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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.
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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.
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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:
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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:
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Tweets of the Week
Over at BuckBokai’s big sister site BallinEurope.com, this writer’s posting his top tweets of the week and due to technical issues (don’t ask; they’ll be solved soon), BiE needs a metaphorical hand.
Thus, this post of the top 10 basketball-related tweets of the past week — the week in which BuckBokai may have fallen in love with the medium.
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Dirk Nowitzki in Tron, animated form
Dirk Nowitzki’s always been a bit science-fictional, a larger-than-life spieler who remains suspiciously impervious to the ravages of time or physical injury: The lifetime Dallas Maverick has played in 920 of a possible 952 regular-season games, a 96.64% attendance rate, in his 12-year career while maintaining mostly consistent per game scoring averages of 23.4 to 26.6 over the past nine seasons.
In fact, coupled with an accent once frighteningly similar to the Governator’s, one might wonder if Nowitzki is actually a cyborg sent from the future to terminate all NBA scoring records – or at least set a high bar for Europeans in the NBA.
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Review: “Danger on the Martian Links”
The BuckBokai 40th-anniversary retrospective of DC Comics’ “Strange Sports Stories” mini-run appearing in Brave and the Bold issues 45-49 continues. Today: The Brave and the Bold backup story in issue 46, “Danger on the Martin Links,” a nice attempt in the subsubgenre and nearly inspired enough to neutralize the idiocy of “The Hotshot Hoopsters” somewhat, is reviewed.
Whoof. Well, after the debacle that was the Brave and the Bold no. 46 lead story, i.e. “The Hot-Shot Hoopsters,” science-fiction sports fans will be pleased to hear that the backup tale is actually not bad. Not great, mind you, but with a glimmer of interesting material and a glimpse at what might have been.
(Or “what would be,” perhaps – BuckBokai still has high hopes for DC Comics’ “Strange Sports Stories” mini(?)-series of 1973-74, to be read through and reviewed after finishing up the BotB run.)
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Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1960 win: A science-fictional notion
From the Synchronicity Department comes a neat little tidbit from Robert Sheckley’s Immortality Inc. (You know, the book they totally warped to make the awesomely weird Freejack.)
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Brainwashed again by Schoolhouse Rock
Just because BuckBokai has a blog and wants to share the pain … see, not too long ago, yours truly turned the little bucks (ages 5 and 3½) onto “Schoolhouse Rock.”
For those of you not ancient enough to remember, these were catchy three-minute educational short animated films cleverly disguised as music videos (or were they music videos cleverly disguised as educational short animated films?) that ran between your regularly-scheduled cartoons on Saturday and Sunday mornings. See, back in the late 70s/early 80s, we didn’t have cable TV and … ah, you’d never believe it. Just go with it.
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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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