The Lost Weekend

I finally made it back home last night following three days of merriment in the dusty cow town of Denver, CO. I witnessed most of that time through the bottom of a pint glass and a thick haze of Benadryl, so all I came away with were these facts: The Denver Broncos beat the Kansas City Chiefs in a football game, and the Rocky Mountain News is on its deathbed.

Some good news, some bad. No matter your feelings on the News itself, we can all agree that journalistic diversity is essential to our democracy. The more sources we have to interpret the happenings around us, the clearer and more accurate a perspective we--we the voter, the citizen, the consumer, the football fan--can build for ourselves. This internet device you are currently manipulating is both challenging old media like the Rocky (which is a good thing) and killing it (which is bad but entirely preventable, most newspapers are run by short-sighted buffoons).

What hasn't changed is the House of Georges' commitment to covering the life and times of Sir Gary Coleman. Normally this is left to our Official Arnold Editor Bankmeister, who dresses it up with photos of hot poon. Unfortunately, the responsibilities of The Tradition left us with a giant Coleman blind spot last week, and we missed the latest:



Other wacky news items we missed over the weekend after the jump...

Diff'rent Strokes reappears in fake-retro pop culture with the delightful Betamaxmas. Just make sure you adjust the rabbit ears and surf the channels to find the best reception.

Once in a great while Saturday Night Live comes through with a funny skit, and usually that involves Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake:



Oklahoma won the Big XII championship over a helpless club from Missouri and will play in the BCS national title game. I was miffed by OU's selection over Texas last week, but one frame from that broadcast Saturday made everything better:


That's right: Fuck you, Longhorns. I think that's one of the Ten Commandments.

Speaking of college football, my alma mater was invited to a bowl game. We can all bitch about the BCS, but one of the endearing traits of the current bullshit system is that fans of mediocre teams from bad conferences still get to have a vested interest in the postseason, something that would never take place under a big-money playoff. That's lame, I know, but it's the biggest reason a school like this will never get on board with a true playoff.

Here's how you fix it. All the non-BCS conferences should secede from the current Division I/BCS and join up with the former Division I-AA. They could jump into the playoff that's already in place there, that no one watches because no one cares about the Delaware Blue Hens. Well, few care about schools like CSU or Fresno State or Hawaii or Kent State or Utah, but there are some. Like me. And I would watch those playoffs, more than I'd watch a non-CSU New Mexico Bowl between two bad teams.

Here's the best part: you give the winner of that tournament a wild-card shot into the BCS. So if Utah or Kent State remains unbeaten, they still make it, but they're even hotter because they've been playing a month of playoff football. Win/win, and you'd have a real D-I playoff in no time.

Moving away from the dirty, scandalous world of commercialized football, let's talk about something pure and innocent. Like naked cock on live network TV. You may have already heard about this, or you may have even seen it with your own eyes. I was blissfully unaware of this spectacle until this morning, and let's just say it's something you just can't unsee. For the brave and the gay, here's Vikings tight end Visanthe Shiancoe's meaty manhood (obviously, obviously NSFW). If you don't like to look at his junk, go here. It's much more wholesome.

Since your day is now ruined, let's cheer up by laughing at someone who basically pissed away his whole life and career. It'll make our own pathetic existences seem accomplished by comparison. I'm speaking of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's arrest. That's right, the governor got pinched and booked. He's been under investigation for a couple years for suspicion of corruption, and he did what I think most of us would have done under the same circumstances: He talked on wiretapped cell phones about trading an open Senate seat for fat bribes (more dirt here). Logical, right?

That's all great, you say, but isn't this a sports blog? Didn't we all come here to talk about football and look at cock (football cock, of course)? Yes we did, and let me assure you we'll be back to the world of sports soon enough, friends.

All right, back to Chicago. Seems that Blagojevich was also involved in a shady scheme to shake down Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and both the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field (see, sports!). Tribune Co. has been trying to sell said franchise and beloved ballpark, attracting quite a fascinating gang of suitors.

Like zany Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban! You remember him, right? He's cool, because he's a blogger, only he's lame, because he hates the blogs. Well, he might have been in the running to purchase the Cubs until he got popped for some Martha Stewart shit. All that's been well-covered. What I didn't know until this very morning was that Mark Cuban lives in a Dallas neighborhood called James Meaders Estates. And that Ross Perot is one of his neighbors, and that George W. Bush soon will be as well. Best of all, James Meaders Estates was formed in 1956 with protective covenants that state that only white people can live there. And those covenants stayed in place until 2000.

But just to top everything off and to bring it all full circle, Tribune Co. itself filed for bankruptcy yesterday. So you, dirty blog-reader, have killed not only American journalism but the Chicago Cubs and baseball itself. Take a shot at mom, apple pie and Chevrolet while you're at it.

Update: Chevrolet is already gone, and your mom and apple pie are next.