I am America (and so can You!)
Page 8
It’s concussion, not con-cushion. Toughen up!
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RULES OF THE GAME: Sports contain a lot of rules, and I’m not a fan of “rules,” especially when it comes to sports. That’s just Big Government interference. Let the free market decide what constitutes a touchdown.
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Chevron, sponsoring this chapter was a home run!
SPORTS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
The big story in sports right now is athletes taking drugs, making themselves better with steroids and human growth hormone. Some people have a problem with this, but not me.
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NEWS FLASH: Athletes perform for our enjoyment. So “performance-enhancing drugs” are really “enjoyment-enhancing drugs.”
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Bravo, Mr. Bonds.
The fact is, Americans want the best of everything. That’s why Americans won’t watch women’s basketball. Every time I see a lady make a shot I think, “I bet a guy could’ve made that better.” “Enhanced” athletics are the same way.
Back in the day when sports consisted of little slow guys hitting set shots, bunting, and staging Statue of Liberty plays, the public was satisfied because they didn’t know any better. But now that we’ve seen huge behemoths with 2% body fat and misshapen foreheads leap over piles of bodies to crush each other’s larynx, we can’t go back. That’s why I’m proposing the end of all regulations on what athletes do to themselves. If a guy wants to shoot himself up with hormones or chimp sperm, that’s his business. The only thing that matters is performance on the field. Now a lot of people ask, “What kind of message would this send to our young people?” To which I reply, “Don’t suck. Go the extra mile to actually be good or you’ll be selling insurance.” With those forces at work in the marketplace of modern scientific body modification, our sports will continue to be the most entertaining in the world.
Also no going back post-Black.
TRASH TALK
Sometimes the best performance-enhancing drugs come from the mind. This might come in handy when there aren’t any regular performance-enhancing drugs around, or maybe you have them but there’s no time to inject. Like when you’re in that five-on-five company league hoops game covering the sweaty guy with the mustache and knee brace—let’s call him Carl2—and he’s driving toward the basket and your only options are A) to plant a shoulder in his meaty flank or B) let him score. That’s when it’s time to let loose with option C) a little trash-talk.
Try this:
“Hey Carl, what’s your favorite system of geologically significant caverns? Mine is ‘Carlsbad’…at basketball!”
Did I need to hit him that hard? Maybe not, but in the heat of after-work coed basketball, you don’t always have time to perceive your opponent as a human.
Even during the work day, it’s hard to perceive Carl as a human.
Healthy trash-talk is a vital pillar of the Temple of Sport, and as with the Acropolis its erosion portends the downfall of our civilization.
“Hey, let’s give everyone a trophy, even the kid who never gets put in the game and seems to enjoy himself anyway.” That’s what Coach PC Police says.
I’m sure Carl would say the same thing.
Well, I’ve got a trophy for that kid, and it’s a big bronze boot to commemorate his being kicked out of the league. I don’t want my son thinking that mediocrity is an option—“Success or Exposure,” that’s the Colbert motto. We need to teach our children that their peers are competitors for food, shelter, and eventually mates. And I know I’m not going to win any awards for saying that, probably because these days all the awards have already been given out for “Good Effort.”
We must stop Carl from mating.
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The scene: Weehawken, New Jersey. A duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. As Hamilton loads his dueling pistol, Burr tells him only fools and mountebanks will use the ten-dollar bill. Hamilton takes umbrage and begins to tell Burr that firstly the ten-dollar bill does not yet exist, and furthermore only dead people can legally appear on U.S. curren…BANG! Welcome to my wallet, Al.
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My favorite places to trash-talk are professional sporting events. Sure, there’s no way I could perform at the same level as a professional athlete. But just because I can’t beat LeBron James in a dunking contest doesn’t mean I can’t try and lure him into the stands for a fistfight by pointing out that his trademark headband makes him look like the ringleader of a 1980s exercise video.
SOME PEOPLE are going to say trash-talk is the last refuge of the desperate. You can see these people coming a mile away, in their tweed coats with the Morning Edition Travel Mugs. To them I say, “Since when did the spirit of competition become some kind of wet nurse for the weak?” Pointing out an adversary’s flaws is a tradition as old as wife-stealing. So, when sporting, never hesitate to dish out heaping servings of hearty smack-pie.
The Blessed Smackrament.
THE SPORTS BREAKDOWN
With the overabundance of sports out there, how do you know which ones to watch? Easy, I’m going to tell you. There are some sports that deserve your respect and adoration and others that should be ignored—I’m looking at you, Soccer. First, let’s go over the sports you should be recording nightly on your home Digital Video Recorder.3
BASEBALL: Baseball is as American as apple pie. In fact, I’ve often thought the game should be played with an apple instead of a ball. I have a lot of other great ideas!
There’s a reason that baseball is the National Pastime, and it’s not just because it is our most popular sport, after football, basketball, and NASCAR racing. It is that the simple joy of hitting something with a stick is one that speaks to every American child, regardless of race, class, or upbringing. Wherever there are sticks, or long pieces of processed wood, you can find children hitting something with them. As the child grows, so does the challenge—can you hit something that doesn’t want to be hit? And thus begins the child’s lifetime love of baseball. Unfortunately, the integrity of the sport has been sullied by our sex-crazed culture. I’ve heard from a worldly 4th grader that “rounding the bases” is a euphemism for “going all the way” with a girl. Why don’t you youths try rounding the abstinence bases instead?
For more on my baseball-pie musings, read my book: “Hey Batter, Batter, Batter. Eat Batter.”
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7th INNING STRETCH: “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks…” Hey, buy them yourself! Just more melodic proof that we are living in a welfare state.
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Baseball reflects the American dream in many other ways. Baseball players are very well paid, and they get to stand around in a park most of the time. Once in a while, a ball comes their way, but the rest of the game can be spent scanning the crowd for hot girls. When their team comes up to bat, baseball players are considered incredibly skilled if they can do their job 35% of the time. In almost all other American professions, workers are expected to get that number up to at least 45% or they’d be fired.
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TIME OUT: Bull Durham is the best Kevin Costner baseball movie. After that comes Field of Dreams, then For the Love of the Game, and then Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
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I should add, I do most of my sport-related Kevin Costner research at my local Blockbuster. Why do I tell you this?
BECAUSE: Blockbuster just bought out the sponsorship rights for this chapter from Chevron. It’s now called the
BLOCKBUSTER “Now You Don’t Have to Choose” SPORTS CHAPTER
Ball’s in your court, Netflix.
ICE HOCKEY: Ice hockey is training for our eventual war with the glaciers. They’ve encroached before and they’ll do it again. Remember the Titanic! This proud sport teaches us how to combat the ice menace using only sticks and a Zamboni. With ice hockey and our good friend global warming, we might just win the cold war again.
Ice, you’re on thin ice.
WORLD’S STRONGEST MAN COMPETI
TION: I’ve said it before—it’s not really a sport unless there’s the possibility of dislodging your intestines. Luckily, the Met-Rx World’s Strongest Man Competition fits this bill. It uses a complex and indisputable formula to crown its champion. You are truly the most powerful man on earth if you can pull a semi with your teeth, hurl a keg full of lead shot over a wall, and lift at least 20 natives of the impoverished country in which the event is held.3
Items you must lift to be the World’s Strongest Man:
A mule
Rodin’s “The Thinker”
Rodin’s ‘The Thinker” riding a mule
A suitcase full of duty-free sambuca
A train car packed with hobos
Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert
St. Paul, Minnesota
The one-ton meatball lift is particularly hard.
Hey, advertisers, why pay $2 million dollars for a 30-second Super Bowl spot, when you can pay considerably less for an ad here? Think about it.
Are you still thinking about it?
Seriously, keep thinking about it.
COCKFIGHTING: There’s an easy way to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg: Attach a cockspur to both of them and let them fight it out.
My money is on the egg. Those Grade A Jumbos have a lot of attitude.
If you are lucky enough to get into the sport of cockfighting, I recommend fitting your cock with a Mexican straight blade. It’s a much quicker and cleaner kill. The Filipino curved blade is just cruel.
A good cockpit is a cross between a Thunderdome and a bucket of KFC Snackers™.
FYI: Due to a last-minute bidding war, this chapter is now called:
THE KRAFT Seven Seas Creamy Italian SPORTS CHAPTER
Please refer to it accordingly.
FIGURE SKATING: Figure skating—including individual and pairs, but excluding ice dancing, figure skating’s gay cousin—has everything I could possibly wish for in a sport. Speed, beauty, smooth jazz, sequins, and the chance that someone could at any moment obliterate every tendon in their knees. While it is true that certain Soviet and Chinese people frequently outdo Americans at this sport, that’s OK because skating is all they ever do.
BASKETBALL: We invented basketball, and it has become so popular that we’ve developed two versions of it: the college, or “classic,” version of the game, in which rules are followed and at most above-average athletes can excel; and the NBA version of the game, in which 7-foot-tall monster freaks leap about on trampolines while swinging their massive elbows like cudgels and running four steps without dribbling before taking off from their opponent’s foul line to slam dunk. Each version can be appreciated on its own merits: the NBA for its display of superhuman abilities and larger-than-life personas, and college for its easy-to-understand gambling format. While it’s true that Team USA hasn’t come in better than 3rd place in most recent World Competitions, that’s OK, because the losses are more due to the hubris of our players than their abilities, thus teaching our children a sound moral lesson: If you make enough money in what you do, it doesn’t matter if you have your ass handed to you by a Lithuanian.
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TIME OUT: Nothing is less American than the Army-Navy game. Whichever side you pick, you’re rooting against our boys. The Army and Navy squads should be combined, and they should play football against teams from any other country, and instead of footballs they would used bomb-balls. And Air Force can do kickoffs.
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FOOTBALL: Football started out as a great idea: “What if we took rugby and got rid of the part where guys stick their heads in each others’ butts?” The idea caught on. Soon someone realized that the game would be even more fun if you could throw the ball forward. This change took football into its golden age, which continued until they switched over to cowhide. Much of the drama is gone from football these days, as technology has taken over. Plastic helmets have replaced the far more stylish helmets which were less about protecting the head and more about clothing it.
When was the last time you heard of somebody with a leather football helmet getting hurt? Exactly. They work.
SPORTS TO IGNORE
DIVING: Not sure what the big achievement is in walking off the end of a plank and succumbing to gravity. Big deal. To really make the divers demonstrate some skill, the diving events should be held in a zero-G environment like the International Space Station.
Houston, we have a forward somersault pike.
CYCLING: It seems a colossal waste to me to have a dozen cyclists, in peak condition, furiously pedaling their sleek carbon-fiber machines at mind-boggling speeds…and not a single one of them is carrying a takeout order of Chinese food. Because once you’re past the age of 12, the only legitimate reason I can think of to get on a bicycle is to deliver someone’s steamy container of moo shu pork. I say we limit the cycling events to professional delivery boys and bike messengers, and here’s a thrilling twist I came up with the other night while watching The Road to Perdition: Each contestant is carrying an envelope he’s supposed to deliver to the judge. Inside that envelope: an order to shoot the cyclist dead. The spectators know what’s in the notes—the athletes have no idea!!!!
Next to Spandex bike shorts, jean shorts look macho.
Don’t tell.
SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING: I defy you to watch this sport and tell me the Olympics have no hidden gay agenda, and probably some kind of nose clip kickback scheme going on as well. Besides, a sport in which you win by doing exactly what your partner is doing goes against our American tradition of individuality; it’s the aquatic equivalent of the Soviet army marching in lockstep through Red Square, if that army were also wearing women’s bathing suits and occasionally twirling in unison. So I reject synchronized swimming, and call instead for it to be replaced by an improvised freestyle underwater dance jam. Still gay, but now American gay.
I told you to ignore these. Skip Ahead!
A QUICK NOTE ABOUT THE OLYMPICS
The Olympics began in perversion: greased up naked men slapping hot sweaty body parts against one another’s taut and hairless flesh in pursuit of victory, like Chippendale’s dancers at an after-hours party. And the tradition of perversion4 continues—because as an international athletic competition, the Olympics are a warped, watered-down version of the only worthy contest between nations: war.
Gold Medal Flour, this would be a great section of the chapter for you to sub-sponsor.
True arguments over international status are not settled by who can throw a fancy hubcap farther. They are settled by invasion. Sure, war takes longer than a 100-meter footrace, but it’s much more dramatic, and you don’t have to pretend to care about the bronze. Now, I’m not saying that every four years we should have a World War. Such a scenario would play hell with my stock portfolio. I’m simply saying that the modern Olympics should be more like war, in that there should be consequences for winning and losing. The Koreans beat Italy in slalom? They get Michelangelo’s David. Rwanda beats Sweden in the high jump? They get to move to Sweden. If Afghanistan defeats us in the biathlon, they can have Connecticut. Warning to you, Connecticut—support our president.
FENCING: I like the concept. I don’t like the masks, or protective jumpsuits, and for God sake use a real sword, not those effete little French things. I mean, does “epee” sound like something you could open an artery with? You need a blade that wouldn’t embarrass a pirate, or maybe one of those martial arts swords that looks like a long walking stick but then when a guy tries to attack you, you pull it apart and whoosh! It’s actually two swords. Speaking of martial arts, a few throwing stars couldn’t hurt fencing, or any sport for that matter. And can we please get rid of that ridiculous electronic scoring system that uses sensors to tell us someone has made a hit? That’s what blood is for.