Reason I Could Never Work For ESPN #243

By Espen Jockovitch

I've done my very best to hold this shit torrent back, but the levee's breaking right here and right damned now. Brace yourselves, Homeskillets - E-Jock's gonna blow some serious truth all up in your stuff:

NASCAR totally sucks. NASCAR shamelessly, irreddeemably, and enthusiatically blows donkeys. There is absolutely nothing in NASCAR which merits celebration, highlightery, or hip-quasi-urban-tagline spouting. I can't even pretend that NASCAR is a friggin' sport, much less a spectator sport.

I hear you, Jim-Bob: "NASCAR rakes in billions of dollars a year!" So does public accounting, Cousin-Brother, and if I'm not willing to dedicate time to watching a bunch of pencilnecks depreciate long-term capital leaseholdings, I sure as hell can't justify devoting three hours a Sunday to witness jumpsuited jerkoffs take left turns around a giant damned circle. At least accountants do my taxes - Rusty Dalehart Junior, Jr. never gave me Thing Freakin' One.

Yeah, Jethro Bodine will go on about the strategies and the teamwork and all that hollabolla, but those admirable qualities are on instant visual display in baseball, football, basketball and hockey - you know... SPORTS - each and every day. Plus, sports offer such added bonii as athleticism, grace, agility and cheerleader/dance teams. NASCAR is a bunch of guys driving close together really fast. That's not a sport, that's my daily commute - and I don't expect a camera crew and redneck receiving line to spray me with six-dollar champagne when I snag my favorite parking spot on a Tuesday.

Yet a relentless few insist NASCAR is worth attention, and follow up with the dramatic storyline angle. Oh, this team is angry at that team, and this driver is such a little punch-happy hothead and that one is threatening to leave his team to join a rival... Look, Clem - that sounds a hell of a lot like 'Desperate Housewives', which I don't really care to watch anyway. If 'Desperate Housewives' offers me drama AND Teri Hatcher's glorious ta-tas, what chance does some sweaty hick wearing a fireproof Tide outfit have?

In summary: NASCAR's Taggadildo Fahv Hunnert or whatever has the visual appeal of three hours of 7-11 surveillance tape. I couldn't fake excitement over it if you attached electrodes to my junk to make my testes tingle every time an announcer mispronounces the word "oil". Between baseball, basketball, hockey and football, I get 342 regular season games and enough playoffs to fill up the rest of the year and then some - so pick up your Matchboxes and Hot Wheels and put all your plastic track away so Uncle Bob has somewhere to sit when he comes over to watch the Celtics.

Deadly Shooting Rampage Not Particularly Tragic

by Lars Eisenberg

SCHAUMBERG, IL (IbK) -- Yesterday afternoon at 12:45, a heavily-armed man stormed into the Fourth Street Bank and Trust office on Phillips Avenue and emptied two magazines of bullets into patrons awaiting service, killing four and injuring dozens before taking his own life. Among the victims were Eric Faulkner, 32, of North Chicago, Bert Stellis, 58, of Evanston, Harold Phipps, 47 and Louise Turner, 44, both of Schaumberg.

This is the point of the article about where I should be describing the senseless tragedy of brillant and charitable lives cut short in a brutal hail of random vengeance in an effort to trade in the kind of emotional pornography that gets picked up by wire services and wins awards, but all evidence points to yesterday's victims being complete assholes.

"Eric got whacked?" mused a co-worker who would only call himself C. F. for the purposes of this interview. "Hunh... what are the odds? I usually don't get that lucky on Mondays!" C. F. went on to describe Faulkner as a loud, inconsiderate boor of a co-worker who frequently jacked jaws for hours on end at top volume on his speakerphone, and sat on projects for weeks before pawning them off to C. F. as "rush jobs" while farting in his cubicle. When asked if he had any regrets on the passing of his coworker, C. F. lamented the fact that he'd never get back the five bucks he loaned Faulkner for lunch last Friday, but quickly said he'd gladly pay ten to never see "that shitstain Eric" again.

Bert Stellis was by all accounts a pasty-fleshed, clammy, lecherous blob who, in the words of an unnamed server at the Hooters he frequented, "would pinch your ass and laugh, then leave a $1.50 tip." She went on to mention Stellis's frequent bawdily-detailed recounts of the previous evening's stripclub exploits to anyone withing a fifty foot radius and closed the conversation with a spirited "Fuck him!"

One of the policeman at the scene of the incident immediately recognized Harold Phipps as "that uppity S.O.B. with dozens of parking tickets" and who drove "like he had a demon up his ass." Officer W (again, not wishing to be named) assessed the streets as safer today than yesterday with "that arrogant douchenugget off the road." Officer W immediately called to have Phipps's car impounded for sale to pay off all his outstanding fines.

Louise Turner was chief collections agent for Sears Credit. Enough said there, what? Meanwhile, the shooter, Murray "Captain Shizbinx-Frelinda VII" Arminster was merely a loon who went off his meds and thought the banks were clandestine partners of the evil Pan-Galactic Conglomerate conspiring to spread its testicle-shrinking Omicron Rays by circulating Wisconsin state quarters. Sadly, we have no heroes here.

I am sorry to disappoint those of you quaking with the DTs for your daily outrage fix, but since it is extremely difficult to paint a vivid picture of sanguine tragedy when your pallette is caked with pigshit, in this case it is better that I simply report the facts. I'm sure something patently horrible will pop up for you between now and Oprah - hang in there!

Heroing Ain't Easy

By Sperman

You’d think the life of a superhero would be pure glamour and glitz that would leave us all cape-deep in bling, babes and non-stop adulation. Well, in truth… not so much.

Fact is, we run a pretty lean operation here at the Justice League. Nobody pays us for what we do - we aren’t heroes for hire or anything… heck, we’re not even on the city payroll like firemen or the police. The only money we see comes from our residuals from comic books, movies, and related merchandising. Truth be told, it’s only thanks to that dweeb Tobey McGuire that we even have cable in the rec room here.

And you can just for-the-hell-get about benefits. Batman’s been working non-stop for nearly 70 years – you’d think with his seniority that he should be able to live out the rest of his days fishing off the coast of Boca, but no-o-o-o-o. After he foils a caper, he drags his geriatric ass back into the lab to come up with new Bat-shit we can use to make lives better, such as his own full-body Bat-Girdle to keep his centenarian shit together, Supe’s perma-curl mega-mousse so that one curly thing dangling down on his forehead stays in place when he flies, and the Junk Cloaker for my leotard-required public appearances when kids or Baptists might be around.

Health plan? Dude… we’re Superheroes! We aren’t supposed to get hurt. Granted, most of us are just humans with special abilities, but best of luck getting Kaiser Permanente to take Aquaman’s prescription for Flomax seriously. Besides, if we ever break anything, the Kryptonian’s X-Ray vision will tell us what and where, Wonder Woman will rope it up and we’ll send those assache interns The Wonder Twins out to cover our shift until we heal.

It’s not bad, really, because we’re in this game to help mankind, not for the money. Super Powers + Greed = Super Villain. Sure, Super Villains get to buy all those way cool nuclear gamma expando-destructo ray thingies and hire minions and hot, curvy, judo-trained sidekicks with all their coin, but deep down they’re pitiable shells of human beings who destroy simply because nobody ever loved them for who they are. Besides, as long as we keep working together, us Superheroes always kick their rich evil asses, just like in that Meatballs movie from ‘79. How cool is that?!

2008 IbK Real Man™ Bronze Scrotum Award Winner: Dude In Section 108C, Row 16

by Knorr the Interpreter

It is my honor and privilege to award the inaugural IbK Real Man™ Bronze Scrotum Award to The Dude In The Orange Shirt In Section 108C, Row 16 at the 4 April 2008 Lake Erie Monsters game at Quicken Loans Arena. During the first intermission, I witnessed you walking down the entire flight of steps between two sections of raucous hockey fans carrying a purse. Normally, that would be grounds for ridicule, but the why and how you carried that purse are truly meritorious.

Your sacrifice of short-term man points to deliver a purse your female companion accidentally left behind God-only-knows-where on an entirely different level of Quicken Loans Arena exemplified true devotion to your forgetful paramour. It takes a guy who knows exactly what he’s packing in the pickle jar to have the confidence to pull of such an act of bravado. But not only is WHY you committed this valiant act of self-sacrifice worthy of highest note, but the HOW deserves equal if not greater praise. Throughout the entire emasculating trek down the 80-foot flight of concrete stairs with 12,000+ hockey fans looking on, you boldly held the purse at a slightly-cocked arm’s length by the far corner of the zipper as if it were a fully and freshly loaded soft leather diaper with shoulder straps. The angle of the purse never wavered - remaining perfectly parallel to the ground the entire trip in defiance of all natural physical principles – thus exemplifying the formidable wrist strength of an IbK Real Man™. ‘Twas obvious you had no desire to carry the purse, equally obvious you were fully cognizant of the risk to your manliness doing so would present, yet in the name of love of a woman you braved the potential hazards and emerged the bigger man than all those who thought of mocking you.

Congratulations, Dude In The Orange Shirt In Section 108C, Row 16 at the 4 April 2008 Lake Erie Monsters game at Quicken Loans Arena. It is with great awe and pride that I award you the inaugural IbK Real Man™ Bronze Scrotum Award for your brazen purse-carrying during the first intermission. If your ladyfriend didn’t *at least* give you a blowjob for your grand act of valor, there is no damned justice in this world.