Month: July 2015

When I was a kid, my family would go to the beach for the first week of August. It was a great time, but it was also a bit depressing, because part of the trip was secretly about going outlet shopping for back-to-school stuff. It was like an end of the summer, even though it wasn’t over yet. Friends and family this week have been sending me pictures of fall seasonal beers they’re finding in stores. It brings me back to those last few days of vacation. So thanks for making me feel like a kid again, if a depressed one. If you were busy smashing your car into a U.S. Capitol barrier this week, odds are you missed it.

Guy refuses to give boss his private phone
This week, the NFL upheld four-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for throwing some footballs that weren’t filled with the exact amount of air required by league rules. Commissioner Roger Goodell decided that Commissioner Roger Goodell was correct in doling out the punishment, claiming that Brady ordered his cell phone destroyed before the league asked for it to be turned over. The real crime here is denying the world the nudes that were on that phone.

Lion low
An American dentist became the most hunted man in America after it was revealed that in Zimbabwe he illegally lured a famous lion out of a wildlife preserve and shot it. The internet collectively lost its mind over this. Walter Palmer faces possible charges in Zimbabwe, and here in the U.S., the Justice Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service are looking for him. Roger Goodell has suspended him for two games, and could increase it to a full season if video of the incident surfaces.

There is no 9
Also this week, Microsoft released Window 10, the latest version of his popular operating system. The OS is free for pretty much anyone who bought a Windows computer in the last five or six years, and is being downloaded by millions. So get ready for a call from your parents asking how you do the thing that takes you to the internet.

Speaking of fecal sports, it looks like our swimming athletes will get more than a mouthful at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. According to an Associated Press investigation, the water in Rio’s brimming with “1.7 million times the level of [fecal-bourne viruses that] would be considered hazardous on a Southern California beach.”

Kristina Mena, a U.S. expert in risk assessment for waterborne viruses, examined the AP data and estimated that international athletes at all water venues would have a 99 percent chance of infection if they ingested just three teaspoons of water — though whether a person will fall ill depends on immunity and other factors.

[Emphasis ours.]

It would take our athletes years to acclimate to those waters, which wouldn’t prevent them from getting sick, but would lessen symptom severity. As it stands, they don’t have enough time to train without chumming their swim lanes — a considerable amount of beefy chum if you’ve ever been to a Texas de Brasil restaurant.

So, congratulations, third-world athletes. You finally found an advantage over first-world water filtration. But, seriously, what a sh*tty way to win.

Baseball: The favorite sport of old people and fans of endless amounts of statistics. It’s a slow, monotonous game, which could be part of why no one watches it anymore. But the Miami Marlins may have figured out how to turn it around: play fart noises.

Earlier this week, the Marlins played fart noises during the Washington Nationals’ battling practice before a game. It proved to be such a distraction for the Nats that the brought in their own speakers in an attempt to drown out the farts. The Marlins have denied any wrongdoing, but most people see it as retaliation for the Nationals’ playing soft rock slow jams during their opponents’ batting practice before home games all season long.

How great would it be if there were random fart noises played during the games? Each team could get a certain amount of farts to play during a game, and use them at key moments to throw the other team off.

As a business, the Washington Redskins have a … unique relationship with numbers. They’re obsessed with the numbers ranging from 1982 through 1991, which was the last era they mattered. Then there’s the number 20, or the alleged number of years you have to wait on a list for season tickets; meanwhile, the number of available seats isn’t readily available because the team is covering them up with weird boxes now. They used to love the number 3: three Super Bowl victories and RGIII; but before Joe Thiesman could change his name to Joe Threesman, the number’s been ruined by going 3 and 13 in 2013 and only slightly improved to 4 and 12 last year.

And now, they’re claiming 7.8 billion unique visitors to articles about last years training camp — only slightly outnumbering the entire Earth’s population by a measly 600 million people. (Perhaps owner Dan Snyder has provided WiFi to previously uncounted hunter-gatherer tribes in the remote corners of the planet?) They also claimed to raise media coverage (and then, somehow, revenue) for the city of Richmond by over $76 million dollars just by moving their training camp there, which may explain why some of the defensive line looked so sluggish last year — that’s a lot of fancy dinners at local restaurants.

With off-the-field numbers like that, we can only assume the Redskins’ poll of Native American support for their team name is equally as believable.

Seagulls in England have gotten so aggressive that the government wants to take action. But what are the kids up to?

A few teenagers have been spotted running up and down the waterfront in Plymouth with bags of fish and chips over their heads, daring the gulls to attack them. A couple teens were spotted doing something stupid? In the media, we call that a “dangerous new craze sweeping the country that could put your child at risk.”

The best news here is that these teenagers aren’t afraid of the seagulls, even though the rest of the U.K. is. Perhaps these boys are the symbols of resistance the Brits need to turn this thing around.

Folks, if for some reason you’re driving in Keene, N.H., be a good neighbor and bring a whole lot of pancakes.

A state highway had to be shut down earlier this week when a truck carrying roughly 220 gallons of maple syrup spilled its contents all over the road. If only this had happened in Vermont.

To no one’s surprise today, the NFL upheld it’s four game suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the never, freaking, ending, still improperly named, Deflategate, scandal. Brady is having the NFLPA file an injunction while he takes moral authority leader, Roger Goodell, to court for what he believes is an unjust suspension. Continue reading Eat My Sports: I’ll See You in Court!

While it may be possible for once famous actors to disappear into regrettable roles in B-movies, the same can’t be said for escaped fugitives.

That’s what Jason Stange, a man wanted by authorities for allegedly violating his parole in 2014, learned after appearing in a low-budget horror film. U.S. Marshals identified Stange from a picture in a Olympia, Washington newspaper feature on the film, Marla Mae, in which he plays an evil doctor.

We’re guessing this is exactly what Laurence Olivier felt like during Clash of the Titans.

It’s shaping up to be the worst summer ever in England. Just weeks ago, an English beach suffered from snails launching from the sand. Now, there’s an attack from the air.

The seagulls on U.K. beaches are going nuts this summer. First, it was reported that a gull pecked a dog to death in Cornwall while it was outside in its own yard, then another one pecked at the head of a 66-year-old woman in the same town, or shire, or whatever. She suffered wounds to her scalp. Someone even photographed seagulls eating a rat whole. Her Majesty’s seagulls have clearly snapped.

The problem has gotten so bad that Prime Minister David Cameron has said there should be a national conversation about these dangerous birds. No, really. In the U.S., we can barely muster enough outrage to have a national conversation after a mass shooting. Do you really think our country is ready for when the animals rise up?

Just when it seemed that people who enjoy food better than you were running out of ways to work umami into everyday conversations, researchers gave them the savory shot in the arm they needed to douche-canoe up new streams. Umami is for poseurs; the real flavor is now in fat.

Fat joins umami as well as sweet, sour, salty, and bitter in the list of ways people who only cum over kale can categorize what’s just so damn amazing in their mouths right now. According to scientists, who apparently hate normal eaters, fat possesses a distinct flavor that impacts the way other ingredients taste all on it’s own.

But, there is a silver digestive lining to this artisanal chili with heirloom peppers fart cloud: the more fat these assh*les pour over their vegetables, the sooner we’ll be rid of them. And if we can get heroin declared the “mouth-feel” of 2015, even sooner.