NFL Determined to Rid League of Crips, Bloods

Right after we get a fun little story about how NFL locker rooms are a really fun place with lots of great homo jokes, we get this gem of a headline right off ESPN.com -

Report: NFL to review tape for evidence of on-field gang signs

Is this what we have turned into as a society? We are now hiring "experts" to analyze old game tapes for the possibility of gang signs? Where might one find these alleged "experts" and how much is their time worth? The NFL has a long standing reputation of never settling for anything less than the best so does that mean they are bringing in Suge Knight and plopping his 400 pounds in front of a TV?

The worst part of this story is the automatic linkage to Paul Pierce's incident in the playoff series against Atlanta. Says one NFL VP -

"We were always suspicious that [gang-related hand signals] might be happening," said Mike Pereira, the NFL's vice president of officiating, according to the report. "But the Paul Pierce thing is what brought it to light. When he was fined ... that's when we said we need to take a look at it and see if we need to be aware of it."

Never mind the fact that it was never proven that Pierce flashed any gang sign whatsoever. Never mind the fact that Pierce's Truth Foundation funds anti-gang programs all over the country. Hey, the NBA has black guys and one got fined for some gang stuff so we better investigate the black folks in our league too. Real logical.

At least one person associated with the NFL has some common sense -

"Guys come from all over the country, and who knows what they're really doing?" Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Dennis Northcutt said, according to The Times' report. "People have got signs for their kids, signs for their fraternities. How do you differentiate who's really throwing up gang signs?

"This is a gang sign," he added, touching his index finger to his thumb to form a squished version of the hand sign for OK. "But at the same time, it's a sign for a personnel group."

Bleep You, Liberals

Eddie Vedder tickets went on sale last week. Apparently he's doing some solo shows following a nationwide full band tour that ended in June. I caught the last two shows at the Great Tweeter Comcast Woods Center and suffice it to say, I was blown the fuck away. See, that is what happens when I venture out to any sort of musical act. I always feel so-so heading into the show and come out ready to tattoo the band name on my lower back (wait? what?). I have what you might call an addictive personality.

Anyway, I was happy as fuck when I heard about Vedder touring solo if only to carry on the stoke I felt during the last week of June. I realized it wouldn't be quite the same since 90% of the band would be staying home and the setlist would be invariably different. I also realized the political bullshit would be ten times what it was in Mansfield but whatever, I was game. What I did not know was that all the liberal fucks and MoveOn.org douche bags would come out en masse and drive the ticket price of this shit through the roof. Both nights sold out in about 13 seconds flat and now its looking like 150 bucks a ticket just to get my ass in a seat that night.

So, to all you tight jean wearing, George Bush hating wannabe Canadians: GET FUCKED. Take the weekend off from bitching about high gas prices or illegitimate wars and kindly go die in a boating accident. And most importantly, stop fucking up my summer.

Some Positive News From the NFL

Look, I was as sad as the next guy over the retirement of Will Leitch. I was also afraid of what would happen to the most well written blog on the planet. I'm starting to feel a little better on both accounts now that I've sampled a little of the next generation.

Clay Travis penned an absolute gem today regarding the side of an NFL locker room we rarely get to see. Any story that humanizes those that we worship is a plus in my book and the revelation that "No Homo" is the joke of choice in the NFL really made my day.

Writes Travis -

Professional sports locker rooms are one of the last bastions for gay humor. That’s because there’s never been any gay athletes. So, you see, the very idea of anyone being gay is always funny. Which brings me to the first big scoop of my illustrious Deadspin career: The phrase “No Homo” has taken over NFL locker rooms.

It’s everywhere, on every single team, the NFL equivalent of the late 90's Macarena dance. No Homo owes its popularity to the remarkably varied and infinitely complicated nature of its use. Or the opposite. One or the other. It’s applied thusly:

LenDale White says to Vince Young: “Vince, you’ve got great nips. No homo.”

Brilliant.

I have a buddy that has been using this phrase religiously over the past year or two. While I have always gotten a light chuckle out of its use, it never became standard verbiage amongst any social circle I belong to. You can bet that is going to change now that I know Donovan McNabb uses these exact words every time he accidentally grazes Brian Westbrook's ass.

NFL Joke of Choice - Deadspin

Finally, Something New to Hunt

With the nation's wild horse population swelling to more than 33,000 and another 30,000 currently held in holding facilities it has been determined that some of these beasts must die. This is great news because, man, do I hate horses. Loathsome, useless creatures that stopped being relevant right around the James Garfield administration.

I guess some expert decided the US could manage no more than 27,000 of the things at any given time so by my math we have a solid 6,000 to poach. If it were up to me, I'd release the 30,000 from horse prison and then we could really have a field day.

Can you think of anything more fun than coming up with exotic ways to assassinate a horse? Two great movies come to mind, The Patriot and 300. The horses in those flicks got fucked the fuck up and it was, in a word, awesome.

So I guess the question is, where do we go from here? Do I need to fill out any paper work or apply for a permit? Can we just head out west and start shooting? Please, someone enlighten me.
(h/t - WSJ and LA Times)

We Thank You

From the bottom of our hearts.

A million blogs have logged a million posts with regards to one William F Leitch. Make this 1,000,001. You are a genius, a visionary and a leader. Enough words there are not to describe the love we share for you (in the most hetero way possible…of course).

On behalf of every jerk off hack like ourselves, there is a debt of gratitude that will never be repaid. You paved a road that never deserved tar and you blazed a trail that never deserved the effort. Yet, as we look back it all seems to make so much sense.

Sports news without access, favor or discretion. Why didn’t we think of that. So obvious, so simple, so perfect.

Before tarnishing a legacy with more incoherent rambling, let’s just end it with some words of your own. As has been the case so many times, we could not have said it better ourselves.

That's all we wanted Deadspin to be all along; a place where people could slip away from their life for a while, dig in, have some fun, then head back to the regular life, where bills must be paid, family must be attended to, jobs must be (slightly) acknowledged. You know: Kind of like sports themselves. Life is difficult. Life is scary. Diversions — real, palpable diversions, places where you can go away and frolic, and then return to the world the way you found it, for better or worse — are rare, and should be cherished. That's what sports are. That's what we hope this site has been. That's what we're certain it will continue to be.

Good night and good luck.

Adolph Coors - Fucking it up Since 1873

What is with these guys? Of all the liquor purveyors in this country, Coors is the only one that should have stayed under after the repeal of prohibition. They have not done a God Damn thing right since. The product is shit (I know, man landed on the moon), their advertising makes the folks at Geico look smart and the gimmicks are not clever enough to trick a Saint Bernard.

I remember when I tasted my first Coors Light. I was 15 and it was free. And warm. And skunked. I loved it, but really, my only basis for comparison was some cheap whiskey I stole from the parents wet bar. Time passed, I realized that Bud Light was much more fashionable and I felt way less gay asking the bums outside the liquor store to buy it for me. Then a funny thing happened. I was 22 and the store near my house was out of BL's. I said fuck it, Coors can't be that bad, picked up a 12 pack and tapped the Rockies. Guess what? It tasted EXACTLY like it did the first time I had it 7 years prior (warm and skunked).

As far as their marketing campaigns go - I'll leave it to Drew Magory of Kissing Suzy Kolber to summarize those efforts:

It's a beer ad. It's not fucking hard. Start with a monkey. Then show some tits. Then make a dick joke. Then cut to product. See? Gold. Yet these guys constantly fuck it up. Coors Light's motto is "The coldest beer in the world!" Do they understand the logic flaw in that selling point? Oooh, it's so cold, we can only measure it in Kelvin! Morons. You know what the coldest beer in the world is? ANY OF THEM. I had a Coors Light once that had been sitting in the car for an hour in late August. It was anything but cold. So fuck you, Pete Coors. Fuck your advertising, and fuck your cheap, shitty beer. Fuck.

All of this is well and good but certainly not worth an entire post. That is where the new gimmicks come in and push me right over the top. First we had the mountains changing colors once the bottles were sufficiently cool (blue like your eyes). That was pretty fucking stupid. I've held enough cold objects in my day and I am pretty confident I don't need some paper label to tell me when my beer is ok to drink.

Currently, we are in the middle of the newest cluster fuck of a promotion - vented wide mouth cans. That's right, if the wide mouth alone isn't enough to rush their shitty swill to your liver, now there is a quarter inch vent along side to quicken up the pace. To set the record straight, I was never really on board with the wide mouth thing in the first place. It is not like drinking liquid from a can was ever all that challenging. I'm pretty sure it was something that Terry Schiavo could have managed on a bad day. Plus, worst case scenario, can't you just pour it into a glass? Now we get a vented wide mouth? Pretty sad. Its readily apparent that the brain trust running this shit show has never heard of shotgunning.

You want to impress me Coors, find a way to put a tab on the side of the can along with the one up top. That way, I won't always have to carry keys with me and I won't have to worry about hacking up my fingers and gums on all the shrapnel.

Doing My Part

It's been a while. For which I apologize. I really did not plan on posting until June 7th but who knows, maybe I will squeeze a few more in before then.

A lot of hot air has been wasted regarding the expected stimulus checks millions of Americans are waiting on. Depending on the last two digits of your social security number, its quite possible you've gotten it back already. The last two of mine are 41 and my rebate cleared on Friday or Saturday of last weekend. Not sure of the exact day since I spent the weekend more or less in a drunken haze.

However, the key is that I did spend which is why I figured I would take a moment and break down where my stimulus money ended up. First, let me go on record - I think this stimulus plan is completely asinine to begin with and will do close to nothing to help our economy. A one time cash flow that amounts to little more than an extra week's pay for an average American is not going to do anything to solve what really troubles the economy ($130 oil, hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage related writedowns by banks all over the country, an astonishingly weak dollar, 5%+ inflation, etc, etc...) Despite all this, I decided to play along and do my part. After all, I am a Patriot.

The government's disbursement plan coincided beautifully with a last minute trip to DC so it was not too tough to find ways to spend my money. For starters, I booked $180 round trip ticket on Southwest to get down there. The airlines (aside from Southwest) are struggling with higher fuel costs (its called hedging fucksticks) so what hell, I felt honored to give the industry a little boost. Once down there, I took in a Nationals game at their brand new park. Beautiful stadium. While I spent nothing on the ticket, I did buy about 3 dozen draft beers and some related ballpark food which came out to a cool hundo. I capped the weekend off with a dinner which included several orders of buffalo wings and another 3 dozen draft beers bringing the 2-day total to around 4 bills.

I took the other 2 hundred and dumped it in to my ING Orange fund so it could yield about 2.5% over the next 12 months. It also brings ING's capital up so they can make more shitty decisions on CMO's and other asset backed securities thus injecting some much needed liquidity into the market.

Like I said, I'm a Patriot.