Mike Defends Lance Armstrong? He Sucks, but He’s No Homophobe.
I didn’t watch the ESPYs (EPSN’s sports award show) because I don’t think the world needs any more award shows. You want to give out awards? Fine. Please do it without the show though. They are always boring. Whether it be movies, music or sports, they basically always boil down to an industry self-love circle jerk, and I don’t have to stomach to watch them. Sure, channels like MTV and ESPN try to make it better with different award categories and hosts that aren’t cut from the usual comedian cloth, but it doesn’t work. Recently, the non-comedian host of this year’s ESPYs got himself in trouble with one of the jokes from his monologue. Maybe you’ve heard, or you…shudder…actually watched the ESPYs, but the host that I speak of was none other than perennial topic, Lance Armstrong. Armstrong dropped an anal sex reference in a joke that he pointed at friend Jake Gyllenhaal, who we all know starred in Brokeback Mountain. You can watch the video clip of Armstrong delivering said joke after the jump, or you read the relevant part right here:
Armstrong: [blah blah blah]…Jake Gyllenhaal is here tonight.
[Applause]
Armstrong:Jake, why are you sitting in the front? I thought you liked it in the rear.
Apparently, this joke garnered some ire or at least the thought and discussion of ire from a few sources. For instance, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times called it a “tasteless line” and wondered how it was not edited it out. I’ll tell you why it wasn’t edited out Dick: Because it wasn’t a big deal. Regular readers of this site will want to brace themselves right now…I’m about to defend Lance Armstrong. There is no reason why Armstrong should be getting any flack for this. First off, lets state the obvious. If you want to get made at anyone for that joke, Armstrong isn’t the guy. Lets not kid ourselves. Armstrong was simply reading a script. Secondly, in the grand pantheon of jokes, that joke sucked. It was the last of roughly 1,000,000,000,000 other Brokeback Mountain jokes and you could see the punchline coming from a mile away. However…if you narrow it down to the pantheon of award show jokes, then the joke isn’t half bad and actually gets a little extra credit for trying to push the Gestapo enforced envelope of modern TV. Lastly, whats to get offended over? Like I said before, its no worse than any other of the billion “Brokeback” jokes that echoed from the TV off every water cooler in the world for the past 9 months. How was that joke offensive? Is it more offensive than calling a Jewish guy cheap or saying a man doesn’t want to ask for directions? Of course its a generalization of a group, thats what 96% of jokes are. Wow, he called Jake Gyllenhaal gay! How edgy! Then add in the fact that its got a real shot at being completely true when you look at Gyllenhaal track record and you’ve actually have a pretty bland joke. Armstrong has actually been accused of being a homophobe. Come on! Correct me if I’m wrong, but there was nothing derogatory or wrong in that joke right? I mean “in the rear” as Armstrong puts it, is how a couple of gay guys get down. So what was wrong hateful in his joke? Its no more hateful that a gay man making a joke about how boring missionary position is. I’m getting tired of the knee-jerk reaction that if you say the word “gay” and you happen to be straight, then you are a homophobe. I guess the overreaction by people is better than the other side that spends their time telling people how to live and if they are going to hell or not, but not by much.
Now if I know Armstrong, he’ll probably redact his joke in some interview in the coming days. He’ll say that he’s sorry and he didn’t want to offend anyone with his comments and that he really shouldn’t of said that. In fact, he might have already released that statement. Either way, thats too bad, and I would go right back on the offensive against Armstrong. You shouldn’t take that joke back. You shouldn’t apologize. Leave it out there. Let Dick from the Times whine about it. Be a man and stand by the joke you had written for you and you practiced delivering in the mirror of your bedroom for weeks on! Who knows, maybe this will make your stupid bracelets more fashionable again. Nevermind, I think the wristband ship has sailed.
Hey new readers!
For more information on why Lance and I have a past (insert your own Brokeback joke here), read some old favorites such as:
Livestrong, die now! (Make sure to take the time and check out the comments.)
Livestrong, die now! II
Gratuitous Kate Beckinsale and Friends Photo #21
So I’ve been having problems with my internet connection lately. Every once in a while it will just drop off and my modem can’t connect. I call in to see if its a neighborhood wide outage, and its not, so I get stuck doing some technique called “power-cycling” read out of a script by Jeff the ass-hat because “…it might be your router.” So finally I get through to Charter that its not my router, I’m not an idiot, and they need to at least come check my line to see if that is the problem. I make an appointment for July 12th. Of course the appointment is 9am – 5pm so I have to take off work and wait all day for this guy to show up. The day before the appointment I decided to call Charter and confirm my appointment. I get this India chick that is impossible to understand and is apparently a moron. There is no appointment in the computer for me on the 12th so I get a little miffed, but still calm, and I say that I took off work for this and someone needs to show up tomorrow. So after some back and forth she says there is a new appointment scheduled and tries to get rid of me. I stop her and we have this exchange:
Mike: “I’m sorry, but this has been a bit of a mess. Can you just tell me Yes or No, will someone be coming to my house tomorrow?”
Her: “Ok. Ok. [ long pause ] Ok.”
Mike: “What? Look I took off work for this. I just need you to tell me Yes or No if someone is coming tomorrow.”
Her: “Ok. Ok. Ok…”
Mike: “Seriously, I don’t want to wait at home all day for nothing. Please tell me Yes or No. If its ‘No’, thats fine, I just need to know one way or the other.”
Her: “[ long pause ] Ok. Ok.”
Mike: “I’m really not trying to get angry with you right now. But you need to give me a Yes or No!”
Her: “I put the appointment in…Ok?”
Mike: “Give me the number to the dispatch because I’m going nowhere with you. You clearly don’t want to help me at all. Don’t say Ok.” [ she gives me the number]
Her: “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Mike: “You’re kidding right?”
[Click]
Its gets better. She gave me the wrong number. And after almost an hour of talking to other people I get someone that tells me that there is an appointment set up for me and it was entered earlier that day. I say, yes, there probably is the India lady entered it. The lady on the phone says: “Well lady you talked to earlier inputed the appointment for the 18th, not the 12th.” The 18th! That India bitch was just going to let me sit at home all day on the 12th and she knew no one was going to come! Screw that bitch! If the answer was No (as I know that is was) just tell me so I don’t sit at home like an asshole! Stupid bitch! ….so….anyway I finally argued my way into them giving me an appointment on the 12th and that was that. Seriously though, what the hell? Why would you do that to a person. I was being cool, I just needed a simple confirmation and she wouldn’t give it to me even though she knew that without that information I would be fucked. Bitch!
This was 3 days ago and, if you’ve noticed, I’m still pissed. All I want to do right now is look at Christina Ricci and her new sexy make-over. The good news is I can make that happen. One pic here, one pic after the jump. Enjoy. I need to go calm down.
Pictures via: blog NYC
Randi Naughton and Her Breasts Hate Ricky Lamming
I like to stop by stlbloggers.com from time to time to see what I’m missing in my city while I lay on my couch watching Growing Pains reruns. Today stlbloggers.com yielded a very odd story about the first guy to be prosecuted for Illinois’ cyberstalking law. Now normally I disregard any news coming out of Illinois because who the hell cares about whats happening over there? But this story was a little different. It seems that one Rickey E. Lamming (Thats the sexy man pictured.), 50, was obsessed with a local morning news anchor Randi Naughton. More specifically, Lamming was obsessed with Randi Naughton’s breasts, and he wasn’t into keeping it much of a secret. Detailed by the stlbloggers.com posts here and here (Note the 4th comment down in the latter link) Lamming posted the following post on stlbloggers in January of last year:
I’m a WHAT?
I recently posted a couple of messages on a google bulletin board extolling the magnificence of Randi Naughtons breasts. (shes the morning wake up anchor at channel 2) and after sobering up, I removed them.
I read later that week in a St Louis Media Professional discussion that I’m a STALKER!!!
I resent this, this woman comes into viewers homes every morning and people in this position should know that things like this happen ( I remember a Mary Tyler Moore show where she got “one of those”).
Does this make me a stalker!
Hmmm………thanks a lot!
Maybe if you did indeed get drunk, and post something on the internet about someone’s breasts you wouldn’t be a stalker. (I mean, who among us hasn’t gotten drunk and posted about women’s breasts?) However, one might think you are a stalker if you…I don’t know…say made an entire blog about that same women’s breasts and updated said blog for a few months. That might make you a stalker right? Check out randinaughtonsbreasts.blogspot.com. Not only am I not joking…click it, its safe for work for the most part…but it is clearly written by old Slick Rick, and in the profile he coyly states his intentions with the greeting card like sentiment: “I’d love to fuck Randi Naughton’s breasts.” Is it weird or wrong that I would totally love to see the inside of this guy’s room right now? I just keep flashing back to Ace Ventura when he visits Ray Finkle’s bedroom. “What a morning news nut huh?”
Anyway, Naughton struck a blow today with Ricky getting 30 months of probation! Of course seeing how Ricky’s a bit looney, I don’t think the whole idea of probation will really get through, so good luck with that Randi. Oh, and here’s another reason why it sucks to be Randi Naughton: When you search for her in Google, guess what the second result that gets returned is? Ah, you guessed it: randinaughtonsbreasts.blogspot.com. Ouch. Maybe she should think about petitioning Blogger to take down that blog, or do something to make her breasts less attractive.
Who says nothing happens in St. Louis?
UPDATE:
I ran across Lamming’s Blogger profile. Not only did I discover that he has 2 other blogs about Naughton but the profile itself is filled with priceless insane stalker talk. Under “About Me” he has the previously quoted line: “I’d love to fuck Randi Naughton’s breasts.” Under “Interests” he has…wait for it…”Randi Naughton.” Those you saw coming right? Well under “Favorite Movies” he has “Casablanca, Forbidden Planet, Zatoichi series” and under “Favorite Books” he lists “Wheel of Time series, Dark Tower series, Dean Koontz books, fantasy, Knights” I love that this guy set up his profile, was all Silence of the Lambs style writing his gross intentions about Randy Naughton in the first two blanks while I’m assuming he is touching himself, and then he gets to where it asks what his favorite movies and books are and he switches gears to “Gosh, what should I put here…Oh I know I just loved Dean Koontz’s last book!” I know its messed up, but just find crazy people endlessly entertaining!
Hell Yeah Bitch! .com Has $100 Burning a Hole In Its Pocket
Hell Yeah Bitch! .com takes yet another step into legimacy: We finally made some money. Finally we earned enough money to pull a check from Google! Now the smart thing would be to use this money to pay the majority of next year’s hosting bill. That being said, the idea of cashing in out in to quaters, dumping them in a kiddie pool and swimming in it naked is just as appealing. Decisions decisions.
That Jersey You’re Wearing Makes You Look Like An Ass
ESPN.com’s Page 2 has an article up detailing what your store-bought baseball jersey that you wear says about you. He steps through most, if not all, the different “types” of jerseys you see at a game, and then tells you why you shouldn’t be wearing that. For instance jerseys of guys that have left your team…
Active Guys Who’ve Left jerseys:
These are inexcusable, yet you still see Red Sox No. 5 GARCIAPARRA, Braves No. 31 MADDUX and Mariners No. 24 GRIFFEY on fans who can’t let go, a la Mike Peters from “Swingers.” Yes, they were popular. Yes, it was fine to wear them at one time. And yes, paying $120 for a jersey of your favorite player, only to see him get traded or signed away is a bona fide kick in the stomach. But until they’ve retired and the jerseys achieve full retro status, one shouldn’t dress like he’s got numbers of married ex-girlfriends still saved on his cell phone.
The Midwest Tech Conference 06
Ok, I’m getting a little sick of all the conferences popping up all over the west coast like zits on a pre-Proactiv using Jessica Simpsons’ face. There’s the standard fare of conferences for any and all computer languages, but now there are Web 2.0 conferences and Web 2.0 company site launches and blogging software conferences and…well theres just lots of conferences. The problem is that every single one is on the west coast with the exception of a few snooty conferences that hold court in Europe somewhere to make themselves feel extra elitist and special. If you are from California maybe you haven’t heard, but its true that we do have computer and (gasp!) the internet in the midwest and some of us are pretty damn smart. So why don’t we ever get a conference? Of course I understand that some of these “parties” are celebrating the launch of a new company, and that makes sense to have that party at or near the offices for said company. However the vast majority of these conferences are location independent. You don’t have to have your MySQL conference in San Francisco, MySQL can be discussed anywhere. Do you think that the Web 2.0 phenomenon has reached past the borders of California? You bet your sweet bippy it has! (Editor’s Note: Where did that come from?) We have computers and the internet out here too! Can’t we have some fun instead of being relegated to looking at flickr groups of convention pictures, reading blog posts Live from the floor! and getting handouts from Valleyschwag? I already know the answer: “No.” Most tech conferences will never leave the borders of California. We, the computer people of the midwest will get no such conference. We will not know the joys of having to wear a lanyard and bumping into a low-rated tech celebrity on the convention floor. Well will never know the joys of seeing Leo Laporte setting up an on-location TWiT at MacWorld or overhear Robert Scoble talk about the virtues of Blogging and Windows Vista at a podcast conference. It will never happen.
Maybe all is not lost. I am putting the call out for at least one tech convention to come to St. Louis! …but we all know whats going to come from that: Dick. So the real plan is to make our own conference. Today I’m floating the idea of the Midwest Tech Conference! This conference would happen in St. Louis, Missouri and would be a BYOBW conference, which of course means Bring Your Own Buzz Words. This conference can be about whatever you want. There won’t be a rigid “topic” like some of those other conferences…you want to talk about MySQL, go right ahead. Blogging? Sure why not! Who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman? Put me down for one of those seminars! No, we might not get Scoble or Laporte out to it, but at least we would have something going on thats not in California.
Yes, I’m serious. If you are interested in this please let me know! I would be happy to go all the way on this if we get a good response: t-shirts, sponsers…the whole deal. If we only get a few people then we can still get t-shirts and have a BBQ at my apartment in the city. Either way, its high time we have something like this and Hell Yeah Bitch! .com has both the balls and free time to get this thing going! Who’s with me?!
If you are even a little interested or if you are a lot interested and want to help: mike -at- hellyeahbitch.com (or at the very least, leave a comment.) Also, be sure to Digg this, or email this to any and all that would be interested.
By the way, if anyone wants to take a hack at making a better, cooler, and bigger logo (suitable for t-shirts and posters) please let me know and help out!
Gratuitous Kate Beckinsale and Friends Photo #20
Have you seen the Lindsay Lohan pictures from her spread in British GQ? I was taking a look-see last night, I and thought to my self, this is the first time in at least a year that I looked at Lindsay Lohan and actually thought she looked attractive. It seems like for a while now, I look at her, she looks like hell, and I say to myself: “She used to be cute” or “She could be cute.” but I haven’t thought “She is cute.” Yet if you were to ask me a few days ago to name off some hot celebrities, I would have listed Lohan. Weird huh? How did I get brainwashed into thinking I was supposed to think she was hot even though she hasn’t been for some time now? I guess thats what I get for eating one of Matthew McConaughey’s brownies at that orgy back a few months. That was a weird party, I remember telling Lidnsay Lohan that she wasn’t nearly as sexy as the her coke-induced stuper made her believe and then I just remember waking up the next morning thinking that Lindsay Lohan was the sexiest person alive…and for some reason my ass hurt. I guess I will never know if the brainwashing and the ass-soreness were related in some way. Now enjoy this week’s pics, I need to go make a call or two. Jake Gyllenhaal keeps sending me fruit baskets with cards that say: “Thanks for the wonderful night!” It must be some kind of mistake.
Rocketboom goes RocketBUST
As a…*shudder*…blogger (why do I still dislike that term?) that has been around for well over 3 years now, I guess its my duty to say something about this whole RocketBoom craziness. (If you don’t know about this story go anywhere and you’ll run face-first into it.) I was never 100% into RocketBoom like some people but I loved that it was there. A daily video-blog news report thats completely unattached from a big media company was and I guess is still needed. The key to RocketBoom, and in turn, Amanda’s popularity was that they weren’t tied to MSNBC or Fox News, it was on its own. Amanda is cute and has a nice style, though somewhat over the top at times, but she isn’t so amazing that I would watch her show on CNBC. She was popular because of the setting she was in and the aura it gave off. Deservely so or not, Amanda has become the face of videoblogging and independent news and she would be wise to now sour it by giving in to Jason Calacanis’ offer to be the face of Netscape. She should stay away from jobs like that or risk souring her independent ‘cred. She would be wise to do her own thing and visit the big-money-making sector only at the right place…say she does her own RocketBoom type show, and then does apperences on The Daily Show? Gigs like that would allow her to stay in the vision of the audience that loves her and still be able to afford more glamour shots like above. Thats the trick though, if she wants to stay in this line of work, she needs to keep the geeks focused on her. Jump to a bigger corporate market and I don’t see her lasting very long. She was a fun host here, but she is a novelty that gets old quick to the offline masses.
As far as Rocketboom the show? Its 50 / 50 on where it goes from here.The quicker they get settled and going forward with a new lead will be in direct relation to how they do in the post-Amanda phase of their existance.
All thats left now is for the rest of the breakup story to come out.
I Have No Problem Beating Up Old People
A few years ago I was visiting my grandma at her retirement home in Oregon and I took a call from my lovely girlfriend and sat outside on a bench while we talked. Not long after one of the home’s nurses came out and asked me to come inside. Apparently some of the old people were worried about a young guy outside on a cell phone and they thought I was selling drugs. No, I’m not kidding the old skranks thought I was selling drugs. Not because they saw money or product exchange hands (because there’s no way they could have seen Octavio and I make the drop, we were behind his van) but because I was under the age of 62 and I was on a cellphone. After telling this story to my mom, aunt and grandma the nurse came in and revealed that it wasn’t “some of the patients,” it was one old skrank named Hazel Deluksy. To this day, I’ve never seen Hazel. If when / if I do, I would gee-fully yank her walker out from under the crazy old broad and then step over her on the way out the door on my way to pick up a new kilo of the strong stuff for sale by more understanding retirement homes.
While thinking about that story over the weekend, I realized that Hazel had some crappy luck trying to mess with a guy that, not only isn’t understanding of the plight of an old confused woman, but also has little to no morals to speak of and would drop and old lady if he deemed necessary at a moment’s notice. The thought also came to mind that Hazel isn’t the only old person I would fight. There are actually a few on that list.
- Hazel Delusky
- Bill Keane. Yes, the guy that unleashes the unholy terror and humorless crap that is Family Circus. God damn he sucks!
- Martin Landau. He just thinks he’s so great. Couple of broken ribs would literally and figuratively take some of the air out of him. Also, the bastard was in B*A*P*S*. He needs to get his ass kicked just for that.
- Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Here’s why.
- Your grandmother. Yes, even if she is dead. Because it would be easy.
Anyone want to add anyone?