A Brilliant Little Play

Mmmm... beeeer.

Writing for The New Yorker, John Kenney imagines the beer summit between President Obama, Officer James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

My friend Buffy posted this to facebook and now I’m posting it here cuz I loved it so much. Thanks Buffy!

Boom Goes The Dynamite

"Uhhhh..."

Anyone who knows Sean K. Robb knows that if there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s watching the wheels fall off the sick joke that is TV news. In particular, I love watching reporters “in the field” struggle to maintain that fakey newsguy thing when confronted by drunken members of the public that just want to get their dumb mugs on screen.

Especially good is when said reporters resort to violence to maintain the integrity of their on-scene reports. In this recent clip, Las Vegas reporter Steve Ryan honours the spirit of Michael Jackson by bitch slapping a drunk fat guy. Gold.

Affliction and everything after…

Fedor is always ready to fight. Even at the park!

So Affliction has called it quits in the fight promotion business after the cancellation of their upcoming pay-per-view. While failing to find a suitable victim for their heavyweight champ Fedor Emelianenko – after Josh Barnett was revealed to be on the juice! – the company realized they were bleeding cash by the second and tapped out, thus proving once again that it’s impossible for an MMA promoter in the States to run up against the UFC. Elite couldn’t do it with a primetime network TV deal, Bodog couldn’t do it will a reckless billionaire investor and Affliction couldn’t do it with Fedor  as their champion.

Jonathan Snowden at mmapayout.com has his own compelling theory as to what killed Affliction however – he blames Randy Couture.

The upside of all of this is that it could pave wave the way for Fedor to fight Brock Lesnar to determine the true undisputed heavyweight champion. Which would be insane. Fedor’s team is reportedly in the US and willing to meet with UFC boss Dana White. What happens now will depend not on strength or fighting styles, but upon money and the big Russian’s willingness to cede control of his career to White’s American empire.

To deal with Fedor is to deal with his entourage as well as the numerous strings they’ve already attached. White would be nuts to sign any fighter – let alone one who might beat his champ – to a one fight contract. But Fedor wants to be able to make his own decisions about who to fight, not have his fight card handed to him by a boss. It’s a unique situation and one that would never exist were it not for the fact that White sees two things in Fedor: dollar bills and perhaps the greatest heavyweight fighter of all time.

Fedor vs. Hong Man Choi

FWIW…

Yes We Can!

I’m wearing wrist sweatbands this summer. It’s kind of my new thing. Awesome to wear and to look at, retro yet classic design and they help keep your hands dry – they’re the perfect accessory to any outfit!

Also – The only album I’m listening to constantly and like, all the fricken time, is the Kings of Leon’s Only By the Night. Brilliant, beautiful record.

"Revelry" live in Los Angeles

Scarlett Johansson

The lovely Ms. Johansson as Albert Lynch’s “A Portrait of a Lady in Blue.” 

You can find more pictures of celebrities in old paintings here and here, but really, this is all just an excuse to post this awesome photoshop.

Really?

So this is weird...

Tag Team Back Again! Straight from the “MMA today is really just the old days of pro-wrestling” department – Tag-Team MMA! Seriously!

The flaws with this sort of match arrangement are obvious from the start – whoever manages to catch the first tag gains a huge advantage and once one team member is tapped, the other is basically left in a handicap match against two opponents.

Purists will see this as a bastardization of the sport and I’d be hard pressed to disagree. Still, one can’t help but imagine how exciting such pairings might be in the UFC should Dana White ever lose his mind completely.

Hideous Men Are Hideous 

Read this

After debuting at Sundance to mixed and somewhat befuddled reviews, John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski’s film adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s incredible short fiction collection “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men” will receive theatrical distribution by IFC September 25th.

I read the book while living in Uruguay during the production of  “14 Days In Paradise” and loved every hilarious, dark and misanthropic page. The movie is already being compared to Neil LaBute’s savage take downs of modern mores and sensibilities with the hideous men from the book represented on screen in all of their particularly male vileness. Can’t wait.

First look is here.

Just a Misunderstanding

The Star.com, 3:50pm

I swear, when I saw this headline my first thought was…

‘Oh my god! What did Mr. T do?’

Laurence Tureaud