Archive for January, 2011
In these trying economic times, do you know what businesses could really use a little boost? Strip clubs!
If the chips (and wadded-up dollar bills) fall just right, Dallas/Fort Worth-area Rick’s Cabaret locations could see upwards of $2 million in additional revenue due to Super Bowl XLV being played just down the road in Arlington at Cowboys Stadium on February 6th, according to Rick’s chief executive Eric Langan. There are seven clubs in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and are expected to be jam packed throughout Super Bowl festivities/debauchery.
Via Reuters:
“We estimate, worst case, it will be about an additional $1 million in revenue for us,” he said in a telephone interview, adding the company did about that much extra during the Super Bowl in Miami last year.
“But if we get a New York-Chicago Bears Super Bowl, then it could be really big,” Langan added, citing the size of the cities. “We could be as high as $2 million.”
Well, I suppose that’s good news. Thanks to the trickle-down economic principles at work in most strip clubs, at least we know the gals working their tails off strutting their stuff just to make it through college or until their acting career takes off will see a large portion of that influx of added revenue. That has to at least partially make up for having to hear “Pour Some Sugar On Me” by Def Leppard 10 times during every shift.
Rick’s Cabaret could see $2 million Super Bowl boost [Reuters]
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do, brother, whatcha gonna do when Bartomania runs wild on you?
Doesn’t quite have the same ring as the original iteration of the iconic catchphrase, but that probably will make little difference to Jets linebacker Bart Scott when he finds out his outrageous performance during his interview with Sal Paolantonio shortly after New York’s upset of the New England Patriots last weekend caught the attention of his boyhood hero, Hulk Hogan.
Hogan, reached on the phone by ESPN New York, liked what he saw out of Scott’s bravado. In fact, it reminded the Hulkster a little bit of himself:
“It was like one of my mid-’80s promos, and all that was missing were a few ‘What are you gonna dos?’ and some lightning bolts in there,” said the 57-year-old Hogan, who now appears with TNA Wrestling on Spike TV. “It was right on the money. I think it’s cool that [Scott] is stepping up and showboating it a bit, because it’s about personality and entertaining people, too.
“I could tell Bart had been watching wrestling, and it’s pretty cool because a lot of these guys are afraid to step outside the box. … Sometimes when you say stuff you believe it and it happens.”
Indeed. Although in Hogan’s case, that worked only as long as the thing he believed would happen coincided with the script. Zing.
Hogan also believes that after Scott’s career in the NFL is over, he could have a future in pro wrestling.
“Oh yeah,” Hogan said. “When his career’s over and he wants to make some real money, tell him to give me a call and we’ll break him in the right way.”
Now that would certainly be something, wouldn’t it? Scott makes the transition to sports entertainment and follows in the footsteps of his childhood hero. But it might be a good idea if Scott stopped a bit short of totally emulating the Hulkster and did not marry a woman who looks exactly like his daughter. Just saying.
Hulk Hogan pulls for Jets, Bart Scott [ESPN New York]
I’ll let you figure out which letter needs to replaced yourself. Can’t figure it out? Alright, I’ll tell you: replace “h” in “head” with a “d” and suddenly, the walking dead have jobs as Division I coaches teaching basketball to the young men of America, and I don’t have to tell you how ugly that could get.
Just kidding. I think it has become painfully obvious to regular readers that I have the comic sensibilities of an 8th grade boy. Sloppy cock fight. Heh. Further, even if you read the headline verbatim, what in the hell is a “sloppy rock fight” anyway? Makes no sense. Even to a zombie.
In first game as head coaches, Mike Rice and Kevin Willard faced off in ‘sloppy rock fight’ [NJ.com]
Perhaps comparing Tony Dungy to Dr. Seuss is a bit of a stretch. Coach Dungy doesn’t allow himself to get bogged down with rhyming and childlike whimsy. You see, Tony Dungy believes that while having fun is an integral part of childhood, reading is incredibly important and sometimes, books that children read should have a positive, life-affirming message. An admirable goal, to be sure.
That is why Dungy and his wife Lauren have embarked on writing an eight-book series whose goal is to instruct parents on how to impart to their children life’s important lessons. The first book in the series is You Can Be A Friend, and it is described as follows (via Barnes & Noble):
A new children’s book written by parents extraordinaire Tony and Lauren Dungy! You Can Be a Friend is the first title in Tony and Lauren Dungy’s series of children’s books which feature inspirational stories that remind kids of the importance of family, friends, and self-confidence. In this story, Jade has been planning to have her birthday party at a water park, but her new friend, Hannah, is in a wheelchair. Now Jade has a decision to make: is it more important to keep her party where she planned, or to make sure all her friends have fun? Tony and Lauren Dungy present this subtly beautiful story, which will help any parent explain that having limitations can never limit the boundaries of friendship.
Sure, I could go ahead and be my typical snarky self here, but to be honest, the book really does seem to contain some good messages for kids. Further, the way I see it, the more time Dungy spends writing children’s books, the less time he’ll have for his high-minded moralizing, something that has become a trademark of Dungy’s in his role as NFL analyst. This is precisely why I am a tad bit concerned over the title of the second book in the series: Little Rex Ryan Is A Big Potty-Mouthed Meanie Who Needs His Mouth Washed Out With Soap. I have no idea what sort of lessons will be imparted by that book.
Tony Dungy, wife have deal to co-author children’s books to promote reading [The Canadian Press]
To be perfectly honest and forthright, I cannot for the life of me come up with one legitimate reason why FOX has refused to air a commercial promoting the website, JesusHatesObama.com. I mean, it has everything you’re looking for and touches upon the lighthearted kind of subject matter people usually have a grand old time discussing, especially when it comes to an entertaining Super Bowl ad: politics, religion, bobbleheads. Those are usually hallmarks of a rip-roaring good time! It’s all there. Weird.
Via Mediaite:
This year, the rejected ad beginning to cause buzz is for a site called, innocently and innocuously, JesusHatesObama.com. Fox, which will air the Super Bowl this year, called the ad “unacceptable.” The site sells merchandise like mugs and T-shirts poking fun at the President and his policies and informs visitors that while they don’t actually believe Jesus hates Obama, they do believe in “the freedom to make fun of the Obama Administration with novelty T-shirts.”
The tongue-in-cheek, whimsical little ad follows.
This series is brought to you by T.G.I Fridays®, where every weekend means Food, Fun & Playoff Football! Hut, Hut, Hut!
This is the end, my only friend, the end. That’s right. The last weekend of NFL action with more than one game. Sure, we will have the Super Bowl to enjoy after the Conference Championship games wrap up Sunday evening, and while I am sure it will be an entertaining game, watching it nevertheless can often feel somewhat anticlimactic with the awareness that after kickoff, we are a mere hours away from an long, cold and football-less offseason. Sad.
But let us contemplate the death throes of another NFL season another time and celebrate this Sunday, because even though we know the end is quickly coming, we can still enjoy the magic that remains.
I have to somewhat shamefully concede that the fine sport of camel racing has not received its deserved due and proper respect and attention here at the Sportress in the past and it is something that I have duly noted during S.O.B. committee meetings I hold with myself and assorted stuffed animals which serve as the site’s board of directors. But once I saw this shocking story about how some despicable people are denigrating the good name of camel racing for profit, well, I could not, and from this point, will not remain silent any longer.
You see, camel racing in Dubai is a big money sport and technology has quickly become enmeshed in the sport courtesy of robot jockeys. Sadly, with the advent and subsequent incorporation of technological ingenuity into the ancient sport has become more prevalent, so has the shameful, unethical abuse of said advancements by way of robot jockey that administer shocks to the camels to coerce the camels to run faster.
Well, the law has caught up to three of these despicable profiteers in Dubai and brought them to justice for greedily attempting to circumvent the integrity of camel racing and now they could face jail time for their actions.
Via FOX Sports:
Undercover officers posing as customers made the arrest and said they negotiated paying the men around 29,000 dirhams ($8,000) for each modified robot, around 30 times more than the price of ordinary robots.
An investigation was under way Friday into how widespread the use of “shock jockeys” is in the lucrative sport, where successful thoroughbreds are worth millions of dollars.
I know. Shocking, isn’t it? Um, no pun intended.
Men charged with camel-race fixing [FOX Sports]
(Click for full-size version)
I assume the readers of the Sportress, when they are not overindulging on sports viewing, aspire to watch only quality television programming. One such example would be NBC’s Parks and Recreation, which for some ungodly, shameful and pathetic reason that NBC should be ashamed of, languished in broadcast purgatory this fall and just had its season premiere last night.
In the episode, “Go Big or Go Home,” Ron Swanson, the Director of the Pawnee, Indiana’s Parks & Recreation Department, is forced to coach a youth basketball team as a consequence of deep budget cuts to his department. This is when the manly Swanson drops some serious macho wisdom on his team, courtesy of the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. It is indeed brilliant, and it is this person’s opinion that if more athletes utilized the valuable lessons contained therein, they would undoubtedly achieve unparalleled levels of success, both on and off the field.
Video of the scene when Ron introduces his players to the the Pyramid of Greatness follows.
For some unknown reason, we feel the need to make up nicknames for everything and everyone: buddies (Schmitty), power celebrity couples (I’m not going to degrade myself with providing an example), genitalia (The Octagon), what have you. The fascination with providing a nickname for stuff is all the more pervasive in sports. We cannot just call something or someone by its name, especially when it involves a defensive unit: The Steel Curtain, The Purple People Eaters, The Doomsday Defense, etc.
But at least in those above examples, those squads achieved an incredible level of success before a nickname was bestowed upon them. Apparently, the Green Bay Packers defensive line need a nickname, although in my estimation, while doing an admirable job, haven’t risen to the level of nickname-worthy status. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel apparently does not agree with my assessment and has decided to have a little fun with it by conducting a poll to ascertain what its readers feel is the best nickname for the Packers D-Line. The options:
- The Bay of Bigs
- Beef and Cheddar
- The Big Cheese
- The Cheddar Curtain
- Gang Green
- Gold Crush
- Great Wall of Cheddar
- The Green Giants
- The Phat Pack
- The Ton-Dra
Ugh. Not a quality option among them, although it’s nice to see that cheese was well represented. Not that I have any better ideas which proves a point: a nickname should evolve on its own, not as part of a fan poll. But as a hopeful Vikings fan who has decided the Bears going to the Super Bowl is the lesser of two evils, I’d like to throw this one out there for Green Bay’s defensive line: Velveeta, because it melts down easily when the heat is on.
What nickname would you give the Packers’ defensive line? [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
Wake N’ Blog is the Sportress of Blogitude’s morning link dump. Send tips, link submissions, etc. to weedagainstspeed@gmail.com.
• Ha! Well played, The Body Odd on MSNBC, well played, but a horrible story. Mr. A, a 50-year-old married man, “would experience fever, weakness, exhaustion, loss of initiative, headache, disordered speech, irritability, forgetfulness and frightening dreams, not to mention swollen lips and throat” after every time he ejaculated. First diagnosed as a condition in 2002, Mr. A had what experts call Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome, or POIS. The issue? Some men are allergic to their own semen. To treat the condition, men are inoculated over a series of injections which contain an increasingly less diluted solution of their own semen. Run with that one any way you want. [MSNBC]
• It’s true sports uniforms are getting uglier. [Larry Brown Sports]
• The New York Jets held a rally in Times Square and you’ll never guess who showed up: Fireman Ed! Yay! [Bob's Blitz]
• This is getting ridiculous: Padraig Harrington was disqualified from the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship after a TV viewer decided to narc on him for a rules violation. [Devil Ball Golf]
• Her name is Charlie Laine. She is a Green Bay Packers fan. She does naughty things on camera. [Busted Coverage]
• Out of 3 million people, a homeless man won ESPN.com’s top fantasy football prize this season. [Shutdown Corner]
• Kim Kardashian attends basketball game, indicates that she loves…something. [The Basketball Jones]
• Bill Clinton crashed Chad Ochocinco’s birthday party. [The Last Angry Fan]
• An interesting infographic about everything you wanted to know about Super Bowl tickets. [Deuce of Davenport]
• Why do we hate Tom Brady and love Big Ben? [Off the Bench]
• Controversial goal review causes Kings GM to claim that the NHL is biased. [Puck Daddy]
• Tony LaRussa was roasted. [Joe Sports Fan]
• “Lex Lion: Gleatest Coach Evel” [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• Ha: “Brian Cashman found urinating on George Steinbrenner’s grave” [TAUNTR]
• The Onion Headline of the Day: In My Professional Medical Opinion, Pick At It (By Dr. Russell Mantz, M.D.)
It’s 4:19, You Gotta Minute?
Posted by:
• Awesome: Oakland A’s fan has challenged Giants closer/goofball Brian Wilson to a “legal boxing match.” [Big League Stew]
• Video of Shaquille O’Neal proving he’s the best Oreo licker in the NBA. [The Basketball Jones]
• Vince Young, self-described “elite quarterback,” everyone. [With Leather]
• Brilliant: a fat people’s history of the Packers-Bears rivalry. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• Uh-oh, Sammy Sosa is starting to look awfully pale again. [Off the Bench]
• Great behind the scenes stuff on the NHL Guardian Project. [Puck Daddy]
• NFL Playoffs ’11 Craigslist Casual Encounters listings are…not good. [Busted Coverage]
• The Carmelo Anthony trade made little sense for anyone involved, including the Nets. [Larry Brown Sports]
• Jimmer Fredette is a Dan Majerle in training. [Tirico Suave]
• Now TV viewers are incorrectly accusing golfers of rules violations. [Waggle Room]
• A video featuring a six-year-old bodybuilder working out isn’t awkward at all. Nope. [Bob's Blitz]
• Other characters to be introduced in LeBron’s animated series. [TAUNTR]
• Blake Griffin is the Flyin’ Lion. [The Sports Hernia Blog]
• The Onion Headline of the Day, Part II: The High Reis: I Don’t Care About Politics So Obama Shouldn’t Care About Sports
Send tips, link submissions, etc. to weedagainstspeed@gmail.com.
No, not Clay Aiken. I don’t even think he won it. No, not Reuben Studdard. No, not Soul Patrol Guy, either. Lee DeWyze. Don’t remember him? Yeah, me neither. But that’s him pictured above and he won American Idol last year…still nothing? Oh.
Anyway, DeWyze announced via Twitter Monday that he was going to perform the National Anthem before the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears play each other in the NFC Championship on Sunday. The only problem is, he’s not performing the National Anthem – that other guy who did it last weekend will be handling those duties. Oops. And awkward.
Shedding some light on the “controversy” (via The Washington Post):
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said Wednesday the league had recently booked DeWyze to perform the national anthem at the NFC championship game, regardless of location. He said “to accommodate the Bears and their fans,” DeWyze will instead perform at halftime and Jim Cornelison will perform the national anthem.
Well, if DeWyze is going to defer to anybody, it should be Cornelison. That guy, to paraphrase Randy Jackson, “blew it out” last weekend. Dawg. And DeWyze should get used to playing second fiddle and deferring to more talented performers anyway. That way it won’t sting quite as bad when he gets bumped at the East Podunk Casino and All-You-Can-Eat Buffet because Night Ranger’s bus broke down outside.
DeWyze gets halftime gig at NFC championship [The Washington Post]
That’s just weird, man. You would think it’s bad enough for Brady right now after losing to the Jets last weekend now he has to right a stupid report about foot surgery? That seems kind of like piling on to me at this point.
And what’s up with the syntax of that headline, New York Post? It’s very confusing and difficult to understand. And don’t get me started about the extraneous colon in it. I haven’t seen an extraneous colon that glaring since (insert name of porno here).
Patriots’ Brady to have foot surgery: report [New York Post]
According to the always informative Game On!, ten ladies from the Lingerie Football League will be baring more than, well, a helluva lot more than what they usually bare on the field in an eight-page photo spread in the upcoming February issue of Playboy.
You can see a video preview on Playboy‘s site here – non-nude, but it is on Playboy.com, so be forewarned and use discretion. And if you are brave enough to click on through, you have the option of checking out a nude version of said video preview, if that’s something you would find interesting.
Here’s Playboy’s take on the pictorial:
They may put the skin in pigskin, but the powerhouse women of the Lingerie Football League are dead serious about their sport.
Dead serious. Indeed. And if these lovely lasses may put the “skin” in “pigskin,” does that mean that Playboy puts the pig in it? Nah, but now I have the “Pig in a Poke” scene from National Lampoon’s European Vacation stuck in my head. “God, I miss Jack.” Ha.
Anyway, as far as these gals are concerned, they might as well strike while the iron is hot, I guess. I mean, who knows how long the Lingerie Football League is going to be around to titillate and tantalize, so these lovely ladies might as well take whatever they can get, right? I’m not going to complain and stand here and admonish them for degrading their fine sport. And by fine, I mean fiiiine.
(takes a sip of brandy, puts on Al Green album)
Lingerie Football League players doing pictorial for Playboy [Game On!]
