This is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen. Used in 1990 as a skit during a Phil Collins TV special, this video has Gilbert Gottfried, Vanessa Williams and some other actor trying to come up with a gimmick. Gottfriend exclaims "Phil Collins versus the Ultimate Warrior" and what follows is pure magic.
To be fair, although Collins gets destroyed, he doesn't technically lose the match.
Since I'm on an off week for Epochrypha, and seeing as my soupe du jour or, rather, soupe de la saison (i.e. the NBA) isn't top news right now, I figured it'd be a good time serve up the first helping of Era-ta, which will taste pretty much like the bi-weekly but be a little less meaty (cf. clam chowder vs. corn chowder). For now, Great Sports Names, some guy named Tiger, and a little Madness may thicken the air, but in a week or two you're going to want to turn your attention back to the only league that insists on calling itself an association. The following tidbits won't make you more knowledgeable come NBA postseason, they won't help you win any sports bar arguments with your buddies, but it should keep your appetite whetted and keep you feeling superior to your boxscore billeted "peers". So tuck your bibs in boys and girls and get that saliva going. Here we go.
Yeah, it makes about as much sense to me as it does to you. But in another 90's ratings prayer, WCW hyped the arrival of Robocop at a Pay per View Event. He shows up, walks down the ramp to "rescue" Sting from a "steel" cage by "tearing" the door off, and then walks away with Sting. And then never appeared again. Okayyyy...
The Year is 1995. The Game is Ohio State-Notre Dame. Ohio State has never beaten Notre Dame and is only up by 1 with the ball on their own 18 on third down. Regis Philbin, an ND alum tells ABC reporter Lynn Swann that Notre Dame is going to win.
And then Terry Glenn turns a short curl pass into an 82 yard catch and run touchdown, outrunning future kick returner extraordinaire Allen Rossum in the process.
OSU went on to beat the Irish 42-26, Terry Glenn proved what he could do when he wasn't being a little girl, and Regis pulled a Matt Hasslebeck with his statement. Got to love those three outcomes.
Remember Charles Rogers? The ex Detroit Lion #2 overall pick of the 2003 draft? The guy who caught 2 TD passes in his debut only to break his collarbone later in the same game to knock him out for the year. The guy who then broke his collarbone again in the season debut the following year? And then battled injuries in the 2005 season, played 9 games, failed a drug test, and was done with the Lions?
In keeping with the sites name, we're going waaaay Outside the Boxscore tonight and giving you a taste of Eddie George's Grille 27. I have a friend in Columbus, OH who I visit now and then. Everytime I visit we walk past Eddie's place on the corner of 11th and High Street, but I hadn't ever been in, until yesterday's lovely dinner there. Having finally experienced the dining experience that is Eddie George's, I'll share my opinions with you!
To begin, I want to quell some misconceptions about Eddie
George's. From the street and on its website, the place looks pretty fancy. Inside 27, however, the place isn't nearly as sophisticated. It's certainly clean and looks nice, and the waitstaff is dressed nice, but there are tvs everywhere (the booths even get their own little flatscreens) and the menus are more of the cheap takeout variety. A friend of my friend said this was the kind of spot you took girlfriends to, but when Eddie talks in the video about how families can eat there he is much more correct. I'm sure a huge Buckeye loving girlfriend would enjoy Eddie's, but I'd probably take her somewhere a little fancier. Regardless, just wanted to point that out for diners in the Columbus area who stay away fearing a sophisticated/high class place. Eddie's is actually a very comfortable, affordable dining experience.
The waitstaff was lovely and the food was...interesting. Lots of choices, though mostly sandwiches/salads. I was actually kind of shocked to only see 3 different cuts of steak in a football town. Of course one of them was a $44 dollar 27 ounce steak, in honor of #27 himself, which is supposed to be delicious, and so I guess that can count as a few different steaks. I really wanted to get the 27 ounce, but being a poor recent college graduate, it was sadly a little out of my price range. I also didn't get any booze, though I hear they make amazing martinis, so I regret that one, as they were affordable.
Instead, I opted for something truly...innovative? A fried meatloaf hoagie, with literally everything fried. I know the Midwest is all about frying their food but wow, I did not realize that included the bread and the meatloaf and the sauce and all. My friend got a wrap (I forget the type), which looked pretty good. The fries on the side were delicious, the hoagie was alright (some things are delicious fried, meatloaf is not really one of those things). Additionally, my friend seemed to really enjoy her wrap.
Dessert was definitely considered, but ultimately we had none. Which was a shame, as they had a fried chocolate dessert. I've had fried ice cream and I've had fried twinkies but this thing appeared to take the cake (literally). My mouth still waters thinking about the possibilities of it.
Good food, good service, and it was kind of cool to watch the 2007 homerun derby in a nice restauraunt that wasn't a chain like TGI Fridays or Chili's. The portions are solid, and we each paid under $10 for our meals, so the prices were solid as well.
So my thoughts? If you go in expecting a fancy steakhouse, or a house of memorabilia, then you will be sadly dissapointed. However, if you go in expecting good food at a good price (and little reminder of the owner himself besides the number 27 on the menus and walls), then you'll be pleasantly suprised with Eddie George's. For a start to the night, or as a night cap after a long night of drinking at the Ugly Tuna and McFadden's, Eddie George's Grille is perfect. So well done Mr. Buckeye, decent establishment.
And there you have my visit to Eddie George's Grille 27. I hope you'll try it if you're in town!
WCW tried, for a long time, to be as popular as the WWF was.
Bringing former WWF wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Lex Luger, and Paul Wight over was a good decision.
Establishing a new nearly 8 foot tall Yeti (mummy) character whose first appearance includes dry humping them champion Hulk Hogan (the real 'action' begins at 0:32) was not such a good decision.
Bonus: The birth of the Yeti.
Stepping Up is big games from little guys. Big meaning important though the boxscore might not show it. Little meaning lack of household-name-ness. Recognize.
Lou is a chill dude, playing guitar and getting his downward-facing dog on in his off time. But he gets his rotweiler on when that tip goes up. His Wikipedia page claims he recorded more than 4 blocks per minute at one point, though I can't find anything to substantiate that. I did see the twelve blocks Phoenix put up Wednesday night, as well as the key rejections Amundson hit the Jazz up for. Looking at him, you'd see more Mike Miller than Deke. Still, he gets under dudes skin. Earlier this season, he irked Zack Randolph so much that Z-bo threw a two-game suspending punch. Then, The Nuggets' Nene also received a two-game suspension for head-butting and elbowing Amundson to the floor this Monday in a Suns win. All I can say is, if Amundson is heading for a career along the lines of Kurt Rambis and Rudy Tomjonovich, then he's not doing half bad. Was that inappropriate? Sorry. Keep up the good work, Lou. Here's lookin at you (kid)!
"Comin' in the club with that fresh shit on, with something crazy on my arm. Uh-uh-um. Now here's another hit, Barry Bonds!" -Kanye
"Oh my God. She's so hot. She's so hot she's making me sexist. Bitch." - Flight of the Conchords
I don't know much about TNA wrestling. I do know that a japanese guy who dances around in a crazy mask and a golden hat teaming up with a dude with a stupid mask who acts like Stone Cold Steve Austin is the recipe for an awesome team of gimmicks.
Another great video of the Shark is found here, where he's bed ridden after an accident with his "family" crying around him.
The Call Out is a sporadic cross section taken from the pulsing vein of the sports world. When the heartbeat skips, we look at why.
Tayshaun was and has been the poster boy for "doing it right." He came out of Kentucky after four years, a few "blistering" performances, and the usual conference awards (SEC MVP). He didn't start that first year out of Kentucky, coming off the bench behind Clifford Robinson and (hold the phone!) Michael Curry, but he did come on strong in the playoffs. That postseason, he became the only NBA player ever to score more points in the playoffs than in the regular season. Such an emergence, went the rationale, made the possibility of drafting Carmello unimportant to Dumars' '03 eternal sunshine and spotless mind. In '03-'04, Detroit won the NBA finals and the rest, as they say, is history. They won doing it "the right way," with no certifiable star and lots of guys who looked like glue. The ultimate glue guy on that glueiest of teams? Tayshaun. He did it all. Solid game at mid-range, long, and even post play. Moved the ball well. Defensive stopper. Length like no one's business. Pulled down a good number of caroms. Blocked Reggie Miller lay-ups for breakfast. He wouldn't score 30, but if you needed him to he'd put the chairs on the tables before you closed down for the night.
Tayshaun? You could've done better. You should be doing better. Tayshaun, you've been called out.
FIELD TRIP! is hopefully another regular aspect that we at Outside the Boxscore will try to work into the blog. Any time we go somewhere cool and sports related we’ll try to write a little something and post some pictures. Granted it won’t be a wicked regular segment, but time to time it might pop up.
Anyways, yesterday me and Mr. Chew ambled over to
First of all, I have to throw up the obligatory Dick Butkus pictures. He didn't make it into the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame, but he certainly was one of the most talented NFL linebackers to ever play the sport. To the left is the lovely bust of this beast of a man, truly showing off his awesome glory. Next to the intro for this post is part of an exhibit that showcased his helmet and a clickable button that told you about how beastly Butkus truly was. However all that talk kind of distracted you from the important point that Dick Butkus was indeed the man and that he did, indeed, play angry. And so I snapped a picture of the important part and moved on.
The second thing about the Hall that really struck me, and which I had noticed before, but 
not quite so in such a pronounced fashion, was that it is filled with some ridiculous things. Like it’s one thing to have guys like Gus Frerotte and Alex Smith get in the Hall for random achievements. But some of the exhibits are just plain random. My favorite has got to be the one that shows that Emmitt Smith broke the old rushing records of Walter Payton and Jim Brown. Only they can’t just settle with a jersey and a plaque. They have to actually have an entirely white painted nondescript football player (why they went cheap here when most of the other guys in the Hall are fully depicted I don’t know) at the end of a long stretch with 2 broken planes of glass (plastic) in his wake. Glass (more plastic) shards on the ground to add to the effect. The record is great and all, but the display is absolutely ridiculous.
It gets better. Check out the team area where there’s a board explaining the history of each of the 
NFL’s 32 teams complete with a helmet for each team. Behind the writing of each board is the picture of a player who is representative of the franchise. The Texans have Andre Johnson, the Broncos have John Elway, makes sense. The Falcons, however, have DeAngelo Hall. The same guy who complained his way out of
Another great piece is the GameDay Stadium Theater, where they show you a video about the NFL, training camp through super bowl. Halfway through the showing, the entire area of seats does a 180 just to switch video screens/put you near an exit, which I knew was coming but still totally jumped a bit. The video itself is interesting, not so much for the “behind the scenes” action but more for the players who you see a lot of in it. There’s a ton of Ryan Leaf, some early Colts/Vikings action of Peyton Manning and Randy Moss, and a helluva lot of Cris Carter and Jerome Bettis. My favorite part (well besides the amazingly obscure Amp Lee plunging for a touchdown)? At one point Broncos Coach Mike Shanahan takes a WR aside in training camp and explains to him that he could be a great player in this league one day but that he’s got to make all the catches. The player? Sir Mawn Wilson, who played one year with the Broncos and bounced around a few practice squads before he left the league and played some Arena Football. Guess he never quite learned everything Shanahan had to teach, but at least he’s (sort of) in the Football Hall of Fame.
This all being said, there are some really cool artifacts within the Football Hall of Fame. 
One of my biggest favorites was the impressive collections cleats they have, especially the personalized ones. I didn’t get a good picture of Eric Dickerson’s cleats, which I thought were pretty snazzy and read "First Down." However, I did get a picture of Morten Andersen's absurd cleats. They're in the Hall for Andersen's consecutive games record as a kicker, and they read "Strength" on the side (as you can see). Dickerson’s had words too, but they were real small and in yellow and sort of awesome. Andersen's I was much less impressed by. Sure I guess a kicker needs leg strength for long field goals into the wind, but when I picture Morten Andersen as a 42 year old late in his career, I don't really see strength. I mean the guy ended up having a FG maximum distance of like 42 yards by the end of his career.
Another great exhibit? This random area where th
ere are life size statues of eight to nine random great players on the left and a bunch of jerseys with audio on the right. When I say random I mean random, it’s like Reggie White and Johnny Unitas and Anthony Munoz and Chuck Noll and a few others, with nothing connecting them/explaining why they specifically were chosen. My favorite of all these players was Walter “Sweetness” Payton, who is kind of chilling in the middle of it all with his trademark headband. I also thought it was kind of weird that he and the others had all this stuff on but no cleats, but I guess they just didn’t donate cleats to the Hall or something. Although Sweetness DID have cleats on display in the same case that Eric Dickerson did, so who knows since, after all, the Hall is freaking weird.
Lastly, no trip to anywhere is complete without a gift shop stop. 
We spent $0 in the gift shop, but had a good time browsing. Awesome items included foam Eagle Heads and Cowboy Hats, Bears Cedric Benson figures on clearance, and these stand up 2D figures of players past and present. I took pictures of a bunch of these, including Derek Anderson, Mike Ditka, and Dick Butkus (of course), but the best had to be Terrell Owens. I mean he wasn’t even in the same area as the other available stand ups, he was standing on a clearance table all by himself (even though he wasn’t on clearance). Figures TO would have to make a spectacle of himself, even in a
That does it for the cool stuff we saw/things I thought about them. Other interesting tidbits include the following:
- TGI Friday’s has great mozzarella sticks
- Me and Ben had a Madden-off. He won in a high scoring affair by 17 pts, but not before I returned a kickoff for a TD with DeSean Jackson with a bunch of 8 year olds cheering me on.
- Me and Ben also has a QB challenge in the throwing cage. Results were unimpressive, but Ben won. Suffice it to say, I’m more of a TE/WR type.
- If you ever go yourself, pick O.J. Simpson’s nose. A friend of mine does it every time she goes (she’s from
Anyways, that was our trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Hope you liked reading about it half as much as we liked visiting it.
A special Monday edition of Epochrypha, just because...
There’s something else going on here that Barash doesn’t take in to account. Sports are often used as an excuse for two certifiable opiates for the masses (his opening criticism of sports watching): alcohol and television. When we talk about industrial revolutions and technological advances, long term events with widespread consequences especially seen in workplaces, these things take a large socio-emotional toll on the great majority of people who do the legwork. This idea comes from Clay Shirky saying some really smart things about how gin got people through the industrial revolution and how tv has done that for people in recent years. A kind of opiate (to use Barash's word) that we needed before we could learn to move beyond it. (Shirky goes on to talk about civic surplus and how it's being realized now through huge projects done by many people, such as Wikipedia. The whole piece is worth a look, a spectate.) But look, sports is not meant to be that. It is an outlet, for sure, but it’s also an allegiance. In a increasingly globalized world, it’s harder and harder to find local, relatable things to tie oneself to. It’s hard to find an emotional anchor outside the so often breakable family unit. (And why is that family unit so breakable? Because it’s asked to stand alone when really it’s supposed to function within a larger community unit, but I digress) Furthermore, rites of passage have all but disappeared from our society. The closest is graduation, but it has so little meaning. It is no longer a recognition of excellence and accepted preparedness for a world of social responsibilities. Rather, it is a casting off of young people untested in anything but test taking abilities. It’s society saying, “Go. Try. Fail. And then try again. Maybe go to college. That’ll postpone your necessary inclusion into the sad social reality of the working world.” It’s a damaging system. Sports is one of the last vestiges of true social rites, and as such also one of the last bastions of the allegiances/responsibilities these rites usually promote one to. I’m not saying sports is perfect or that it should be seen as the only redeeming facet of a quickly eroding societal structure. Far from that. Rather, I see it as getting some things right. I see it as a model which other professions or sectors of society might examine.
Look, at it’s most elemental, sports boils down to a civilized form of gladiatorial competition. Prized athletes destroying themselves and each other for the amusement of the masses. (Take that sentence without a grain of irony, and I think you have exactly what Barash is afraid of. But read on, it’s simply not that simple.) What sport better exemplifies this than “professional” wrestling? When I first thought of writing this piece, it was not in response to an article in The Chronicle, but rather in response to The Wrestler and Mickey Rourke’s incredible performance. It’s a sad, beautiful, poignant film and I suggest you see it if you haven’t. It’s all these things, but it works because it’s also equal parts gruesomely gory and drably grey. The stark reality between the wrestler’s real life and that which is glorified under flood lights and the chants of rabid fans. The scary reality presented by the movie (semi-spoiler alert…but the ending’s really achieved by the viewing, not the knowing) is that this athlete is killing himself, literally killing himself just for the glory and seemingly for the adulation of his fans. I mean, its elegiac nature makes it poetic, of course. But taking industrial strength staples in the back just to make for a better show? There’s nothing poetic about that.
First things first. Today Outside the Boxscore took a Field Trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Once I get all of the pictures uploaded to my computer there will be a post about our trip. Probably coming a little later today.
In bi-weekly installments, OtB brings you a long-form joint re: NBA and its ontological extension unto all of sport. Epochrypha: writings or statements of questionable authorship or authenticity, but always impassioned and always with an eye on the times we're spectating in. Enjoy.
There was an article a few months ago comparing sports attendance and musem attendance, and museums were higher by a landslide. Why? Because you can't see the famous paintings online. Well, maybe one or two really famous ones, but those are just the highlights. If you want to see that Matisse you've heard so much about, you have to go down to the museum and actually see it. Because they don't put it on TV for you, and they carefully guard it from spreading across the internet. They decrease supply to raise demand. Don't get me wrong, I don't ever want sports taken from TV. Having these epic battles broadcast straight into my living room is part of the genius of modern sports. But the point is that with football less is more.
So what's the ideal system for the NBA? Or for any sport? I think every sport and league has to come up with their own model. It's important for it not to be too complicated, but it shouldn't be too simple either. You want fans arguing deep into the night about what's right and what's wrong with a system. Make it too simple and they have a two minute argument and go home none the wiser. So all this discussion was to increase our wisdom quotient, then? Well, something has to. The good stuff's in the argument, not in the way you walk away from it.
