Posted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
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.
Posted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
Terry Gilliam’s Hallowdega: *The* Halloween sports highlight
BuckBokai’s not sure from exactly where Terry Gilliam’s apparent recent interest in NASCAR racing came from, but if it means a new Gilliam flick on Halloween, who cares?
Reads press material, in part:
“For decades, legend and lore have swirled around the 2.66 miles of asphalt that make up racing’s fastest track: Talladega Superspeedway. This Halloween, in celebration of the AMP Energy Juice 500 at Talladega on October 31st, the world will learn the truth.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 0 Comments
21st century sports: Snowboard Basketball
Now that winter’s getting ready to set in over wide swathes of North America and Northern Europe, let’s hope we see a revival of the greatest 21st-century sport invented in 2010: Snowboard basketball.
Posted by Os Davis | 0 Comments
Rangers vs. Giants World Series: The future is here
Well, welcome to the future: the San Francisco Giants (!) and Texas Rangers (!!!!) will meet in the 2010 World Series, thereby giving the first World Series title ever to one of these entities, snapping a half-century long deprivation of such, and eliminating the possibility of using either squad to represent far-flung o-so-strange science-fiction futures.
Like the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates to which BuckBokai devoted an earlier entry, the Giants and Rangers are seeking to break historically notable runs of futility. In fact, the vanquished team in 2010 goes home with the second-longest active run of World Series futility. Reads the all-time list:
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 0 Comments
Sports Guy on boring stuff, Unbreakable 2
Bill Simmons, a.k.a. The Sports Guy over at ESPN.com, has outdone BuckBokai – imagine that – and in his latest LOL-packed mailbag column, Simmons riffs on “Seven Topics You Should Never Discuss.” The ‘Guy brings some salient points to the discussion about the undiscussable; unfortunately, his list is rather bereft of science-fiction references.
You should never discuss, proclaimeth the Simmons:
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 11 Comments
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.
Posted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
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?
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
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.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
Insights from parallel universe: Iverson goes to Olympiacos
Sometimes seemingly minor incidents in the grander scheme of sports history are exactly the opposite, for who can truly know the axis upon which events revolve?
Going into the 2009-10 NBA season, a handful of European news outlets tersely reported a rumor that those freewheeling, free-spending Angelopoulos Brothers running the Olympiacos basketball club had offered one Allen Iverson a huge chunk of change to come play in Greece with the Reds.
Yours truly’s speculation then was that ultimately substituting A.I. for Linas Kleiza – for as things turned out in the market last year, Kleiza was the highest-end free-agent the Brothers could coerce to jump the pond to play hoops – would have gotten the Reds off to the exact same start, namely near the top of the EΣAKE and Euroleague tables. (After all, i argued then, there’s nothing even A.I. could’ve done about the H1N1 that struck several members of the club numb for weeks.)
Now that this unfortunate season for both Iverson and Olympiacos are in the books, we have more details to expand the parallel universe of 2009-10 basketball.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 2 Comments
Brett Favre might retire, believed to be former Obsidian Order officer
In one of the most nauseating annually repeated stories in recent sports history, mainstream news outlets are once again paying attention to that Elim Garak of the NFL future Hall of Famer Brett Favre and his on-again/off-again talk of retirement. Reports ESPN.com this morning:
Favre has informed the Vikings he will not return to Minnesota for a second season, according to multiple reports.
Favre has sent text messages to teammates saying, “This is it,” league sources told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
Here’s the thing. BuckBokai has figured for years that this whole will-he-won’t-he dance is a charade worthy of Starfleet’s favorite Cardassian tailor. To wit: Brett Favre *simply doesn’t want to go through the grueling workouts of training camp.* That’s it, seriously. Waiting for a decision like this every summer is tantamount to Lebron James’ ballyhooed PR-heavy exit strategy.
Except every year.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 5 Comments
Bukimi no Tani Genshō Gō Gō Gō (or, Why the Speed Racer Movie was So Bad)
One of the key scientific theories of the 21st century is certain to be Masahiro Mori’s Bukimi no Tani Genshō, a.k.a. “The Uncanny Valley” Theory. The supposition suggests that as robots or animated objects more closely and closely approach a human form, the more likely there are to cause revulsion in a human observer until a great degree of realism exists.
ESPN.com’s excellent Patrick Hruby applied the Uncanny Valley Theory to video games back in 2005 (How long ago was that? Check out the image from the Madden ’06 he’s reviewing) and, by inference via BuckBokai’s idol Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
Posted by Os Davis | 3 Comments
Happy Turn Ahead the Clock Week!
Today is July 25th, which means BuckBokai will take this opportunity to celebrate that greatest of real-life sports events ever, namely the Turn Ahead the Clock games held by Major League Baseball in 1998 and 1999.
Begun with a single freaky promotion designed as a parody of “Turn Back the Clock Nights,” the first such game featuring futuristic duds happened on July 18, 1998 in a game pitting the Kansas City Royals against the Seattle Mariners. (Is there anything Seattle couldn’t do in the 1990s?)
Read More