Month: April 2013

Jason Collins became the first male professional athlete in the four major North American sports leagues to come out public ally as being homosexual yesterday. And while this is landmark, in the respect that he is the first, I personally can’t wait for these types of issues to be non-issues.

First off, I want to commend Collins for having the courage to come out. Being a high profile athlete (even if you are declining in your sport, and play for the Washington Wizards to boot) definitely does not make this sort of thing easy to come out in admit, especially with the high-testosterone locker rooms. I’m glad Collins came out, it’s progressive, it means we’re starting to embrace the culture in different areas, it means that in 2013 we are finally starting to move forward with this. Continue reading Eat My Sports: The gay issue

Already reeling from being soccer, the sport of soccer received a black eye when a referee for the Russian Football Union assaulted a player on the field mid-game.

The dispute started when the Chechen ref, Musa Kadyrov, blew his whistle to issue a penalty (or whatever it is they call it when somebody doesn’t mince about the field correctly). One of the players, Russian Ilya Krichmar, disputed the call before heading to the bench.

At this point, the stories diverge. According to the Krichmar, words were exchanged, and he disputed the call and Kadyrov’s performance as an officiator that day … but he swears he didn’t say anything about Kadyrov or his mother because, you know, Chechens be touchy.

‘We weren’t happy with the officiating, words had been exchanged but I had never said anything personal about him or his mother,’ he said. ‘I know how sensitive Chechen people are.’

Kadyrov, however, claims that Krichmar did insult him, which is why he attacked the player from behind, putting Krichmar into a chokehold and then punching the stroganoff out of him. (And, according to the photo we found of the attack, trying to split him like a wishbone with the other team.)

Russian FA has since fired Kadyrov and banned him from the league for life, leaving his future open for a career in the WWE or Vince McMahon’s soccer-based replacement for the XFL.

Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? More like wall-crawling menace. Jameson for mayoral reelection!

If there’s one thing the Swedish people know, it’s music — if you can call it that. From ABBA to Swedish House Mafia, to whenever the Swedish Chef sings, these people know music. And you can’t have a pantheon of Swedish musicians without including Ace of Base. Which unfortunately has a member famous for something else Sweden did.

Ace of Base, like that guy at the end of the bar, is still around, even though they should have called it quits a long time ago. It came out recently that one of the band’s founding members, Ulf Ekberg, was in a Nazi band before Ace of Base. The band, called Commit Suicide, apparently played songs that could have been on the soundtrack to American History X if they weren’t in Swedish.

Ekberg said he regrets having ever played in Commit Suicide. The man just has a thing for bands that commit or endorse crimes against humanity.

After years of being ignored or insulted, theater geeks are having their day in the sun. Broadway musicals have been on the upswing for many years now, highlighted by recent successes like The Book of Mormon by the creators of South Park. As with the movie industry, it has seemed that the rising popularity isn’t so much because of new creative successes like Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s, they recycle and reformat existing work.

The first logical trend was to make musicals from music people knew. We got plays like Mama Mia! and Movin’ Out. We even got something more recent in American Idiot, based on Green Day’s album of the same name. But movies are the big thing now. There’s work to bring Big Fish to theaters, Army of Darkness got the musical treatment, we’ve seen Spamalot, Ghost and Billy Elliot.

If you thought, “Hey, why don’t they make a musical based on Rocky?” you’re a terrible person, but you’re thinking like a Broadway producer. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Boxing on Broadway

Since the end of Starz’s series Spartacus: Insert Title Here a few weeks ago, the world has been short on over-the-top combat sequences. So to tide us over, how about a fight on the top of the world? (No slow-motion yells were reported.)

Police are still investigating, but one version of the story is that on Mount Everest, climbers were asked by their sherpas below them to pause their climb for a bit while they secured their ropes. The climbers ignored them, and continued their climb, sending huge chunks of ice down toward the sherpas below. The sherpas attacked the climbers at camp that night throwing punches and sometimes rocks.

The climbers beat a hasty retreat down the mountain after the beating.

Being a teenager isn’t easy. There’s a lot of moping around, no one understanding you despite everyone older than you having already experienced those very same feelings, the discovery of The Cure and growth spurts. Well, for some people there are growth spurts. Regardless, it can be a sucky time that feels like there’s not a lot of victories taking place.

Not unless you’re Bucky Dennis, Jr. A sophomore in high school, Dennis Jr. snagged a 13-foot, 950-pound hammerhead shark. That’s more than double of this writer, length-wise. Weight-wise, even a beast that size would give Jillian Michaels a tough time to lose that weight. (And think of how sore her throat would be from the yelling!)

Sadly, the shark had to be released back into the water due to hippie-dippy laws in Florida, but know this: we know what you are, and we’ll be after you again, shark. As for Bucky, we doff our cap to you, sir.

Shepherds who tend flocks of sheep at night (sure, “night flocking”) will have an easier time finding their girlfriends, and it’s all thanks to science and its ongoing mission to make everything glow.

Researchers at the Animal Reproduction Institute of Uruguay inserted genes from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish into specially bred sheep. When exposed to UV light, the sheep glow a bright yellowish-green color.

We hope this trend continues until eventually all animals glow under black lights. It’ll make it easier to identify our enemies in the War on Animals, especially because they’re nearly immune to questioning. (Just try getting answers out of a stoat. They’re notoriously tight-lipped.)

The furloughs for air traffic controllers began earlier this week, delaying flights on perfectly good days, I should know, because my flight yesterday was delayed. As I’m sitting there in the airport waiting over an hour for my flight to board, I read the headline on my phone that the House passed a bill to end the FAA furloughs. Great timing, jerks. If you were busy getting drafted into the NFL this week, odds are you missed it.

‘I’m the Archiver‘
All five living presidents gathered in Texas this week for the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library. Each chief executive took a few moments to honor the opening of the building, as well as reflect on the importance of the younger Bush’s administration. One of the features of the library that was highlighted was the section on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which visitors are challenged to find.

Jury of (foreigner) peers
Jury duty is one of the worst things about being an American citizen, second only to draft eligibility and voting. But in California, immigrants might get in on the fun. The state legislature is considering a bill that would allow non-citizens who are in the U.S. legally to serve on juries. Great, more American jobs being taken foreigners.

This should get sampled in no time
This week, a wax audio recording of Alexander Graham Bell was found in the Smithsonian archives. Dating back to 1885, it is the only known recording of Bell’s voice. On the recording, the inventor of the telephone says, “Hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.” He then goes on to say, “9/11 was an inside job.”

One Tampa woman earned her diamond the hard way. Miriam Tucker accidentally swallowed it during a charity event in which everyone in attendance was served a glass of champagne with either a piece of cubic zirconium or, as her gastroenterologist discovered, one genuine 1.03 carat diamond.

Tucker realized she had swallowed one or the other, but it wasn’t until after everyone else’s cubic zirconium was identified that she knew just which one. It was found and removed at her fortuitously scheduled colonoscopy two days later.

If you ask us, that scheduling is a little too fortuitous. We’re not outright saying Tucker stole the diamond, but it might have been an inside job.