Since new comic book day has been delayed by a day (thanks American independence, you big jerk - and to think I thought you were a good thing), I too will postpone Comics & Sports until tomorrow. Well, that and I'm feeling lazy. Not to mention tired as all get out. I must be getting old. Or something.
To make up for it, I give you what I know you all really want - random acts of violence and a seedy pitchman...
Anyone else feel like there's nothing happening in sports at the moment? Well, apart from those trades, but as a fan of one of the teams I'm recusing myself from such discussion.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Go on. Live a little.
I know the (original, but not at all original) purpose of this website was to try to dump on professional sports journalism, but...I love the comments on the "Truth and Rumors" part of SI.com. I'm addicted. They are almost flawless. And today came a gift from whichever God watches over my sports-related entertainment: an article about Dan Rooney. Cue 600 "The Rooney's are pure class. Their the best thing that ever hapened to the Steelers." comments, right? But this one has so much more. Go on. Try it.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
52 52 52 Week #20: Vermont
In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.
If there was ever a week when 52 52 52 wasn't going to happen, it was probably this one. (Well, other than the four weeks I'm about to spend out of the country, but let's burn that bridge when we get to it.) After all, it's still Independence Weekend (and if that isn't the term, it should be), and I still am under no obligation to do anything other than affirm my love of all things America in the most jingoistic way possible. Which, as far as I'm concerned, involves blowing up Spanish battleships in the name of payback, "Remember the Maine" style. Because that's how I roll.
For after all, as the state motto of Vermont says, "Live free or die!" And if you think of blogging as synonymous with living free and not blogging as much like death, well then...
Ah, I see. I'm being told that "Live free or die" is actually New Hampshire's motto. Honest mistake, that. What's Vermont's? "Freedom and Unity", eh? Well then, if freedom is blogging, and unity is not taking July 4th weekend off, I think you can see how...ah, fuck it.
Point is, we're on Vermont this week, and its stylish Mount Mansfield, clocking in at 4,393 feet. I'd like to think Mount Mansfield was the source of a bunch of really immature jokes by Vermont schoolboys in the 1950s, thanks to the popularity of the truly spectacularly-chested Jayne Mansfield. You know, a lot of stuff about wanting to "mount Mansfield" and other similarly hilarious repartee passed around during hiking excursions. A man can dream. And, because this is still America dammit, a man can supplement the following three facts with pictures of Jayne Mansfield. Because I am, like my last post said, a motherfucking hero.
1. From Wikipedia: "Mount Mansfield is one of the two spots in Vermont where true alpine tundra survives from the ice ages." At the risk of a very, very hackneyed joke that is sure to piss off Djmmm, I think there's a definite chance I may have to revise that joke by 2018. You know, because of global warming. Melting ice, people. Fuck, I probably should have spent more time phrasing that joke and less time apologizing for it. Ah well, no need to apologize for this...
King of the segue, yes sir.
2. Mount Mansfield is the home of the Stowe skiing resort. I'm sure it's a very nice place, but I'm guessing it was at a slightly warmer clime that this photo was snapped...
Not that I'd complain with more ski-appropriate attire. Those fifties gals sure knew how to stretch a sweater. And, by that, I mean they had almost cartoonish busts. Eh, no "almost" about it.
3. Also from Wikipedia: "The mountain has the appearance of a (quite elongated) human face when viewed from the east or west with distinct forehead, nose, lips, chin (the highest point) and an Adam's apple."
I imagine much of that might also be true about Jayne Mansfield, but I haven't quite bothered to check yet. Well, apart from the Adam's apple. Hopefully. Eh, with breasts (or, as us classy folks call them, "gazongas") like that, I won't quibble.
Now that I'm good and horny (which is my preferred writing style, not unlike Oscar Wilde, and we all know how he turned out...wait, he turned out how?), let's talk some Vermont sports journalism. Kenneth Wells of the Newport Daily Express steps up with a piece on a Canadian NASCAR driver. I had vowed to never discuss Canada and NASCAR, but such is the world in which we find ourselves. Also, when the grammar and mechanics are this atrocious, I just can't resist. It's the pedantic dick in me. Mr. Wells?
He’s young, good looking and has that quality personality that fans and friends alike can root for.
"Quality personality"? Not to sound like a stereotypical horny dude in a shitty comedy (too late, I know), but when has that ever not been used as a euphemism? What does this dude have? Genital warts? I'm going to go with genital warts.
For Joliette, Qué. native Patrick Carpentier a big step towards respectability in his chosen profession was taken.
Oh, he's from Quebec. Close enough. To genital warts, I mean.
Man, this is one hell of a dirty post. I guess this is what I get for talking about Canada so soon after the 4th of July. John Adams must be spinning in his XXL grave.
He emerged as the NASCAR Pole sitter in the Lennox Industrial Equipment 301 race this past weekend.
Just to finish off the utterly juvenile trifecta: heh, heh...pole.
The 37 year old turned the mile oval in 29.349 seconds and called it his,"biggest" accomplishment in a career dating back more than a decade. Carpentier said, "Its amazing." There is going to be busloads of people down here, and that’s what the objective is, to grow the fan base of NASCAR here and bring more people in. A lot of people in Canada are starting to be fans.”
Here's a fun game - let's play "Count the grammatical, mechanical, and formatting errors!" in that last mess of text. The game's so fun, it's totally sick! Well, sic, at the very least. This man isn't just the editor of the sports section like last week's Sara Mettlen; he's the fucking publisher of the entire newspaper. For goodness sake, I think I could dig up articles I wrote for my middle school newspaper that are better written than that. And hell, I'm always looking for a new gimmick...
Patrick is smiling, and genuinely appreciative of his feat which could make him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport. He continued," I am really happy, and hopefully this will help me stick around for a few years.”
Him winning the pole in a minor NASCAR race makes him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport? The sad thing is, I totally buy that.
Patrick Carpentier, who makes his home in Las Vegas now is a likable person and his story is somewhat a Cinderella version.
Seriously...was this originally written in English? I'm perfectly willing to redact this post if this was actually a French language article badly translated but, but...I doubt it, somehow.
Honestly, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. If there was one fish that completely filled the barrel. And the water was frozen. And the gun was glued to the fish. And the gun was set to auto-fire. And even if you missed, it still counted as a successful shooting of fish in a barrel. That's how easy mocking this article is. It's almost beneath me. Thank goodness I'm unbelievably petty.
He is easy to pull, for less than two years ago he came to Loudon during the Sylvania 300 weekend to basically introduce himself to potential sponsors.
He's easy to pull? What, one can, as Wiktionary so eloquently puts it, "persuade [him] to have sex with one"? He really is Quebecois...
It's obvious that Kenneth Wells is forcing his children to write articles for him. Here's the real question though: was it his twelve-year-old or five-year-old? Keep in mind, his twelve-year-old is going through a bit of a geek phase, so you'd think there'd be some random Gundam Wing reference crowbarred in there somewhere. You know, much like I did there. Overall, I'm going with five-year-old on the day he learned to use spell check. Because, atrocious as the usage might be, at least some of the words are spelled correctly.
Carpentier has never finished higher than 23rd, but, if he can ever hang close enough and long enough to capture the checkers, there may well be a new national holiday up north.
If he wins one obscure NASCAR race, Canada will designate a national holiday? Look, I know the Stephen Harper premiership has gotten people down, but let's not take things to completely radical extremes.
See! I even know the name of Canada's prime minister. Admittedly, I thought it was James Harper until I looked it up, but isn't it the effort that counts? So, um...yay America!
If there was ever a week when 52 52 52 wasn't going to happen, it was probably this one. (Well, other than the four weeks I'm about to spend out of the country, but let's burn that bridge when we get to it.) After all, it's still Independence Weekend (and if that isn't the term, it should be), and I still am under no obligation to do anything other than affirm my love of all things America in the most jingoistic way possible. Which, as far as I'm concerned, involves blowing up Spanish battleships in the name of payback, "Remember the Maine" style. Because that's how I roll.
For after all, as the state motto of Vermont says, "Live free or die!" And if you think of blogging as synonymous with living free and not blogging as much like death, well then...
Ah, I see. I'm being told that "Live free or die" is actually New Hampshire's motto. Honest mistake, that. What's Vermont's? "Freedom and Unity", eh? Well then, if freedom is blogging, and unity is not taking July 4th weekend off, I think you can see how...ah, fuck it.
Point is, we're on Vermont this week, and its stylish Mount Mansfield, clocking in at 4,393 feet. I'd like to think Mount Mansfield was the source of a bunch of really immature jokes by Vermont schoolboys in the 1950s, thanks to the popularity of the truly spectacularly-chested Jayne Mansfield. You know, a lot of stuff about wanting to "mount Mansfield" and other similarly hilarious repartee passed around during hiking excursions. A man can dream. And, because this is still America dammit, a man can supplement the following three facts with pictures of Jayne Mansfield. Because I am, like my last post said, a motherfucking hero.
1. From Wikipedia: "Mount Mansfield is one of the two spots in Vermont where true alpine tundra survives from the ice ages." At the risk of a very, very hackneyed joke that is sure to piss off Djmmm, I think there's a definite chance I may have to revise that joke by 2018. You know, because of global warming. Melting ice, people. Fuck, I probably should have spent more time phrasing that joke and less time apologizing for it. Ah well, no need to apologize for this...
King of the segue, yes sir.
2. Mount Mansfield is the home of the Stowe skiing resort. I'm sure it's a very nice place, but I'm guessing it was at a slightly warmer clime that this photo was snapped...
Not that I'd complain with more ski-appropriate attire. Those fifties gals sure knew how to stretch a sweater. And, by that, I mean they had almost cartoonish busts. Eh, no "almost" about it.
3. Also from Wikipedia: "The mountain has the appearance of a (quite elongated) human face when viewed from the east or west with distinct forehead, nose, lips, chin (the highest point) and an Adam's apple."
I imagine much of that might also be true about Jayne Mansfield, but I haven't quite bothered to check yet. Well, apart from the Adam's apple. Hopefully. Eh, with breasts (or, as us classy folks call them, "gazongas") like that, I won't quibble.
Now that I'm good and horny (which is my preferred writing style, not unlike Oscar Wilde, and we all know how he turned out...wait, he turned out how?), let's talk some Vermont sports journalism. Kenneth Wells of the Newport Daily Express steps up with a piece on a Canadian NASCAR driver. I had vowed to never discuss Canada and NASCAR, but such is the world in which we find ourselves. Also, when the grammar and mechanics are this atrocious, I just can't resist. It's the pedantic dick in me. Mr. Wells?
He’s young, good looking and has that quality personality that fans and friends alike can root for.
"Quality personality"? Not to sound like a stereotypical horny dude in a shitty comedy (too late, I know), but when has that ever not been used as a euphemism? What does this dude have? Genital warts? I'm going to go with genital warts.
For Joliette, Qué. native Patrick Carpentier a big step towards respectability in his chosen profession was taken.
Oh, he's from Quebec. Close enough. To genital warts, I mean.
Man, this is one hell of a dirty post. I guess this is what I get for talking about Canada so soon after the 4th of July. John Adams must be spinning in his XXL grave.
He emerged as the NASCAR Pole sitter in the Lennox Industrial Equipment 301 race this past weekend.
Just to finish off the utterly juvenile trifecta: heh, heh...pole.
The 37 year old turned the mile oval in 29.349 seconds and called it his,"biggest" accomplishment in a career dating back more than a decade. Carpentier said, "Its amazing." There is going to be busloads of people down here, and that’s what the objective is, to grow the fan base of NASCAR here and bring more people in. A lot of people in Canada are starting to be fans.”
Here's a fun game - let's play "Count the grammatical, mechanical, and formatting errors!" in that last mess of text. The game's so fun, it's totally sick! Well, sic, at the very least. This man isn't just the editor of the sports section like last week's Sara Mettlen; he's the fucking publisher of the entire newspaper. For goodness sake, I think I could dig up articles I wrote for my middle school newspaper that are better written than that. And hell, I'm always looking for a new gimmick...
Patrick is smiling, and genuinely appreciative of his feat which could make him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport. He continued," I am really happy, and hopefully this will help me stick around for a few years.”
Him winning the pole in a minor NASCAR race makes him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport? The sad thing is, I totally buy that.
Patrick Carpentier, who makes his home in Las Vegas now is a likable person and his story is somewhat a Cinderella version.
Seriously...was this originally written in English? I'm perfectly willing to redact this post if this was actually a French language article badly translated but, but...I doubt it, somehow.
Honestly, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. If there was one fish that completely filled the barrel. And the water was frozen. And the gun was glued to the fish. And the gun was set to auto-fire. And even if you missed, it still counted as a successful shooting of fish in a barrel. That's how easy mocking this article is. It's almost beneath me. Thank goodness I'm unbelievably petty.
He is easy to pull, for less than two years ago he came to Loudon during the Sylvania 300 weekend to basically introduce himself to potential sponsors.
He's easy to pull? What, one can, as Wiktionary so eloquently puts it, "persuade [him] to have sex with one"? He really is Quebecois...
It's obvious that Kenneth Wells is forcing his children to write articles for him. Here's the real question though: was it his twelve-year-old or five-year-old? Keep in mind, his twelve-year-old is going through a bit of a geek phase, so you'd think there'd be some random Gundam Wing reference crowbarred in there somewhere. You know, much like I did there. Overall, I'm going with five-year-old on the day he learned to use spell check. Because, atrocious as the usage might be, at least some of the words are spelled correctly.
Carpentier has never finished higher than 23rd, but, if he can ever hang close enough and long enough to capture the checkers, there may well be a new national holiday up north.
If he wins one obscure NASCAR race, Canada will designate a national holiday? Look, I know the Stephen Harper premiership has gotten people down, but let's not take things to completely radical extremes.
See! I even know the name of Canada's prime minister. Admittedly, I thought it was James Harper until I looked it up, but isn't it the effort that counts? So, um...yay America!
Help me out here.
Jon Heyman is doing a funny, I think. Regarding the A-Rod+Madonna thing (which is evidently consuming my life), he has this to say:
No, it shouldn't be interesting. But more importantly, I'm curious about "Material Man". Heyman's evidently proud of it, because he used it twice. Is that a reference to A-Rod's big salary? Is there any other (funnier) explanation that I'm missing? I'm going to guess that there isn't, because that would be just the kind of thing I could see Heyman chuckling to himself about for many minutes after thinking of. Horrible sentence, sorry.
Dominating the pages of the New York tabloids is the reputed hookup of the Material Girl (Madonna) and baseball's Material Man (Alex Rodriguez). However, the latest distraction doesn't seem the be affecting the Material Man's on-field performance so far. It should be interesting to see if the MG has All-Star tickets.
No, it shouldn't be interesting. But more importantly, I'm curious about "Material Man". Heyman's evidently proud of it, because he used it twice. Is that a reference to A-Rod's big salary? Is there any other (funnier) explanation that I'm missing? I'm going to guess that there isn't, because that would be just the kind of thing I could see Heyman chuckling to himself about for many minutes after thinking of. Horrible sentence, sorry.
Friday, July 4, 2008
The Column Thingy #2: Independence Day means another week until I really start
That's right, I'm calling this "The Column Thingy." Originality was never my strong suit.
If you're reading this, it's because I am currently in a campground without internet access. And no, unlike pretty much everyone in my last post, I haven't been kidnapped, I'm just on vacation. Because, as I'm sure you all know, today is July 4, famous throughout these United States as the birthday of Hiram Walker, the grocer and distiller. And Independence Day. But really, mostly Hiram Walker.
Of course, thanks to Blogger Scheduler, I'm really writing this two days beforehand, on July 2. Which, weirdly enough, is entirely appropriate, because independence was really declared on July 2, and it's only the relatively less important adoption of the Declaration of Independence that happened on July 4. John Adams even wrote to his wife that July 2 would be known forever as the most important date in American history. Collectors, ever the scrupulous bunch, simply changed the date to July 4. So yeah, a free history lesson.
Anyway, since I just (from my perspective) wrote that whole Dash Dartwell post, I'm going to keep this one short. I'm really sorry I keep teasing a column and then rather spectacularly failing to deliver, but circumstance is a bitch. I believe it was Rousseau who said that.
Anyway, in lieu of a proper column, I present to you the most American YouTube video I could find. And believe me, I looked. Shockingly, there's a truly worrisome lack of Batman kicking ass for America on the series of tubes. For a while, I was going to embed this video, because I happen to love The Great Dictator and the utterly shameless earnestness of the greatest shattering of the fourth wall in cinematic history, but I thought a long speech by a British expat dressed like Hitler was a bit too much of a mixed message, no matter the context. Still, the link is there, and I certainly don't discourage you checking it out.
So, instead, I present this. Since the original poster had disabled embedding, I had to upload the damn thing myself. You know, because I'm a hero.
Be safe, have a great Independence Day, and I'll see you Sunday.
Interlopin' Djmmm: Wait a minute, I'm the only real American on this here blog? You know what that means....
If you're reading this, it's because I am currently in a campground without internet access. And no, unlike pretty much everyone in my last post, I haven't been kidnapped, I'm just on vacation. Because, as I'm sure you all know, today is July 4, famous throughout these United States as the birthday of Hiram Walker, the grocer and distiller. And Independence Day. But really, mostly Hiram Walker.
Of course, thanks to Blogger Scheduler, I'm really writing this two days beforehand, on July 2. Which, weirdly enough, is entirely appropriate, because independence was really declared on July 2, and it's only the relatively less important adoption of the Declaration of Independence that happened on July 4. John Adams even wrote to his wife that July 2 would be known forever as the most important date in American history. Collectors, ever the scrupulous bunch, simply changed the date to July 4. So yeah, a free history lesson.
Anyway, since I just (from my perspective) wrote that whole Dash Dartwell post, I'm going to keep this one short. I'm really sorry I keep teasing a column and then rather spectacularly failing to deliver, but circumstance is a bitch. I believe it was Rousseau who said that.
Anyway, in lieu of a proper column, I present to you the most American YouTube video I could find. And believe me, I looked. Shockingly, there's a truly worrisome lack of Batman kicking ass for America on the series of tubes. For a while, I was going to embed this video, because I happen to love The Great Dictator and the utterly shameless earnestness of the greatest shattering of the fourth wall in cinematic history, but I thought a long speech by a British expat dressed like Hitler was a bit too much of a mixed message, no matter the context. Still, the link is there, and I certainly don't discourage you checking it out.
So, instead, I present this. Since the original poster had disabled embedding, I had to upload the damn thing myself. You know, because I'm a hero.
Be safe, have a great Independence Day, and I'll see you Sunday.
Interlopin' Djmmm: Wait a minute, I'm the only real American on this here blog? You know what that means....
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Somewhere across the Atlantic, an obscenely wealthy man steps out of the batter's box and sniffs the night air.
The Vegas odds of America seeing Serena Rodriguez jumped from 1300:1 to an impressive 17:2 after SI.com made this picture the front page.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Comics & Sports #2: Dash Dartwell Redux
As all geeks (looking at you, Chuck from the NBC series, which is also called Chuck) know, every Wednesday (and Thursdays when Monday was a holiday or something) is that most hallowed of days, new comic book day. In the spirit of that most beautiful of days, I present a feature spotlighting the potentially awesome confluence of sports and comics.
Last week, I promised the following...
Join us next Wednesday for another Comics & Sports entry where our friend Dash will use his tablets to hit more home runs. No, seriously. I swear that's actually going to happen.
Now, I might as well make a confession: I hadn't exactly read that particular comic yet. I was pretty sure that would happen, but I wasn't sure. What if he only threw a no-hitter and didn't hit any home runs? That wouldn't nearly be unbelievably ironic enough. But don't touch that blog dial, comics and/or sports fans, because I should have known Dash Dartwell always delivers. And how!
But first, let's remember just who young Dashford is. From today's comic:
Dash Dartwell is now the miracle man of the athletic world because of his new and astonishing records set with the help of Professor Moss’s metabo-accelerator pills, which speed up all the life processes and give their user unbelievable speed. Dash can dodge bullets and outdistance speeding cars – until the pill’s effect is over.
So yeah, he's everybody's favorite juicer. Last week he used his abilities to rewrite track and field records. And now...baseball. It's the big game between Dash's Dravrah College and its archrival Elay (if you're confused, read those names backwards), and just like with the track meet, a bunch of mobsters have nothing better to do than fix the game in the least subtle way imaginable...
Seriously, "brainy" is the best adjective to describe a guy who guarantees a loss by kidnapping the best five guys on the team? This makes Mr. Burns's team of ringers look downright inconspicuous. Except for Mattingly's sideburns, of course. Those things are fucking visible from space.
Sorry about the quality on some of these; this is what seven decades of obscurity will do to you (just ask the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which at one point was actually a tariff instead of the reference for things that are boring). In case you can't read that, the coach asks, "What do we do?"
In this situation, and I must admit I'm not a trained kidnapping expert, I would probably, you know, call the police. I mean, it's not like the note makes any demands or anything. All it says is that they've been kidnapped so they can't play. You'd sort of think, under the circumstances, that might be grounds to postpone the game. Of course, the availability of the world's fastest man might well skew the standard operating procedure when it comes to kidnapping. I mean, it could.
"Do whatever you do to build up this speed of yours." I believe you can find that on Tony LaRussa's family crest. It's like this comic was written before they invented the concept of accountability. So, what, before 2005? Yeah, I'm going to go with 2005.
Just in case you thought there was the slightest chance Dash didn't know exactly what he's doing. Again, this was apparently in no way considered cheating in the 1940's. I dunno, maybe the war had something to do with it. And you know what? If one last invasion of France will stop all the anti-steroid sanctimony, I think I'm OK with that. More than OK, actually.
Anyway, proving once again that there's no problem you can't solve with kidnapping, the gangsters try to capture Dash as well. But they somehow didn't count on the world's fastest man running away...
Wow, Dash easily outran a car driving at 115 miles per hour? Let me do a little math here (and by "let me", I of course mean Google will do it all for me)...
Call Dash's speed 130 miles per hour. That's the equivalent of 58.1152 meters per second. That means he could complete a 100-meter dash in 1.72 seconds. Makes his last recorded speed of 3.5 seconds look positively slow. Of course, he might be getting a little wind assistance. Maybe. Or would running at that sort of speed pretty much by definition create a tailwind? You'd really think two years of high school physics would have taught me more than this. Oh well, that's the failure of the American public school system for you. Nobody's worked out how to outsource sports blogging yet, right?
In any event, Dash finally gets to the game...
Again, how the hell is this not bad sportsmanship? Or are you allowed to have one juicer if your three best sluggers and two best pitchers get kidnapped? Is that the ethical equation here? I just hope somebody was thinking about the children. Never mind the obvious homosexuality of Batman and Robin corrupting the nation's youth, this comic is clearly responsible for warping the judgment of a bunch of kids who were born about twenty years after this was published. Prove me wrong, people!
Incidentally, why do you need to kidnap two pitchers for one game? I mean, even if they're both aces, the guys in the first panel acted as though both of them would be huge factors in the upcoming game. And considering we're still a decade away from Hoyt Wilhelm, I'm not sure it makes sense for one of them to be a reliever. You know, I'm pretty much completely certain the fondest wish of this comic's writer was to have some asshole nitpick the story's internal logic sixty-seven years after it was written. I know that's what I'm hoping for. Get to it, sentient death blogs of 2075!
Wait, did I just come up with the title and premise of Japan's next big anime? I'm going to say...yes. Yes I did.
And so, with the pills working again, Dash turns into what Jose Canseco so desperately wanted to be: an all-pitching, all-slugging drugged-up super-athlete. To think he didn't even need to blow out his elbow to do it! Truly, he is science's greatest miracle. Or he's just a slimmer version of early career Babe Ruth. Whichever you prefer.
But let's not forget those wacky gangsters! With Dash coming up to bat, even these guys have to admit kidnapping isn't really an option. So they go for the only option more blatantly illegal: shooting Dash in a crowded stadium. With a machine gun.
Shouldn't somebody...anybody...be reacting to one of the baseball players throwing a bat at a guy in the stands who was just brandishing a machine gun? Is Dravrah winning really so incredibly exciting that it makes everyone forget that just happened? Or does that sort of thing just not faze any of them?
I'm starting to see what Tom Brokaw was talking about. Maybe these forties fuckers really were the greatest generation.
Oh that Rojas...truly the weasely Brian McNamee to the gangster's assholish Roger Clemens. I guess that makes Dash the George Mitchell in this analogy. And why not?
With the baseball game out the way, it's time for a little skull-busting. Predictably, Dash works fast.
Damn right! Forget ending human misery when there are so many more sports of which Dash hasn't yet made a complete mockery! How about 2,000 yards...in a game? Or 100 points...in a quarter? Or the hockey equivalent of those things!?
And, lest we forget, Dash hasn't even begun to explore the perverted applications of super-speed. Sure, it's no invisibility, but where there's a perverted will, there is always a way.
And let that be today's lesson.
That's all for now with our pal Dash, but join us next Wednesday when we look at another superhero in a story actually devised by a member of the Washington Redskins. And no, to our eternal regret, not Chris Cooley.
Last week, I promised the following...
Join us next Wednesday for another Comics & Sports entry where our friend Dash will use his tablets to hit more home runs. No, seriously. I swear that's actually going to happen.
Now, I might as well make a confession: I hadn't exactly read that particular comic yet. I was pretty sure that would happen, but I wasn't sure. What if he only threw a no-hitter and didn't hit any home runs? That wouldn't nearly be unbelievably ironic enough. But don't touch that blog dial, comics and/or sports fans, because I should have known Dash Dartwell always delivers. And how!
But first, let's remember just who young Dashford is. From today's comic:
Dash Dartwell is now the miracle man of the athletic world because of his new and astonishing records set with the help of Professor Moss’s metabo-accelerator pills, which speed up all the life processes and give their user unbelievable speed. Dash can dodge bullets and outdistance speeding cars – until the pill’s effect is over.
So yeah, he's everybody's favorite juicer. Last week he used his abilities to rewrite track and field records. And now...baseball. It's the big game between Dash's Dravrah College and its archrival Elay (if you're confused, read those names backwards), and just like with the track meet, a bunch of mobsters have nothing better to do than fix the game in the least subtle way imaginable...
Seriously, "brainy" is the best adjective to describe a guy who guarantees a loss by kidnapping the best five guys on the team? This makes Mr. Burns's team of ringers look downright inconspicuous. Except for Mattingly's sideburns, of course. Those things are fucking visible from space.
Sorry about the quality on some of these; this is what seven decades of obscurity will do to you (just ask the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which at one point was actually a tariff instead of the reference for things that are boring). In case you can't read that, the coach asks, "What do we do?"
In this situation, and I must admit I'm not a trained kidnapping expert, I would probably, you know, call the police. I mean, it's not like the note makes any demands or anything. All it says is that they've been kidnapped so they can't play. You'd sort of think, under the circumstances, that might be grounds to postpone the game. Of course, the availability of the world's fastest man might well skew the standard operating procedure when it comes to kidnapping. I mean, it could.
"Do whatever you do to build up this speed of yours." I believe you can find that on Tony LaRussa's family crest. It's like this comic was written before they invented the concept of accountability. So, what, before 2005? Yeah, I'm going to go with 2005.
Just in case you thought there was the slightest chance Dash didn't know exactly what he's doing. Again, this was apparently in no way considered cheating in the 1940's. I dunno, maybe the war had something to do with it. And you know what? If one last invasion of France will stop all the anti-steroid sanctimony, I think I'm OK with that. More than OK, actually.
Anyway, proving once again that there's no problem you can't solve with kidnapping, the gangsters try to capture Dash as well. But they somehow didn't count on the world's fastest man running away...
Wow, Dash easily outran a car driving at 115 miles per hour? Let me do a little math here (and by "let me", I of course mean Google will do it all for me)...
Call Dash's speed 130 miles per hour. That's the equivalent of 58.1152 meters per second. That means he could complete a 100-meter dash in 1.72 seconds. Makes his last recorded speed of 3.5 seconds look positively slow. Of course, he might be getting a little wind assistance. Maybe. Or would running at that sort of speed pretty much by definition create a tailwind? You'd really think two years of high school physics would have taught me more than this. Oh well, that's the failure of the American public school system for you. Nobody's worked out how to outsource sports blogging yet, right?
In any event, Dash finally gets to the game...
Again, how the hell is this not bad sportsmanship? Or are you allowed to have one juicer if your three best sluggers and two best pitchers get kidnapped? Is that the ethical equation here? I just hope somebody was thinking about the children. Never mind the obvious homosexuality of Batman and Robin corrupting the nation's youth, this comic is clearly responsible for warping the judgment of a bunch of kids who were born about twenty years after this was published. Prove me wrong, people!
Incidentally, why do you need to kidnap two pitchers for one game? I mean, even if they're both aces, the guys in the first panel acted as though both of them would be huge factors in the upcoming game. And considering we're still a decade away from Hoyt Wilhelm, I'm not sure it makes sense for one of them to be a reliever. You know, I'm pretty much completely certain the fondest wish of this comic's writer was to have some asshole nitpick the story's internal logic sixty-seven years after it was written. I know that's what I'm hoping for. Get to it, sentient death blogs of 2075!
Wait, did I just come up with the title and premise of Japan's next big anime? I'm going to say...yes. Yes I did.
And so, with the pills working again, Dash turns into what Jose Canseco so desperately wanted to be: an all-pitching, all-slugging drugged-up super-athlete. To think he didn't even need to blow out his elbow to do it! Truly, he is science's greatest miracle. Or he's just a slimmer version of early career Babe Ruth. Whichever you prefer.
But let's not forget those wacky gangsters! With Dash coming up to bat, even these guys have to admit kidnapping isn't really an option. So they go for the only option more blatantly illegal: shooting Dash in a crowded stadium. With a machine gun.
Shouldn't somebody...anybody...be reacting to one of the baseball players throwing a bat at a guy in the stands who was just brandishing a machine gun? Is Dravrah winning really so incredibly exciting that it makes everyone forget that just happened? Or does that sort of thing just not faze any of them?
I'm starting to see what Tom Brokaw was talking about. Maybe these forties fuckers really were the greatest generation.
Oh that Rojas...truly the weasely Brian McNamee to the gangster's assholish Roger Clemens. I guess that makes Dash the George Mitchell in this analogy. And why not?
With the baseball game out the way, it's time for a little skull-busting. Predictably, Dash works fast.
Damn right! Forget ending human misery when there are so many more sports of which Dash hasn't yet made a complete mockery! How about 2,000 yards...in a game? Or 100 points...in a quarter? Or the hockey equivalent of those things!?
And, lest we forget, Dash hasn't even begun to explore the perverted applications of super-speed. Sure, it's no invisibility, but where there's a perverted will, there is always a way.
And let that be today's lesson.
That's all for now with our pal Dash, but join us next Wednesday when we look at another superhero in a story actually devised by a member of the Washington Redskins. And no, to our eternal regret, not Chris Cooley.
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