August 27, 2009 | Sports, lists

Nothing has done more to facilitate wearing sweats—invasive surgery/rising unemployment rates excepted—than college sports. Anyone who’s so much as parked illegally on a college campus owns a pair of draw string pants or a hoodie they’ve thrown up in, decked out in their team’s cartoonish NCAA apparel. This is a testimony to just how popular college sports are, if you haven’t already guessed as much by reading the preceding sentence.

College sports are so popular, they’ve spawned NCAA ‘student athletes’:  in Greek antiquity they would’ve thwarted advances from professors by learning how to wrestle but now corrode admission standards and deplete resources that would otherwise educate the overachievers they once beat up.

Every college, from the hallowed halls of the Ivy League to the coconut variety have seen the economic potential in subsidizing student athletes—even those who’ll be immediately cut from a professional roster (i.e., nearly all of them)— and collegiate sports are so entrenched that unless offshore gambling havens disappear due to global warning, office productivity skyrockets or the drinking age is upped to 30, they’re here to stay.

To the casual observer, college sports are Balkanized combat with cheap beer ammo, garish sweaters and more crappy brass bands than all of Bavaria. Nearly every team is called the Wildcats which makes staying awake during the play by play and discriminating between fight songs that much more difficult.  

Most college nicknames are historically grounded. In the case of the University of North Carolina literally—‘Tar Heels’ are so named because of the Confederate army’s standing firm—not the greatest choice for a fleet-footed basketball team, the majority of whom are black. In the case of Notre Dame, ‘Fightin’ Irish’ somehow came about despite its founding by French Jesuits (this is understandable as being French hasn’t been associated with kicking ass for about 200 years).

Regardless of origin, most college nicknames are very hostile—Vikings, Blue Storm, Marauders, and Warriors—fitting if you’ve ever called the cops on a frat house or had to mace a second string quarterback. There are many though, that aren’t in any way intimidating the way a good name should be. Here are our Top 20 Lame College Nicknames, chosen alphabetically.

20. Ozark Christian College Ambassadors. Diplomatic immunity means getting away with murder, in some cases, literally, so why not ‘Hitmen’ instead? An ambassador, unless aggressive diplomacy is practiced, usually seeks to find common ground—which is not going to win many friends (or games), especially in a territorial sport like football.

19. Rhode Island College Anchormen. A deadweight, that doesn’t bode well for any kind of  ‘run and gun’ offense, it’s also, thanks to Will Ferrell, a term that connotes someone who once practiced real journalism.

18. University of California-Santa-Cruz Banana Slugs. Something that would be scraped off the bottom of a shoe if it wasn’t ocean-dwelling.

17. Ohio Wesleyan University Battling Bishops, Blackburn College Battlin’ Beavers (tie). On a chessboard, bishops only move diagonally, a strategy that would spell a quick end for both a football team and someone trying to dodge a roadside breathalyzer. Unlike papal pronouncements, Episcopal ones are fallible so it’s hard to get god on your team’s side. As far as Blackburn goes, we refer you to this from Naked Gun:
“Nice beaver. Thanks, I just got it stuffed.”

16. University of Delaware Blue Hens. What happens when you choke your chicken.

15. University of Arkansas-Monticello Boll Weevils. This guy, pictured here, has a song called ‘Ballad of the Boll Weevil’. Get out the DDT.

14. Lubbock Christian University Chaparrals. A chaparral is desiccate shrub land, which could be pretty intimidating if you don’t stamp out that cigarette and start a brush fire.

13. University of Oregon Ducks. Most often shot, played with in a bathtub or hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant.

12. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Gobblers. ‘Gobbler’ is an 80s Pacman knockoff, part of a Thanksgiving spread or someone who didn’t have sex with Bill Clinton according to his famous definition.

11. Geneva College Golden Tornadoes. A golden shower from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania is almost too hard to pass up—we say, ‘almost’.

10. South Dakota State University Jackrabbits. Delicious in a stew, or braised, Italian style.

9. Wabash College Little Giants. Why ‘Cannonballs’ like the song, couldn’t have replaced this oxymoron we don’t know.

8. Pacific Lutheran University Lutes. Since the Baroque Renaissance (because you know we’d get to that period in human history sooner or later in a post about college sports) guys have taken up lute to get laid. These days however, the instrument has the opposite effect: Exhibit A: medieval fair enthusiasts.

7. St Joseph’s College of Maine Monks. Shaolin Monks are trained to kick ass, but unless a hair shirt makes their western counterparts particularly incensed, a low-blood sugared penitent isn’t going to put up much opposition.

6. Whittier College Poets. Not going to run roughshod over the opposition in free verse. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, analyzing Keats’ themes of transience and nature, isn’t going to give us a competitive advantage over you.’

5. University of Pennsylvania Quakers. The most ironically named team here, as the world’s most famous pacifists are Quakers, yet this team still has a fight song.

4. Montana State University-Northern Skylights. “I decided to install a skylight. The neighbors upstairs are really ticked off”, Steven Wright.

3. Indiana State University Sycamores. Until 1921, their athletic teams were unofficially dubbed the “Fighting Teachers”. Not surprisingly, a contest was held soon after to come up with a new name and in 1922, it was announced that “Sycamores” had won by popular student body vote. Then again, ‘The Soldering Irons’ or just about any phrase chosen completely at random and entered as a ballot write-in would’ve been preferable.

2. Webb College Webbies. When you share a name with “the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet” this is a sure sign your football team will be stuffed into a locker.

1. Arkansas Tech University Wonder Boys. In the film version, Michael Douglas takes a lonely, slight, depressed would-be novelist (who wasn’t going to be a walk-on for the line-backing corps any time soon), under his wing.

August 26, 2009 | Drunk Stories, celebrities

The real-life Mayor Quimby and America’s answer to Boris Yeltsin, Senator Edward “Ted”, “Teddy”, “Somebody Tell That Drunk Guy To Put Some Clothes On and Get Out of My Restaurant”, Kennedy is dead.

Edward Moore Kennedy’s place in the hierarchy of great Kennedy men might have been foreshadowed at his birth when his father chose to name him after the family chauffeur, and he most likely would not have risen as fast in politics or remained out of incarceration for as long had he not been to the oyster house born. That said, what he lacked in the ability to shape history and inspire generations, he more than made up for in shameless debauchery. And as the authors of the definitive book on the subject, we can appreciate that.

While the standard tributes roll in, and Kennedy’s years in the US Senate are celebrated as something other than the constant reminder of failed promise they must have been for a guy everybody thought would be president, we thought we would pay tribute to a side of Kennedy that kept late-night comedians in material for decades: the shameless, drunkard side that entertained and horrified people from around the world. One of the great debauched sons of privilege has died and while we could not hope to cover even a fraction of the man’s legendary exploits, we figured we would at least offer you a highlight reel of some of those not kicked under the carpet or to which the local constabulary did not turn a blind eye.

Here then are Ted Kennedy’s Top Drunk Moments!

1951-1959 — Cadillac Eddie No Ablo Espanol: Ted Kennedy got into Harvard on the family name, but was kicked out in his sophomore year for paying another student to take a Spanish test for him.We would like to imagine he was drunk when he decided to risk tarnishing the family name for the sake of passing what was in all likelihood a bird course, but his law school days at the University of Virginia certainly involved a few bent elbows. It was there that Kennedy was dubbed Cadillac Eddie for his propensity to drive — presumably not in a Ford Pinto — around town at reckless speeds, without his lights on, and treating every red light he saw like a bull would a matador cape. Basically he was a pretty fun guy to hang around in college, but that same propensity to lead foot it with a snootful would ruin him in the end.

April 1969 — The “Eskimo Power” Incident: All great legends begin somewhere, and Teddy Kennedy’s legend as one of the great drunkards in politics was truly born on a return flight following a congressional trip to visit poor natives in Alaska. Kennedy must have taken the wheels off the drinks trolley because it apparently didn’t go far past him on that fateful flight. He got bladdered drunk, hit reporters and his aides with pillows and, inspired no doubt by the plight of the people he had just visited, expressed his solidarity with a chant of “Eskimo power!” as he ran up and down the aisles. It should be said that he did just lose his brother to an assassination the year previous, so this could be seen as a response to grief… had this drunken timeline stopped here.

July 1969 — Well so much for a Kennedy in the White House: Likely the only item here that will be mentioned in most obits on the man, the Chappaquiddick incident ruined any hope that he would be able to inherit JFK’s presidency the same way he did his Senate seat and his penchant for strange bed partners. Details are disputed but basically gentlemen Ted offered to drive a former staffer of his brother Robert’s home following a  “no-wives” party. He took her on a drunken (he denied being in said state, but when was the last time you were sober at a no-wives party?) joyride and drove off a bridge. Abandoning the “women and children” first code of conduct, he got the hell out of the sinking car without a backwards glance. Leaving her in the car, he went back to his hotel to sleep — stress, and booze, bad mix, need nap — passing several houses and not telling a soul what happened, while the woman in the car, who could have been saved had he alerted authorities, drowned. What should have meant jail time thankfully for Kennedy occurred on family turf and amid the sort of look the other way while my boss’s cousin commits a felony sort of policing usually reserved for the American South in films. Kennedy harbored hopes of becoming president for years after that, but his chances of being elected after such a grim episode were slim. On the bright side, he wasn’t dead and could go on with his life without having learned a single lesson from the incident.

1985 — The Two Amigos: Teddy liked to party with Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and in 1985 the pair were involved in a couple of headline-grabbing drunken moments. The Washingtonian magazine reported how in a moment of drunken reverie, Kennedy spotted Dodd’s photo on the wall, asked “Who’s this guy?” pulled it off, and smashed it on the floor. Dodd returned the gesture for Kennedy. This “Mexican Hat Dance” became the talk of the town.

December 1985 — A Waitress Sandwich With Mouldy Bread: Kennedy was dining and boozing in a private room at Capitol Hill’s Brasserie restaurant once again with Dodd, so the story goes (we’re obliged to present this all under the banner of “alleged” as Dodd is, to the best of our knowledge, still alive enough to call a lawyer), when a waitress entered the room and — according to witnesses she told immediately after the incident — was first thrown on the table by Kennedy, then picked up by the husky scion to the Kennedy throne and tossed into Dodd’s waiting lap. Kennedy is then alleged to have jumped on the woman and given her the old subway hump. The incident broke up and the waitress ran off when another server happened upon the scene. Displaying that New England wit, Kennedy is said to have quipped:  “Makes you wonder about the leaders of this country!”

September 1987 — The Senator Has the Floor: Apparently play-mounting the wait staff was not considered a ban-able offence at Brasserie, as Kennedy had no problem booking a private room for himself and a woman, said to be a lobbyist (likely not there on the abstinence first league’s behalf), where the two downed a couple of bottles of Chardonnay and got frisky. It seemed the good senator was unable to differentiate between a restaurant and an outbuilding at a Kennedy compound because as the unlucky waitress who happened upon the couple told a friend Kennedy’s pants were in ankle position, the woman “had her dress up” and the two “were screwing on the floor”.

January 1989 — NYC Bar Fracas: The good senator wins some points with this one. Kennedy showed up at a Manhattan bar called American Trash (not to be confused with Brooklyn’s excellent The Trash Bar). Striking up a conversation with any stranger at that point in the evening is unwise, particularly if you have a name recognizable enough to ridicule. Ted threw his drink in the face of an off-duty bouncer, who may or may not have done something to deserve it. His press secretary said it was because the bouncer insulted the Kennedy brothers. But regardless, bouncers are always guilty until proven innocent.

“I went through a lot of difficult times over a period in my life where [drinking] may have been somewhat of a factor or force.” Senator Edward Kennedy. RIP, and MYLRIP (May Your Liver Rest In Peace)

August 24, 2009 | Mad Science, Rants

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control suggests that gamers are not mainly young kids learning life lessons about the joys of indiscriminate violence and destruction, or college kids looking for something to do while smoking pot that does not involve contact with a book. They are, in fact, old enough to have moved on to more productive pursuits like developing a disastrous gambling addiction and/or writing daily letters to the editor that will one day find their way into a police evidence file.

According to the study, the average gamer is 35, thus old enough to have fathered many of the people who comprise the target audience for many games (had they been out and shagging at an age when they were in all likelihood filling a room at their parents’ place with the smell of musty human). The study also says that most gamers are male, depressed, and obese – the latter two being boxes best left unchecked when signing up for an internet matchmaking service.

Before you get too excited about the prospect of the majority of gamers being guys with a couple of decades’ worth of Doritos lodged in the couch cushions, it should be noted that the study is – like one blaming drinking on television and another on how Facebook causes jealousy – dubious. It was based on an online survey of 552 people in Washington’s Seattle-Tacoma area from the ages of 19-99 (educated guess: the 99-year-old does not exist). So this tells us that people in Seattle who have the time and inclination to fill out online surveys about their lives are also likelier to spend hours developing thumb calluses rocking out to “Living on A Prayer” on Guitar Hero. Neither of us smacked our gobs in disbelief at learning that.

As the authors state in the study’s conclusion: “Because the study uses a cross-sectional design, conclusions about causality cannot be made.” And indeed you’d have a chicken and the egg scenario to figure out what came first: did the person come to the video game with a long face and a wide bottom, or did the realization that one’s best friend is someone who you chase around with an automatic weapon in a virtual post-apocalyptic world take the wind from beneath their wings.

Well, we are not psychologists — unless we’re drunk and in a bar then we’ll offer you everything from marriage tips to the card of a reputable roofer — and neither are the people who published this study, which tells us nothing more than newspapers have next to no filter when it comes to this kind of science and when in doubt blame a video game for absolutely everything.