You Missed It: Steve and Company edition

10/5/11: A religious holiday for the Cult of SteveJust when you thought it was safe to go back to the waters of SeriouslyGuys on a Friday evening, DUM-DUM! I strike! As noted last week, Bryan McBournie is on vacation this week. His whereabouts are unknown, but we’re pretty sure he’s not at your kid’s playground in an unmarked white van. After all, there’s a much better chance that he’s right behind you and holding a knife above your neck at this very second. As such, you’re stuck with me. If you were busy protesting a street in Manhattan with a surprising lack of walls, odds are you missed it.

iMiss the guy already

Steve Jobs, creator of all things good at Apple, passed away on Wednesday. According a press release, the man went off into that great big sunset in the sky peacefully and surrounded by friends. It’s not hyperbole to say that Jobs was a pioneer in helping our world interact the way it does on a financial scale thanks to iTunes. No jokes here, kids. We’ll be classy about it, as we don’t actually hate Apple products (in fact, this was typed on one).

But who will take care of all the rowdy friends?

The relationship between Hank Williams Jr. and the opening song for Monday Night Football has been torn asunder, all due to comments made by Williams comparing President Obama to Hitler. Sports radio and podcasts are all wondering what the new intro will be. Suggestions I’ve heard range from the pre-Williams intro, a duet between Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Jon Bon Jovi and Rihanna. In my defense, I listen to the Tony Kornheiser Show.

Unclean! Unclean!

Sickness is in the air! An outbreak of mumps has hit the UC Berkeley campus and a student at Denton High School tested positive for tuberculosis (in an area where a TB scare has already hit). Seeing as how bad things always happen in threes, SG will now predict that the next outbreak of communicable disease will be located at Radford University. We don’t necessarily want to call the health and well-being of our alma mater into question, but we have a hint that sometimes, you can’t change the history of a school.

Guest Post: John Madden on retiring

SeriouslyGuys is excited to receive our first guest post since Jay Leno’s writers back in 2008: John Madden. Mr. Madden wanted to talk about his retirement from football announcing and what this means for the sport, viewers, himself and Monday nights.

Hi, John Madden here. If you picked up an Internet news site today, then you probably already know that I gave a press conference, in which I told the press that I’m retiring from announcing football games for television.

Now, in order to retire from announcing football games for television, that means I have to stop doing programs like Monday Night Football. The key step here is to prevent myself from going to the games, putting on makeup and sitting in front of the cameras and microphone in the broadcasting booth. Also, I’m not really retired if I make any play-by-play calls while wearing a lapel microphone. Those count, too, you know.

So, this retirement means that viewers will no longer see and/or hear me calling the plays during the game, which is where I watch the game with you and tell you what’s happened. At this point, the viewers will have no choice but listen to and watch someone else, who will do what I’ve just described — but with a different voice.

What does this mean for me? I’ll tell you what this means: I’ll have to watch football like a normal man, which means I will drive my friends and family insane by describing every action in the game to them like I would on television. But remember, I won’t be on television. Unless I get one of those video camera/TV displays from Sears. Then I’ll be on TV, but on a separate one from the game or on picture-in-picture (PIP).

Also, I won’t be able to do the scribble arrows thing anymore without a dry erase marker.

This retirement from all football game announcing means that I will also no longer appear on Monday Night Football. This is because the Monday night game is still a football game, only on a Monday night instead of a Sunday afternoon or night, Saturday night or the occasional Tuesday or Thursday night game.

In closing, this means that I will no longer be paid by NBC to talk about the plays during the game, which must occur for it to be considered a game or there’s a penalty for delay of game. (That’s when a team delays the game by failing to commence a play before the play clock reaches 0.)

Good night, unless it’s not night where you are, in which case, the sun is still up or it is not after 5 pm.

The McBournie Minute: Tomorrow is not the end of annoyance

Here we are at the end of the campaign trail of the 2008 election, or as it is known in the Washington area, the kickoff for 2012. We all know where the candidates stand on the issues, heck, Al Gore emailed my work address this morning to tell me about how important elections are, which is probably caused by global warming. In just over 24 hours, it will all finally be over. No more calls, no more people knocking on your door, no more activists pathetically trying to get you to listen to them as you walk by listening to your iPod.

This is the end of the good times.

In my opinion, this election could not have come at a worse time. We as a nation were finally united and then this thing comes along and splits us all up again. For the past two or three years, we have reached across our own aisles to work together toward a common goal: hating George W. Bush. It took the hard work of a bumbling administration, war, natural disaster, the English language and the hard work of people like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, but we got there. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Tomorrow is not the end of annoyance