Every week, I pick five things that make me happy to live in this greatest of countries, Americastan. This week: gay softball, gay iPhone, anti-gay Scott Baio, and more.
When I think of the kinds of people who play softball competitively, two categories come to mind:
• Softball Guy
• Bull Dykes
That’s really about it. I mean, yeah, lots of people play softball for work and at church and at family reunions but those are all like watching the handicapable kids “play” basketball at halftime of an NBA game: yeah sure they’re playing but come on, man. Nobody’s really going all-out, and if they are, they’re an asshole.
I used to live across the street from a park that had a couple of softball fields and while walking my majestic and awesome dog I would get to watch a lot of softball. A lot. That is, if you follow me, a lot of terrible-ass softball. Watching grown adults flail around in the outfield of a coed-company league softball game is like watching your friend hook up with a fat girl at last call: you’re embarrassed for everyone involved and yet you can’t look away. It’s horrifying.
But all of this is common knowledge. What was not common knowledge was that a thing called the Gay Softball World Series exists. Not only does it exist, but it is in fact serious business. At least for the three dudes who were stripped of their 2008 second-place finish.
Look, whatever. Nobody really cares. I just wanted to point out that apparently their team name was “D2”, which given the context, is probably short for two dicks.
A sequence of events:
• Some asshole loses his magical prototype iPhone in a bar in Redwood City, CA
• Oh yeah he was really drunk when he lost it
• Another asshole finds it
• Apple uses black magick to remotely brick the thing
• Some internet assholes get their hands on it
• The internet cracks in two
Or something like that. Look, at this point Apple is a more secure facility than the friggin Pentagon. We’re all aware of this. That means that no dipstick with terrible facial hair who is obviously more impressed with himself than anyone else on Earth is going to be able to walk out the front door with a top-secret piece of hardware in his pocket. That just doesn’t happen.
It’s like if Ferrari let some junior mechanic drive off in a top-secret concept car that the public hasn’t seen yet on a late-night drunk driving spree. Again: not happening.
So what happened here is either that Gizmodo is a collective of toolbags who thought it would be hilarious to play an unfunny late April Fool’s Day prank on everyone, OR that Apple decided it would be even more hilarious to make all the obnoxious tech fetish blogs eat shit for a week or two. I’m rooting for the latter.
Here’s the thing though: why do we care about this asshole? I’m half-tempted to think it was set up by he himself who is allegedly responsible for the lost iPhone thing in the first place. Why not? He looks like the kind of goon that would get off on some temporary internet fame, right? Why isn’t this plausible?
Better yet, why do we care? At all? Oh, wait, we don’t.
You know you’ve seen it. And by “it” I mean “the greatest infomercial ever”. Billy Mays would have been proud to have his name on a thing this…informative.
SNL is usually terrible and bad but every once in a while, like a homeless guy on the street looking for some clean newspaper to wipe his ass with, they pull off something like this:
It’s like how they say that even a broken clock is right twice a day. And it is, unless it’s a digital clock. And even then I guess it’s right because it is 12:00 twice a day. Unless you’re on 24-hour time. Then it’s only right once a day.
So, Shake Weight Commercial DVD Parody Thing, you were 12:00 on the proverbial broken digital 24-hour clock. Congratulations.
God, Scott Baio. Where did it go so wrong?
Actually, I think the better question is Why did we ever think it had gone right?
Look back at the man’s oeuvre and tell me that there was ever a time when he seemed destined for a life greater or more notable than the one he has now. Here, I’ll save you the effort: it was never going to work out any differently.
Scott Baio was never going to be legitimate star or make the transfer to another, more respected line of work. He was never going to be Ron Howard. The best case scenario for him was Jerry Mathers, who faded into a life of obscurity, reunion episodes, and Nick-At-Nite award shows.
I wish he had grown up to be a colossal asshole like Danny Bonaduce, at least that would have been entertaining. Instead, though, he grew up to be a boring slug of a dude who never really got the memo that said It’s over. Because it is. And it has been for twenty years.
After his terrible-ass reality show things on VH1, I thought we were done with Scott Baio. But no. Oh, no. This bizarro Twitter feud with jezebel.com is just too…insane? I’m not one to throw that word around but Jesus.
This past week I moved to San Francisco. From Utah. I can’t think of a more jarring transition. Well okay yeah, you could move from Devil's Lake, North Dakota to New York City and yeah, that would probably be more jarring. Whatever.
But I saw something today I never saw in the five years I lived in Utah: a bum pissing on the sidewalk. I saw that and thought, “God bless America.”
Then I walked into the Coffee Bean and paid three dollars for a cup of coffee.
