So, this weekend, Saturday to be specific, I’m gonna be hosting the depravity down at the L and L tavern on Clark and Belmont. I’ll be trying to get your speed addled bodies back to a reasonable ground zero by putting beer after shot after beer in front of you (spoiler alert: You’re still gonna end up shitting your pants). Don’t be a pudwacker. Come down and celebrate the day before my mom’s (and Axl Rose’s) birthday in style.
You know what else is this weekend? The super bowl. That’s right, people. I’m sure it’s slipped everyone’s mind, since it’s kind of a low key event for understated sophisticates and everything, but I remembered. I actually mark it on my calendar so I can get out there and get my shit together before our nation’s stores of cheese poofs and guacamole are depleted. This sudden spike in junk food sales must make it a weird time to work in the frozen, oven bake jalapeno popper factory. Just a thought.
Well, I for one absolutely hate football. I find it to be boring and slow paced and hosted by smug mongoloids in bad suits and aimed at the kinds of people who drink pepsi right out of the two liter (and don’t get me started on that fucking dance-stepping robot/truck thing on Fox). The whole thing is loud and obnoxious and it sucks and it’s been bumming me out ever since I started forming opinions on things.
I know, I know. This makes me sound like some kind of lame, effete, elitist shitsack, and you know what? Fine. I’m a lame effete, elitist shitsack then, because as far as I can tell, the ONLY thing about football that’s even remotely cool is that it’s an excuse to get hammered and eat garbage on Sunday morning/Monday night, and that’s respectable for sure. But couldn’t we have come up with something that wasn’t so fucking dull? No? No one? I’m the ONLY person on earth that doesn’t give a fuck about football?
Fine. But hear me out.
When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was watch Diff’rent Strokes and Silver Spoons. These were the programs that got me through my week. They were like my Dinosaur Train, (if I can extrapolate what’s going on in my living room right now back a couple of decades), and I loved them. They came on Sunday nights, after football. This would inevitably lead to my shows being pre-empted for the final 3 minutes of some dumb game that for some ungodly reason would drag on for forty five minutes and ultimately lead me to miss Arnold and Willis all together and join Ricky and Alphonso already in progress, which, to put it mildly, was bullshit of the highest order.
This began my hatred of football, but it in no way stopped there. In gradeschool I was kind of a faggy nerd and I used to use recess as an opportunity to practice drawing comics and reading. Every once in a great while, for some dumb reason, everyone that was playing football would corral me into playing and of course it sucked because I was (here comes what‘s known in stand up as a ‘callback,’ folks) an effete pansy and had no idea what the fuck was going on. SO, after abandoning my markers and my sketches of Garfield, I’d go out onto some field with a bunch of kids that didn’t like me (for the express purposes of evening out their teams, that I couldn’t give less of a fuck about) in order for them to humiliate me and call me a homo because I didn’t know shit about their dumb game that I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO PLAY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
So the hating of football continued.
When I turned ten my friend Nick turned me onto the Dead Milkmen and I started skateboarding and suddenly, I was no longer a pariah. I became uh…I guess whatever the ten year old version of ‘edgy’ is. I was, as a result, fully able to dismiss the gradeschool hegemony, including Aerosmith, Nikes and of course, football. Suddenly, rejecting football was making me kind of interesting. This lasted pretty much the entirety of my youth, through highschool and college and well into my adulthood.
But then shit changed. I was never much of a jock, but lots of my friends had super athletic backgrounds. I mean, I played team sports, but I either sucked at them or didn’t give a fuck about them or most likely both (an exception to this is hockey, which I played for 12 years until someone held me down and shaved my head with sheepshears, when I was 16 [a story worth its own entry] finally forever severing the last of my interest in sports) and at some point they all decided to start following sports again. Fine. I got no problem with that. I’m a pretty decent fair weather fan (which is fine, you drooling loons. If everyone painted their fucking stomachs, you wouldn’t even be a blip, duuuuude. It’s only in relation to the casual fan that the weirdos can forge their identities based solely on liking something that they don’t do, so relax).
I like baseball and I remember the glory days of bulls basketball (when I was buck naked on Lincoln Avenue and a truck of riot cops pulled up and rather than arrest me, they just said “hey, get your beer off the street” and drove off. Awesome), but one place that I could never follow everyone to was fucking football, the most popular and lame of all sports.
So suddenly, here I am, 34, surrounded by fantasy football, superbowl parties, a bunch of dildos in stupid uniforms, some dumb weekly trek to sit in some loud room while a bunch of assholes scream in unison and scare the shit out of my kids and all for what? So I can have a fucking beer and some nachos? Fuck that. I don’t care. The emperor wears no clothes. Football is still stupid and it’s still the pastime of mongoloids. And fine, I’m a lame, effete spoil sport, the worst kind of elitist. I can handle that. I’ve been that my whole life. Fuck you people and your dumb game.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some Garfield sketches to finish up.
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33 comments:
It's weird how I can identify with this - in high school all us skateboarding/punk/metal/drug kids were unified in our hatred for sport, and then somewhere in our 20s people just start getting into it again.
Interesting to say the least, living in one of the biggest pro sport team towns in the world. Oh well always had a sneaking suspicion that i was a mongoloid, never wanted to really admit it though. Thanks for takin care of that for me beex.
I don't have any interest in sports at all, but The League is one of my favorite shows. I think I have this weird fascination with fantasy leagues, even though I have no idea how the hell they exactly work.
how the fuck can you think football is boring and then say you like baseball? baseball is like watching paint dry on a field. However, These goddamned games pre-empting the simpsons for the past 20 years or so has really put a hitch in my drawers.
this entry speaks to me, my recess was a lot like that, and whenever i'd join the game all i would hear was "off sides! off sides!" so many times. i still don't know the rules despite the ubiquity of the game.
I almost always agree with you, but, holy shit, are you way off on this.
That dancing robot on FOX is the bane of my existence. I've always hated it, but lost all hope for humanity when it started doing the Electric Slide.
I agree with everything you, and Hamilton, said.
Instead of the football, we're having a show with the Cobra Skulls.
Whoa, another baseball > football type? There are not many of us...good on ya. I'm in to football, but it is DEFINITELY the sport of mongoloids.
I would think that if there was anything we could all agree on, it's that all sports suck balls.
Ah, well. For what it's worth, Beex, I didn't even know who was in the Superbowl until a week ago and I'd much rather be reading than watching sports. so I'm with you.
The whole "punks vs. jocks" thing has been played out too long--I would say I enjoy punk rock more than sports if I had to pick, but can't they coexist?
As much as I'd probably hate to hang out with most NFL players or analysts, I do enjoy the game--though I must agree that baseball is a superior sport.
Matt, it's common to give a piece of your mind after making such a statement.
I used to love watching baseball, football, and particularly basketball but now have very little interest in any sports. My interest waned over the years in the first two but died a sudden death for basketball. It happened the summer of 2006 when my "team" lost the NBA finals. After that, I asked myself, "why the fuck should I give a shit about this?. After asking myself this, I honestly stopped giving a shit.
I also used to play a lot of pick up games of said sports, but, much like how my interest waned in watching these sports, so did my interest in playing them.
I must say that when I find myself watching sporting events with my friends, I feel like I'm missing out on the experience. That's the only downside of not giving a shit. Fuck. I guess that means I do give a shit.
Football is horrendous and I honestly kind of pity the players sometimes. They spend the next 30 years of their lives post-football as nearly, or very, paralyzed. Yeah, they continue to do it year after year, and it is their choice to continue, but I feel bad for the guys whose parents made them play and emphasized its importance over all other aspects of life.
I don't like them at all, but I think sports are good for the general public to experience a sense of community. Like religion, it sucks it has to be within a medium that actually exists partially due to the exclusion of some people but whatever. Also the $$ that's involved in something like NFL is fuuucking ridiculous.
I am a football fan by extension -- my girlfriend is a Jets fan, I'm a Jets fan, I watch the Jets and hope they win. And, actually, I used to feel the same way as you do, right down to rejecting it out of a teenaged need to be contrarian. But I have to say... my foot has edged towards my mouth this year. I found myself enjoying it, and I need to know why. It is such a vapid mess of meaningless, boring hooplah and advertisements, and I think it's the first thing I've ever engaged in that I can qualify as a "guilty pleasure," but ... I suppose it's a certain pulp that sucks me in. If I just don't think of it, and turn my brain off, I get the same dull "yay I guess" excitement that I might from watching, say, Snakes on a Plane. Make sense??
I agree with whatever comedian said this, but I feel like watching millionaires toss a ball around is a waste of fucking time. Pick up a book or new hobby.... or just jerk it.
Hell, anythings better than a fair-weather, alpha male snoozefest filled with phony sounding cheers, whilst a couple dozen dudes grope each other just to try to "score".....
I mean, amirite?
AAAAAAMEN brother
I guess I'm the only hardcore football fan on here. I love football, life sucks when it's not football season. I got season tickets to ASU football and If the Cardinals stadium wasn't 40 miles away from my house I'd have season tickets for them too. It's just fun. And your all wrong, the sport of mongoloids is MMA. Hate that shit.
i went to high school with a guy whom we affectionately nicknamed "Pud" (short form of pudwacker). even though the name wore off with age, i still call him Pud when i see him (which is maybe once every 2 or 3 years).
p.s. he hates it. but i still get joy out of doing it
I've got to hear this story about the hockey incident with the shaved head and sheepshears.
bah. i hated football for a long time. mainly because i was too small to small at a high level and was "known" in school for skateboarding and dirt jumping bikes. i also lettered in 3 sports all 4 years so i always thought i was a balance of nerd and jock (3.96 gpa [not great, but good enough]). a few years later though, after going to college games, i found an appreciation for football and nowadays i enjoy it. of course, i have also moved on to a white collar job where betting on any sport (yes, ANY sport) is an extra perk to pass the time. one one level i get it completely cause i never got to play football. on the other hand, im pretty far removed from those years and i enjoy watching and betting on sports.
hey, its your opinion bro. thats cool. i guess this is a topic we wont debate drunk at the troubador.
Boo on you hipsters. Football is fun to watch and fun to play. Lighten up.
at least you don't have to deal with the superbowl taking over your town. Arlington was already shitty enough, now i have to deal with all these douchebags.
Let's just talk about chuck ragan looks like the biggest former southern high school jock to ever exist. Maaaajor chris clements baseball/football/deep sea fishin' trips wif dad vibes right there. Also I have a sneaking suspicion he's secretly republican, but unlike michale graves has the good sense to ya know, not talk about it
...I like how if you're indifferent (not even hateful) toward the big corny, soulless bullshit infrastructure that is the NFL/mainstream pro sports in general, that somehow makes you 'hipster' dun-nun-daaaaaaah Logic maAaaaaaaaasteeeeeer~
WHO's the logic master? Kevin's the logic master! Dun-nun--daaaaaaa Logic ma--
hahahaha, Martucci.
i also do not give a shit about sports. i have a coworker who, without fail, asks me every week about whatever sports game had happened recently. i get pretty sick of it so i think when i see her and she asks me about the superbowl (that i did not watch) my answer will be along the lines of, "oh god yeah what a game. did you catch the play with walter payton when he hit that homerun during the last ten second of the seventh quarter? BLEW MY MIND."
I don't know, I used to play almost every sport as a kid and once you start to appreciate the dedication of going out there every week and putting your body on the line for getting seriously hurt it's pretty amazing. I just had my first jujitsu competition this weekend and you can't help but appreciate the amount of work and effort that goes into making a blue belt, the first belt above white. Some of these guys have permanently fucked their ears, arms or knees just for a sport and the chance to compete or defend themselves.
Sure, these guys get paid hella but as people above have pointed out they really screw themselves in the long run for a trivial position in a hall of fame or stadium walls.
Dude, I completely feel you. I was also kind of an effete sissy as a kid, and have always thought football is fucking boring and stupid. I didn't start caring about sports at all until I was an adult, no longer confined in schools full of jock assholes, and noticed there are actually some cool people who give a shit about sports.
I still only vaguely care, in general, but I happen to be from San Jose. Which mostly sucks, but we have a pretty good hockey team, and hockey is actually somewhat entertaining to watch.
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