Chad Johnson sees T.O.'s porn cameo and raises him, well, you should probably just see it...

Considering it's the Sabbath and all - wait, isn't the Sabbath a Jewish thing? Don't make me bust out my copy of Chariots of Fire to work this one out. Hold on, my research assistant, the lovely Cary Caine, is telling me something. OK, apparently it's Christian as well. Anyway, how better to celebrate the Lord than an update in our somehow continuing series Great Moments in Wide Receiver Pornography!

(The exclamation point means that excites me. And by "excites me", I do of course mean it sexually arouses me.)

As I previously noted in my trademark rambling, tangential way, Chad Johnson is guesting as editor-in-chief for ESPN The Magazine, a publication famous for its motto, "ESPN The Magazine...where colons can go fuck themselves!"

Anyway, as was very much previously noted, the cover of Ocho Cinco's issue is this:



When my family's issue arrived today, I was finally able to get in close enough to read the textbox resting precariously on Chad Johnson's elbow (that thing could hit his funny bone at LITERALLY ANY MINUTE!!!). It says:

Check out the cover that I almost went with, on page 40.

First of all, even if I have a grammar boner (gramner?) for the Oxford comma, the comma after 'with' up there is totally unnecessary and actually just wrong. I know Chad's guest editor, but which jock did they get to handle copy editing? Marques Slocum?

Anyway, my curiosity suitably piqued, I thumbed to page 40, desperately dodging the sharp corners of ESPN's pages made of recycled tissue paper (all of it official imitation Cleanex brand) and the ticket to papercut country they represented. Arriving on the fortieth page with nary a band-aid on my fingers (well, maybe one or two...those pages are so damn sharp and crafty!), I was greeted with quite possibly the most tastefully erotic image ever captured:



Somewhere, Robert Mapplethorpe is smiling. I imagine that somewhere is Gay Heaven, and I'm not talking about the nightclub. Well, maybe a little, but only if we're talking circa 1983.

And on that appropriately homoerotic note...stay tuned for the live-blog! I might be a little delayed getting started - I'm on a train until 8:21 or so, and then I have to dash to a hotel (that's right - Archie's on the move!) and get set up. But hopefully I'll be up by the end of the first the middle of the second quarter sometime during the second half the second overtime. So root for gridlock! Sweet, beautiful gridlock...

Synergy at its worst finest...

You know how I said in my very last post that I find ESPN The Magazine the least offensive part of the Bristol empire? Yeah, well, I may have to reassess that. Check out these two articles about Chad Johnson and the apparent end of his trade demands. The first is from The National Post, which apparently "is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, Ontario, a district of Toronto." No particular reason why I chose it other than it's one of the two articles that pops up as a news result when I googled Chad Johnson. This is the photo that they used in the article:



No problems there. Simple, appropriate, whatever. It's not exactly high art choosing a photo to represent an NFL wide receiver, but well done nonetheless. A shiny Loonie to The National Post, says I.

But what about the other top news result when you google Chad Johnson? That'd be David Fleming's article on ESPN.com, which covers the exact same story. Not to pile on ESPN (too late), but this is the photo they ran with:



So instead of a relevant photo of Chad Johnson as a Cincinnati Bengal, ESPN chose an image of Johnson from the cover of ESPN The Magazine, which in turn featured not one but two other ESPN The Magazines in a display of nesting doll style brilliance not usually seen outside of Stephen Colbert portraiture. I'd rail against this and call it the death of sports journalism as per my Blogger Opinion Agreement (or BOA for short, because it, you know, constricts my ass, opinions-wise), but I honestly can't help but admire the chutzpah of such blatant self-promotion.

I think it was the caption underneath that won me over:

It's anyone's guess whether Chad Johnson will rip the Bengals or tear it up on the field for Cincy in '08.

Good to know that guy who wrote all the captions in my middle school yearbook is still getting work. I always worried about that guy.