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The simple rules of Butterfly Derby (plus review: Futurama, “The Butterjunk Effect”)
Though not currently based in North America, BuckBokai couldn’t wait to get his hands on this week’s episode of Futurama, the horrifically-titled “The Butterjunk Effect,” promising as it did another science-fiction sport to record in the annals.
Masters of the online science-fiction editorial universe io9, via reviewer Esther Inglis-Arkell, trashed the ep. Inglis-Arkell noted the out-of-character dialogue and action pressed upon Leela and Amy, and yes, BuckBokai must agree that a lot of the early stuff with catty remarks about shoes and weight seems like character-unspecific stuff written in somebody’s sleep. The io9 scribe did note some good bits to be hand in “the throwaway lines and sight gags that Futurama always excels at”; concurrence on this as well, then.
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Batman given Cardboard Gerald treatment in Dark Knight Rises review
Ben Swanson: Greatest Twitter-side movie reviewer ever? After busting up with 141-character bon mots from Cardboard Gerald, the “resident [Charlotte] Bobcats sadsack blogger” and “progeny of Shawn Kemp’s Lister Blister, on “The Dark Knight Rises” all morning, BuckBokai figured he’d repost ‘em all here for posterity. One caveat: Swanson has seen things we people wouldn’t dream – this one’s quite a departure from the franchise, it seems…
Spoilers follow … yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.
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Dispatch from Alternate Universe: Remembering Super Bowl XXXVI (St. Louis Rams 23, New England Patriots 17, OT)
For those Americans missing NFL football right about now (and with professional basketball, hockey and soccer mostly at a complete standstill, who could blame you?), BuckBokai supplies a “what if” piece on one of the greatest Super Bowls ever.
No. 36 featured perhaps the biggest upset recorded in the big game, though 12 years, one 16-0 season and “Spygate” later, the collective consciousness has forgotten that the now EEEvil New England Patriots were 17-point underdogs against Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams’ offensive machine.
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Short fiction: Crow’s Feet
“That was the best game we’ve ever had.”
“If you say so,” I gasp staccato between hard-fought breaths. I idly wonder if I’ll ever be able to pick myself up from the sun-baked asphalt feeling cool against my overheated body. Damn, I’m getting old.
And meanwhile Marcel shoots, swishes, grabs the ball, dribbles past an imaginary defender, shoots, misses, snags it before it bounces again, shoots and again the snap of the net cuts through the dry summer air.
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The (E)X(ley)-Files: Reviewing “The Unnatural”
Obviously aliens: Josh Exley…
Those familiar with the exploits of super-secret government agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully can recall that scripts mostly consisted of a load of unlikely lines and in-references poorly delivered by the principals. “The Unnatural” is happily at least half an exception here, a standalone episode with the presence of Mulder and Scully kept to a minimum via means of a frame-story device; David Duchovny directed this one and actually incorporates some nice visual touches linking the two eras of the story.
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Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson: Real-life inspirations for Josh Exley
Upon viewing and reviewing the X-Files season six episode, “The Unnatural,” BuckBokai thought it only right to give a couple of baseball history’s more unfortunately obscure names their due: Namely, Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson.
The protagonist of the X-Files episode is one Josh Exley, a player for the Negro League’s “Roswell Grays” in 1947. The “Roswell” bit recalls Bauman, a longtime minor-league player in the lower minor-league levels for teams in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. In a career interrupted by World War II, Bauman became a local attraction known for jacking long home runs wherever he played.
But 1954 was something special for baseball fans, if only the truly arcane-loving. Playing for the Roswell Rockets, Bauman torched extant home run records when he hit 72 dingers to go with a .400 batting average, 150 walks and an unbelievable 228 RBIs – in 138 games. Bauman’s homer mark stood for 47 years, until Barry Bonds topped it in 2001. Bauman, still living in Roswell, was quoted as saying that he never “thought it’d last this long, to be honest. I was watching on TV when [Bonds] hit that last one. It didn’t bother me or anything.”
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Justice Leaguer meets Dream Teamers
In case you missed it, a serious meeting of Dream Teamers took place during the 2012 NBA Finals a couple of weeks ago. BuckBokai isn’t referring here to the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder, although note that five players from these squads – Kevin Durant, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Lebron James, Russell Westbrook – will be playing in the London Games and another two – Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade – could well be.
Instead, check out the below YouTube to see Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter version) of the Justice League meet ever brilliant Charles Barkley of The Dream Team and Shaquille O’Neal of Dream Teams II and III after Game 3 of that series. Ms. Carter’s smile remains as appealing beautiful at 60 as in her heyday, though she’s clearly the victim of an overzealous maker-up.
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Superheroes Playing Sports is Gallery Of Awesomeness
Heads up on the online find of the week: Check out the excellently-named fan art website Bam! Kapow! for a frackin’ awesome gallery they just had to call “Superheroes Playing Sports.”
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On the rules of Dabo
“The first rule of Dabo is: Watch the wheel, not the girl.” – common 24th century saying
…In working the day job, building sports websites, casino guide sorta sites and the like, BuckBokai naturally spends idle thinking time pondering the rules of Dabo, that game of chance favored by customers at Quark’s Bar.
To wit: Does Dabo in fact have any rules?
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The top 10 science-fiction sports of all-time
All right, so BuckBokai tries to come off the disabled list today – yes, it seemed like a career-ending injury for a while there, thanks to Father Time (who, as Charles Barkley once so philosophically stated, is undefeated). But fingers crossed that this time BuckBokai once again plays at his steady level.
So to (re)start things off, let’s get back to the basics with a look at the Top 10 Science-Fiction Sports ever devised.
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Edward Cullen vs. Pau Gasol: Who wins?
The brainwashed
Since this piece got little to no love over at big sister ‘site BallinEurope.com, BuckBokai reruns it here – search engine voodoo be damned – for an audience perhaps more in touch with the eternal war between the supernatural undead and NBA basketball…
BuckBokai recently read the latest anti-Laker screed basketball column by ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, an alternately funny and blood-boiling confession-style bit about conditioning one’s children to cheer for the “right” sports team, i.e. Daddy’s sports team.
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R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), world’s funniest umpire and Kirk precursor
One of BuckBokai’s faves – and surely one of anyone who digs on sports and science-fiction movies – has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, has expired and gone to meet his maker, et cetera. Leslie Nielsen succumbed to complications caused by pneumonia in a Ft. Lauderdale hospital last night.
Nielsen is most remembered among sports fans (and the general movie-going populace) for his starring roles in “Airplane,” also featuring Kareem “Roger Murdock” Abdul-Jabbar, and the “Naked Gun” trilogy alongside He Who Shall Not Be Named plus a most memorable turn in episode one by Reggie Jackson. Goddamn it, too, if that umpire scene in Naked Gun I still isn’t one of moviedom’s funniest baseball scenes ever. We love it!
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Happy anniversary, Hungary’s Golden Team!
In the mode of Pardon the Interruption, happy anniversary goes out to soccer’s Golden Team! On this day in 1953, Ferenc Puskas and Team Hungary recorded possibly their greatest win of all-time in torching England at Wembley, 6-3.
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Gaze upon the swellness of Tron:Legacy triptych
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, BuckBokai’ll just let the just-released Tron: Legacy triptych speak for itself. Enjoy the digicompland goodness!
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William Webb-Ellis: Locus of alternate histories
You want to talk what-if scenarios, serious parallel universe-creating moments from the world of sports? Forget relatively trivial stuff like Michael Jordan going to the Portland Trail Blazers in the draft or Harry Frazee taking up the Chicago White Sox’ offer for George Herman Ruth: Go back to 1823 to find a guy that, through simply wanting to gain an advantage in a sports match literally changed world history.
The overwhelming majority of North Americans have never heard the man’s name, despite his literal hand in the creation of three sports currently played and enjoyed by billions. Though he never recorded an official statistic, his effect on the sports universe was a cataclysmic bolt that changed everything. Though his innovation was sometimes called “cheating” by contemporaries, his mode of play now defines leagues all over the world.
Ladies of gentlemen, BuckBokai presents the single most important figure in the history of modern sport itself: William Webb-Ellis!
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Happy 12th, Harmon Bokai!
BuckBokai today wishes an extremely happy birthday (and thus perhaps a San Francisco Giants win in game three of the World Series tonight; more on this below) to Harmon Gin Bokai. Young “Buck” was born on October 31, 1998 in Marina del Rey, California.
While no evidence that the Bokai Family still lives in the coastal town exists (most of the autobiographical information on Buck will be gotten by outlets such as this by way of a 2026 baseball card), it’s nice to think that the future Hall of Famer is growing up in the vicinity of Starfleet’s future headquarters.
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