All I can say is WOW. I’m pretty friggin’ stoked about this one. In ten years of scouring the far corners of the internet for arbitrary pieces of pop Americana, this is one of my all time favorite finds. When I was a kid, this baby wiiiired me up!
Incredible.
Darren Rovell of the worldwide leader recently posted his top 10 “hottest tickets in American sports”. I agree with Rovell on the Derby, Sox-Yanks at Fenway, and Duke-Carolina at Cameron, but I’ve got 7 others I’d rather see than what he lists:
World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, Jacksonville, FL: The Florida – Georgia football game may be the toughest College Football ticket in the nation; seats are available online for no less than $300 for the ’06 game in APRIL. The party starts up Thursday and runs hard through Thursday night, not to mention that it’s October in Florida. And you’d prefer to be at The Masters?
Cowboys @ Eagles, October 8, 2006, Philadelphia, PA: OK, so maybe this is just a one-off, but consider this: who in their right mind scheduled this game — T.O.’s return to the City of Brotherly Love — at 4pm in early October? Half of the crowd will have been drinking since 8 a.m. Enough said.
BC hits the post with 1.7 seconds left, puck falls out. Wisconsin wins 2-1.
The Frozen Four is this exciting every year. If you don’t watch, you’re missing out.
My pal Gordo likes to give me a hard time about liking off-the-wall sports — I live for curling, cornhole and hope to someday take a crack at Irish Road Bowling. I like regular sports too — basketball is my true love, and the Red Sox my one and only team. But baseball and basketball players often do what they do for all the wrong reasons, as guys like Johnny Damon proved this winter. I love sports like curling for one simple reason: people who play them do it because they love it, and for nothing else. When there’s no fame or fortune awaiting the winners, all that BS doesn’t get in the way of doing it for the love of competition.
This brings me to my latest obsession — The Iditarod Sled Dog Race. This obviously, if you know me, is something that I’d never actually do, but I respect the heck out of the fine people that pull it off. I fear them as well — they are all flippin’ crazy. OLN covered the “last great race” this year, and the coverage was strangely compelling — the trials that each musher goes through just to make it to the end is absolutely stunning — as is the scenery.
I also just finished reading Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, a book written by two-time finisher Gary Paulsen. I’m often wary of non-fiction sports books — they usually manage to bore me about halfway through — but this read like a bestselling thriller, comically describing the absolute ridiculousness that was Paulsen’s run from Minnesota (where he learned to mush) to Nome.
My favorite part — Paulsen describing his attempt to make it out of Anchorage (just the ceremonial start of the race) alive:
“We went through people’s yards, ripped down fences, knocked over garbage cans. At one point I found myself going through a carport and across a backyard with fifteen dogs and a fully loaded Iditarod sled. A woman standing over a kitchen sink looked out with wide eyes as we passed through her yard and I snapped a wave at her before clawing the handlebar again to hang on while we tore down her picket fence when [the lead dog] tired to thread through a hole not bigger than a housecat…”
If you like sports and competition at all, give Paulsen’s book a read.
On Friday June 16, legendary Philadelphia band The Hooters will descend on the Electric Factory. I’ve been waiting for this one for a heck of a long time…
On a related note, I saw Matt Nathanson perform at World Cafe Live the other night. As always, Nathanson rocked the joint with his hysterical, energy-packed show (even though the live broadcast factor may have reigned him in a bit). But that isn’t really my point. Nathanson played two songs — a cover of James’ “Laid”, and “Suspended” — that have Hooters ties. “Laid” was recorded for the American Wedding soundtrack at Hooters frontman Eric Bazillian’s Philly studio; the two collaborated again on “Suspended” during the recording of Beneath These Fireworks.
It’s safe to say that pretty much anything goes at a Nathanson show; the other night fans yelled requests continuously — from the absurd (“Stone in Love”), to the obscure (“Amazng Again”), to the obvious (“Play some Skynyrd, man!”). So when I saw Matt perform at The Point in Bryn Mawr just after Beneath These Fireworks came out, I certainly had Hooters on the brain (heh). I refrained from yelling anything throughout the show, however, which would come back to haunt me almost immediately. When the house lights came up at the end of the night, I noticed none other than Mr. Bazillian sitting a few tables behind me. A golden opportunity — denied!
OK, I have a few things I need to get off my chest:
Man, I love TV. (Donna Martin graduates)
Sorry for the double YT post, but this is kind of fun. I was going to throw up this year’s One Shining Moment, just in case you missed it, but instead I found OSM from ’98. Bryce Drew, baby.
You can get the ’06 version here.
New feature on the site — a randomly selected YouTube video for your enjoyment. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it clean.
Today’s selection: Jim Everett goes after Jim Rome after the antagonistic talk show host calls him “Chris” one too many times. A classic.
Thanks to deadspin for bringing this one back up.