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What the puck? Hockey goes to Zarmina, Stan Lee to NHL
Could it be that folks noticed the opening week of NHL hockey this year? In the science-fiction sports realm, at least, the Canadian national pastime has been getting a bit of play lately.
Pop astronomy geeks like BuckBokai were certainly intrigued by tales of Gliese 581g, a.k.a. Zarmina, a so-called “Goldilocks Zone” planet 20.5 light-years away on which water may exist and homo sapiens could live – albeit in a narrow band between perpetual scorching sunlight and continuous night.
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Review: “The Hotshot Hoopsters”
BuckBokai continues with its 40th-anniversary retrospective on DC Comics’ ultimate mini-series, the “Strange Sports Stories” collection in Brave and the Bold issues 45 through 49, proving today that he loves this blog by slogging through “The Hotshot Hoopsters,” cover story in issue #46. I read this one so you don’t to.
Last season’s Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) championship series pitted the country’s age-old rivals Žalgiris Kaunas against Lietuvos Rytas for the nth straight time since the first sports missionaries brought the new religion to the country in the 1920s.
This was to be no ho-hum cliché-ridden series interesting only to the country’s citizens, however, thanks to the stark raving insanity manipulation of Žalgiris by team owner Vladimir Romanov. In what was certainly a nearly unprecedented move, Romanov fired head coach Darius Maskoliunas *in the middle of the best-of-seven championship series* with his team down two games to one. Assistant coach Gvidonas Markevičius stomped out a day later, leaving Žalgiris with a coaching staff numbering zero.
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Death Race 2: Silliest excuse for prequel ever?
Ah, nothing says cinematic success like those three little words “straight to video…”
You’d think that a movie already grounded in a notoriously violent franchise and packed with guns, fast cars, and lots of sweaty dudes in prison would automatically be primed for box office success – but then you consider “Death Race 2,” which may be the final proof that prequel-sequels have simply gone too damn far.
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BuckBokai’s fearless prediction for Doctor Who
This has fuck-all to do with sports, but with a Matt Smith (and Katy Manning!) appearance on the “Sarah Jane Adventures” just weeks away and the first glimpse of the Christmas special has been released by the BBC – lemme tell ya, it totally puts the “tease” in “teaser” – BuckBokai figures he’d better get in this prediction before it becomes old hat.
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Happy 40th, Ball Four!
How this event passed so low under the media radar is beyond BuckBokai – unless it can simply be attributed to the reality that *nobody reads books anymore* – but the 40th anniversary of the release of “Ball Four” was celebrated in Burbank yesterday with a show put on by nonprofit historical group The Baseball Reliquary.
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The Bizarro Bowl: ’76 Buccaneers vs. ’08 Lions
In honor of the start of the 2010 NFL season – no, a Thursday night opening game will not be acknowledged as official because *you’re supposed to play football on Sunday; God said so.* – BuckBokai celebrates by going to the interweb’s greatest time waster sports simulator site, What If Sports.
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World’s greatest sports mascot prevented by George Lucas
Admiral Ackbar may have led rebel forces to victory in the “Star Wars” saga, but he lost a simple fight for fame in Mississippi.
The University of Mississippi Rebels were without a mascot since 2003 when the question was put out the student body by vote. A group of (geeks) students used a bit of cool logic in conceiving of the perfect mascot in Ackbar: After all, he’s the Rebel Leader, right?
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Your fantasy football draft and six more topics not to be discussed
Why didn’t the surgeon general warn me? Combining a viewing schedule of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “His Way” and the 2010 FIBA World Championships against the squall of a lightning-quick fantasy football draft may result in a dangerous altered state.
BuckBokai did, however, receive one nice hallucinatory insight worthy of The Prophets themselves in finally discovering the answer to a 22-year-old mystery. To wit: Why does any Star Trek episode involving the holodeck/holosuite inevitably suck gagh?
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TMQ returns to ESPN.com, makes it so again: Yes!
Not that BuckBokai worships the computer screen upon which his words float or anything, but Gregg Easterbrook, a.k.a. TMQ on ESPN.com, is definitely a role model.
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Review: “Goliath and the Gridiron” (or, This is Your Brain on Berries; Any Questions?)
In continuing its 40th-anniversary retrospective on DC Comics’ ultimate mini-series, the “Strange Sports Stories” collection in Brave and the Bold issues 45 through 49, BuckBokai today analyzes “Goliath of the Gridiron,” a sobering, moralistic tale of berry abuse in college football in the early 1970s.
In the best tradition of sportswriting-based purple prose, “Goliath of the Gridiron” opens with a bloody good (so to speak) description: “The shock of contact and the thud of body against body heralds the opening of the *Hartnell Aggies’* football season…”
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Only 106 more shopping days until Tron: Legacy
In the 1970s, we got Rollerball. In the 1980s, we got The Running Man. In the 1990s, we got Space Jam. Last decade, the subsubgenre was won by Shaolin Soccer – oh yes, we’ll be calling that sci-fi. To get the science-fiction sports film started right in the 2010s, December sees the apparently simultaneous worldwide (yes!) release of Tron: Legacy.
Though BuckBokai is sure you’ve seen this promo poster (from Hungary, location of the BuckBokai.com home office), featuring the gorgeous Beau Garrett as Frisbee- weapon-supplying program Jem, by way of io9 or Slashfilm, it’s definitely worth another repost.
BuckBokai does fear that Tron 2.0 will be bogged down in a lot of self-referencialism and continuity that only nuts of the first flick will get. Geekspeak, too, is sure to be rife in this thing, so it may be best to hope for mere coherence and nice f/x, although we’re essentially guaranteed the latter.
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Arena Football’s Future: Would you like to know more?
Ah, now that the 2010 NFL season has begun (sort of), BuckBokai reflects on two things: 1) how patently *lame* the aberration known as “arena football” is and 2) how awesome said aberration will be in the 23rd century – you know, once we’re at intergalactic war with Klendathu.
First, full disclosure with all the shame of a blacked out one-night stand by a married man – except BuckBokai was conscious. BuckBokai once tried to like the indoor game. Seriously, in 2002, the post-Super Bowl jones (you know, that condition due to which Vince McMahon was ostensibly induced to set up the XFL a year earlier) set in hard with me and BuckBokai sought the Arena Football League as a methadone to the proper football addiction.
What greeted me instead was this:
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Random thought re: Roger Clemens busted
So ESPN is reporting that the New York Times is reporting that Roger Clemens will reportedly be “indicted on charges of making false statements to Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs,” i.e., let’s face it, anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.
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Duds-dealer does D&D dressage — dude!
File this one well near the top of geek chic: Fashionably Geek is today pushing a nearly-irresistible sartorial item for … well, some of you. Combining Dungeons & Dragons with sports jerseys? Nice. BuckBokai’ll run with that.
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Bobby Thomson, of the Shot Heard Round the World, dies at 86
Bobby Thomson, that unwitting creator of a million zillion what-if stories both published and unpublished, that subject of prose and poetry, that metaphorical slayer of poor Ralph Branca, died today at his home in Savannah, Georgia. He was 86.
Thomson played Major League Baseball for 15 years mostly with the New York Giants, going for a .270 lifetime batting average, three All-Star bids and 263 home runs plus one Shot Heard Round The World.
In its mundane three-dimensional existence on the baseball field, Thomson’s famous shot was “merely” the culmination of 154 games of war in a baseball for National League supremacy among New York City boroughs: Brooklyn vs. Manhattan. In an extra playoff game – actually, the third extra game in a best-of-three series, actually, and don’t remind Bud Selig or we’ll have another round of MLB playoffs – Thomson’s walk-off homer against the Dodgers’ Ralph Branca gave the Giants the pennant. Or, as the man said:
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Kobe Bryant vs. the Martians
If, in fact, the terrifying events speculated upon in Space Jam ever do come to pass, we can rest assured that any would-be alien conqueror (or maybe that should be conquistador, as in the San Diego Conquistadors) will find a Terran team ready with a gameplan.
Though Michael Jordan, having now been enshrined in the Hall of Fame twice to definitively end his basketball career (really), probably wouldn’t suit up for Team Earth, prospective on-court leader Kobe Bryant is ready.
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