Always Be Yourself

Everybody you know at the moment may be convinced that you’re as cool as can be:

 . . . but somewhere out there, somebody out there remembers you when you weren’t:

Be yourself. Accept your inner Cowboy Curtis.

Another Good Reason to Like Hockey Players

ESPN, a colossal ESPN-centric entity that splits its time between savvy self-promotion and the occasional sports broadcast, has long received its fair share of criticism from multiple angles and various sources with axes to grind. Some of this criticism is significant and newsworthy in itself—such as when First Take’s Rob Parker got roasted, suspended, and then eventually let go for suggesting that Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III was insufficiently black.

RGIII’s whole left sleeve
white. Rob Parker was right!

We find it interesting that a discussion of race involving a team named the Redskins can, even in this day and age, have absolutely nothing to do with the team being named the Redskins, for God’s sake, but that’s a topic for another day on a different, much more mature blog.

Our gripe with ESPN, the Worldwide Leader in Sports and Also ESPN-Related ESPNiness^TM, is far less socially significant and more centrally located in most people’s “who really gives a shit” category: that is, its tendency to occasionally and/or systematically forget that certain sports and/or leagues, such as the National Hockey League, actually exist.

There are dozens or perhaps hundreds of other sports that also get shortchanged when it comes to national news coverage, but that’s fine because nobody gives a shit about them.¹

The NHL, despite Gary Bettman’s apparent best efforts, still really does exist, although fans are hard-pressed to find evidence of it on ESPN. Since 2004, for example, the network has broadcast the Scripps National Spelling Bee—by far the most athletically taxing of all spelling bees—seven times, and broadcast zero NHL games.² In 2011, “the ESPN family of networks aired thirty-six hours of Main Event coverage”³ of the World Series of Poker—which is probably more like a sport than a spelling bee, but less so than, say, darts—and, again, zero hours of live NHL hockey.

And in the “In Memoriam” section of SportsCenter’s 2011 Year in Review, there was no mention of the deaths of Derek Boogaard, Ryan Rypien, or Wade Belak (the first two being active NHL players at the time of their deaths), or of the forty-three members of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in a plane crash in Minsk.⁴

Does this make the folks at ESPN bad people? No. Well, kinda, but not really. It does mean, though, that the network has a lot of work to do to make it up to, or even stay relevant to, American fans of hockey.

We view the following as an encouraging step in the right direction. Our wife, Dr./Mrs. Some Gal, would probably agree for very different reasons.⁵










NOTES
1. We were going for kind of an irony angle here; not sure if we’ve quite pulled it off it not.
2. In ESPN’s defense, they only stopped broadcasting NHL games when it became apparent that they were going to continue to have to pay for it.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_of_Poker#WSOP_television_coverage
3. http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/disgrace-espn-sportscenter-year-in-review-snubs-hockey-tragedies?urn=nhl,wp20822
4. We understand that many, many athletes have died without making an ESPN end-of-year memorial segment, some of them likely being well-known and having played popular sports, but to overlook a disaster on the scale of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crash is a bit galling. We don’t have a scrap of evidence to back this up, but we have managed to convince ourselves that the Marshall football team’s plane crash got more press than Lokomotiv in 2012, and that happened more than thirty years ago.
5. We are big fans of hockey and Muppets; the doctor/missus is a big fan of Henrik Lundqvist’s dreamy Swedish eyes. So everyone wins here.

Great Moments in Super Bowl History: January 31, 2009

 
We don’t remember who won the game, or who won the MVP award. Frankly, we don’t even know who played.

That’s not to say, though, that we didn’t enjoy the game, or that we didn’t find certain highlights worthy of instant replay:

NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo 2

A week or two after we posted our initial NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo card it occurred to us that, having created only one card, we had doomed our legions of bingo-crazy readers to play against each other using the exact same phrases. Folks would be filling out all the same spaces at the very same time, with only minor variations based on deafness, channel-flipping, or bathroom breaks, so virtually every bingo game would end in a tie.

While it’s heartwarming to think that such an oversight might inadvertently foster a sense of teamwork and cooperation among our readers—and, eventually, among football fans and then people of all creeds and colors from all walks of life—we think it’s a bit silly to even bother playing a game you have virtually no chance of winning. 

That’d basically be like playing for the 2008 Detroit Lions, and nobody deserves that—except maybe for the 2011 Indianapolis Colts.

Don’t be like those losers.¹ Be a winner—pick up a bingo card, find a game on TV, and kick some ass, bingo-player style.

. . . okay, we admit that we don’t have any idea how playing bingo could possibly have anything to do with the notion of “kicking ass.” But we’re willing to admit that it’s probably technically possible, and we’re sure you’ll do your best. Go get ’em, Sport.

 

NOTES

1. That is, coordinated, strong, famous, and rich.

Previously published on December 10, 2011. Bowling in the Dark has gone green, proudly recycling old crappy content and turning it into fresh new crappy content that looks pretty much the same. Please show your support by rereading, or, alternatively, sending us a ton of money.

NFL Broadcaster Cliché Bingo

Do you find yourself with no legitimate reason to continue watching your favorite football team more than five or ten minutes after the opening kickoff? (Colts, Jaguars, Dolphins, Browns, Panthers, Rams, Jets, Seahawks, and Cardinals fans, we’re looking at you.)

Don’t lose hope yet, and by all means don’t get off the couch and try to live a productive life. You can use your local team’s broadcast—assuming it hasn’t been blacked out in your area thanks to lack of interest—to have fun the way old ladies at the local church do. Except you get to do it on your couch, with a beer in your hand!¹

NOTE

1. We do not intend to imply that all old ladies play bingo, or that all bingo players are old or even ladies, or that all churches play or even allow bingo. We merely intend to imply that you are a fat, lazy drunk.

Previously published on November 7, 2011.

Smoking: It's Not Just for Kids Anymore!

In the event that you find yourself in a discussion with the kindly, ever-optimistic Pollyanna kind of person who chooses to believe that tobacco-company executives or marketers have souls, please feel free to use the following as Definitive and Devastating Counterargument Number 1:

 





We’re willing to forgive Fred and Barney for their ignorance of the dangers of smoking because, well, they lived more than two million years ago. Social attitudes were very different back then, and of course scientific research into the effects of cigarette smoke was severely limited by the ineffectiveness of woodpecker-powered x-ray machines.

Disclaimer: No wisecracking prehistoric birdlife was harmed
in the creation of this illustration.

It’s hard to believe, however, that barely fifty years ago the American public was willing to watch their kids’ beloved cartoon friends shill for cigarette companies with, as far as we can tell, nary a word of protest. Apparently, 1,200 years’ worth of lung cancer isn’t necessarily a compelling argument for a connection between smoking and death.¹

A common argument is that at the time, the American public simply wasn’t aware that smoking was deadly, or even just sorta dangerous. Also common is the belief, backed by a veritable mountain range of evidence, that tobacco companies knew about the dangers of smoking and fought tooth and nail to keep the public from learning about it, a cynical act of callous deception on an almost unimaginable scale.²


With that in mind, we have to wonder what elements of 2012 Americans’ daily life will turn out to be horrifically bad for their health, revealed far too late to spare them from gruesome and painful side effects?

Meat is bad for your cholesterol.

Yep. It’ll cause skin cancer. Bank on it.

It won’t be the radiation bombarding your brain from an inch away that kills you,
but rather your toxic levels of pompous self-importance.

This one’s probably a longshot,
but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Puppies: nature’s perfect killers.

Don’t even pretend you’re surprised.

NOTES
1. Cigarette smoking, according to Wikipedia, “have been attested in Central America around the 9th century in the form of reeds and smoking tubes.”
2. We haven’t actually seen these mountains of evidence for ourselves, but we can seek them out using a secret map in our possession, drawn by the Marlboro Man just days before he shit out both his lungs and died.

Broncos Rookie Linebacker Von Miller Wins Prestigious Steve Urkel Impression Award

 

Miller’s prize-winning performance.

“Rookie of the Year? Yawn. When he single-handedly
saves a floundering sitcom by making it
twice as stupid, maybe I’ll be impressed.”

How to Fail at Marketing, Lesson 3

Today’s lesson in how to fail at marketing is a remarkably simple one-step process:

1. Refuse to make a single stinking lick of sense.

To illustrate this lesson, we turn to the current marketing campaign for the Kia Soul. Which of the following ideas, in your opinion, might seem a bit odd if included in a commercial intended to sell a car?

• Heavily-armored futuristic humanoids battling giant cyborgs from outer space.
• A smoke-filled, ash-grey, post-apocalyptic landscape.
• Terrifyingly large, hip-hop-stylin’ mutant dancing hamsters.
• A lime-green vehicle that, while perhaps not as ridiculous-looking as, say, an AMC Gremlin, nevertheless looks more like a rolling shoebox than an actual car.

If you answered “I don’t really know, but it’d be hilariously insane to put all of them in the same commercial,” we’re very sorry, but your ability to tell the difference between an adequate marketing approach and pure gibberish makes you overqualified for the job of marketing cars for Kia.

You’re absolutely right, this is a really bad idea. But don’t take our word for it—see for yourself:

Even if the plot (such as it is) of this commercial made any sense—if one could reasonably argue that 200-pound squirming vermin could crawl out of a shitbox car and put an end to interstellar war with nothing but funky fresh dance moves—and furthermore, if this oddball collection of misguided ideas actually reached what we assume is its target audience, study after comprehensive marketing study has shown that:

• the target audience for violent CGI-robot war games rarely bother to leave cyberspace except to pee, and thus aren’t usually in the market for cars;
• the target audience that’s drawn to hamsters consists of (1) your thirteen-year-old nephew with eighty feet of Habitrail tubes in his basement and (2) his equally pimply friends, and they don’t make purchasing decisions for their households; and
• the target audience that most identifies with images of a barren, lifeless post-apocalyptic wasteland typically isn’t interested in buying a car—they’d prefer to just blow you to bits, steal your gasoline, and laugh as they ride their bikes off into the Australian Outback.

The reason he’s so pissed off? He bought a Saturn.

A Summary of the X-Files Episode You're About to Watch on Netflix

“Hey Scully, check this out: it’s another case that regular FBI agents won’t touch,
with all sorts of creepy occult / monster / alien abduction / mythological overtones.”

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for what’s going on here, 

Mulder. I hereby propose a sensible theory based on science, logic, deductive 

reasoning, good old-fashioned FBI investigation, and a rational 

understanding of how things actually work in the real world.”

“I hereby propose a ludicrous theory, full of magic and lunacy, 
that sounds like it was beamed directly into my brain by
paranoid conspiracy theorists from Planet Bullshit.”

“Have it your way, Mulder. I’ll bet you another year’s worth of
unresolved sexual tension that your silly theory won’t pan out.”

“You’re on. Let’s get to work.”

 

 

“Better luck next week, Scully.”

“Pardon me, but there’s something we need to talk aboot. I must

tell you crucial information that will serve my nefarious purposes and seem 

to answer all of your questions, but won’t actually make a lick of sense.
. . . or perhaps I'm here to kill you. May I come in?”

“Suit yourself, I was just leaving. Oh, and Mulder? 

You’re sleeping alone until at least season seven, smart guy.”

“Crap.”

Plan Comes Together; Hannibal Pleased

“I find it quite satisfying when a strategy properly comes to fruition.”

Today in Rock History, 1981: Radio Star Dies; Video Beats Murder Rap

MTV: active 1981 to, well, 1998 or so.

At 12:01 on August 1, 1981, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes—who insisted on referring to themselves as “The Buggles,” for some appalling reason—announced, to the dismay of the cable-television-viewing world, that the radio star had been killed. Even more shocking was their claim that the death was, in fact, murder—and that the guilty party was none other than Video, the radio star’s longtime collaborator and sometime rival.

In more recent years, murder and music have intertwined often enough to leave the public jaded and desensitized—Marvin Gaye was shot by his own father in 1984; Tejano singer Selena was murdered by the former president of her own fan club in 1995; rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were killed less than six months apart in 1996 and 1997; famed “Wall of Sound” record producer Phil Spector killed actress Lana Clarkson in 2003; and, of course, the Flaming Lips famously butchered Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody in 2005.

In 1981, however, a more innocent world still reeled from the death of John Lennon (apparently a moderately well-established musician in his own right), and was captivated by the simple fact that The Buggles, for all their dense and timeless lyrical artistry, failed to mention the name of the murdered radio star—so it could have been practically anybody.

. . . well, not anybody. They distinctly used the phrase “radio star” at least a dozen times, which suggests that the victim could not have been, for example, Donnie Iris, Joey Scarbury, The Vapors, or anyone from the Sugarhill Gang or Lipps, Inc. But practically anybody else.

News of Video’s supposed guilt spread rapidly, especially among insomniacs, the jobless, and teenage malcontents watching TV without proper supervision. The accusation caught fire in part because of video’s well-established (and perhaps deserved) reputation as a corrupting influence on the young, a useless degenerate, and a crass defiler of all that used to be good, pure, and right about the world.¹ The radio star, who was heard back on the wireless as early as 1952, had already had its heart broken “by pictures” [that is, “moving pictures,” one of Video’s many aliases], so it was no great leap to conclude that Video was guilty of murder.

Video: Tried and convicted by the media, which is kind of ironic,
when you think about it. Unless it’s not—irony is a tough concept
and we’re not sure we get it. Thankfully, we know you don’t either.

The prosecution’s case, however, could not withstand its star witnesses’ inexplicable assault on their own credibility. They personally urged the jury to “put the blame on VTR [Video Tape Recorders],” and displayed a bizarre and confusing distrust of “machines and technology,” going to far as to demolish the court recorder’s stenotype machine and swallow several of the pieces before being restrained by bailiffs.

The accusers. And yes, we all
dressed just like this in 1981.

Most bizarre, though, was Trevor Horn’s obvious mental unraveling on the stand. Asked to describe the scene of the murder, Horn, confused or possibly deranged, claimed that it took place “In my mind . . . and in my car,” thus either implicating himself in the crime or inadvertently suggesting that it was all a product of his troubled imagination.

Charges against Video were eventually dismissed. The long-awaited coroner’s report stated that the radio star died when its motorcycle crashed into a helicopter, having lost control after suffering from a heart attack induced by choking on vomit. The coroner's toxicology screen showed that the radio star’s blood contained fatal levels of alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, paint thinner,² dihydrogenous oxide, hydrochlorothiozide, and perhaps the most unpredictable and concentrated drug of the middle decades of the twentieth century—half a pint of Ozzy Osbourne’s blood.

The death was ruled an accident.

The radio star was 27.

One small step for [a] man (right), one giant waste of man’s time (left).

NOTES

1. Opinions expressed at Bowling in the Dark do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the staff at Bowling in the Dark.

2. Or possibly Everclear. Chemically speaking, they’re essentially the same thing, although it’s possible that drinking paint thinner is less dangerous.

Words that Changed the World VI

  

“Mah na mah na.”

Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me

Don Cherry: Making Acid Trips Look Mundane Since 1934.

A touch of Spuds MacKenzie is the perfect
accessory for the sophisticated gentleman.

Not much commentary is necessary here, as the jackets worn by Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry tend to speak far more loudly than we ever could. Be forewarned, though: do not look directly at the jacket. We repeat, for those of you who lack the ability to go back and re-read previous sentences, do not look directly at the jacket.

At first glance, we thought this was a
Canadian-flag pattern, but that
would be tacky.

Every time Chery wears this jacket on TV,
Pepto-Bismol owes him a nickel.

Damn it, we told you not to look
directly at the jacket.

The best part of this jacket is that it
genuinely qualifies as subtle.

In a moment, Cherry will wave his arms
to signal victory at the Indianapolis 500.

You looked straight at the jacket again,
didn’t you?

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.

If you cross your eyes just right, you’ll 
see the Statue of Liberty.

Several of Don Cherry’s outfits follow

a holiday theme. Here he commemorates

Chinese New Year.

It’s good to see that he paid attention to
this jacket’s warning about proper
eye protection. Safety first, kids.

Cherry saves his more subtle ensembles
for weddings and funerals.

We will refrain from describing what this

jacket looks, but it does make us wish

we’d taken some Pepto-Bismol a few

hours ago.

Special thanks to the good folks at Don We Now Our Gay Apparel for unwittingly supplying us with most of the images above.We swear we didn’t alter them even the slightest in Photoshop.