I close my eyes each night.
This picture (via Ted Berg) is a thing Cole Hamels did. He also pegged Bryce Harper with a baseball. For The Classical, one of these things is OK.
Excited Grizzlies Kid Dot Gif Will Save Us
I wrote this for The Classical on Friday afternoon. Being happy about sports is a pretty cool thing.
“Yauch didn’t flinch or get mad or defensive. He said most everyone has a time in their life that they look back on with regret. He used the word “asshole,” I think. And he said, “We just happened to be on TV a lot when we were assholes.” I’m paraphrasing, but I think that’s pretty much it. I think about that a lot as I get older myself, and look back at stupid things I’ve done. And as I’ve been writing about those things a lot over the past couple years, I hope to be as honest about stuff as he was. And as kind-hearted and forgiving. He was a really good guy.”
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Dave Bry with a nice, short remembrance of Adam Yauch.
I’m too young—but this was maybe the first album I ever bought … because I thought it was “cool”—to say he affected my life in anyway like it seems so many others can. But whenever a good person dies at 47, it’s a terrible thing.
This week has been the worst, but this piece of writing from David Roth is the opposite of that. It’s required reading for human beings.
“That’s the strangest thing about all of it. Sports are the doings of imaginary things, like carrying an inflatable leather token — that’s what it is, an idea with stitches — across a painted line to gather a commodity that can’t be eaten or worn or held in one’s hand. And somehow it’s in this arena, and not any of those others, that we witness human beings actually living like human beings: in ceaseless uncertainty, reaching unscripted conclusions.”
Blake Ahearn does not make that much money, Yahoo!! For The Classical, here’s why that number isn’t really the point.
