This week's Sports Memes is the express edition due to it being a really slow week, and due to the desire to end on a high note with Ron Artest. Enjoy.
1.Jerry Richardson, King of the Impossible. Jerry Richardson has taken his share of criticism this week for condescending to Peyton Manning and Drew Brees in the now-infamous meeting between NFL players reps and owners last week.
"If he’s willing to talk to [Manning] and [Brees] that way, what do you think it says about what he and the other owners think about the rest of the players?" the source said, rhetorically.
I will not defend Richardson, since any man who can make millions off a business empire that began with a Hardee's needs no defense. Hardee's is the Black Eyed Peas of fast-food franchises. You know no one who consumes their product. That product that no one consumes is largely a collection not of their own ideas, but bits and pieces of market-tested product invented elsewhere.
(Digression: Hardee's menu at any point is, by definition, the menu of every other fast-food restaurant combined into one single menu. Currently listed on their menu: hamburgers, big hamburgers, big crazy hamburgers, tacos, fried chicken (parts and planks,) sandwiches, breakfast foods including something called "The Caramel Crumb Biscuit," shakes, apple turnovers, and a gluten-free menu. Currently running through the Black Eyed Peas speakers are snippets of rap, techno, house, disco, rock, party funk, and everything but country music. You should give them time on that, since I now predict Keith Urban will be a member of the band in two years as they age out of teens and into "roots-rock and country soccer moms." Gotta mind the demographics.)
Richardson has accomplished mythical things in his life, for sure, but this past week he accomplished another task previously thought impossible by making the NFL owners look worse than they already do in the NFL's worsening labor clash. This graph shows that given current public perception of NFL owners, this should not be scientifically possible:
Yet despite the obstacles science said he couldn't overcome, Richardson managed to sink the NFL owners' profile to new subterranean depths, and that's after a decade in which they've indebted their teams and the public of their cities by overspending on stadiums, raising ticket prices, coasting on massive television contracts earned in large part by the few teams in the league who earn their keep, and hiring their own sketchy doctor to say that data supporting a link between football-related head trauma and CTE was bogus. Well done, Hardees-bro.
2. Harvey Updyke, King Of Limbs. This will be proven to be an elaborate viral marketing scheme for the new Radiohead record, and then we will all learn how big a fan of pointless mumbling and increasingly formless songs Nick Saban truly is. (Love, a Radiohead fan who is tired of Thom Yorke mumbling.) Until then, we'll have to assume Harvey Updyke, the poisoner of the trees at Auburn's historic Toomer's Corner, acted alone and not in concert with any viral marketing agencies.
Fortunately, as heinous as the crime of killing the living emblems of the Auburn community in act of deranged fandom is, no one's trying to profit off--
3. The Prokhorov Would Like To Speak With You, Carmyelo.
Oh, hyello, Carmyelo. You've caught the Prokhorov speaking with friend Jay-Zed. You think he is so large. Next to me is a tiny man. Most are. It is the fault of no one. Fate makes me tall, wealthy, able to hold four supermodels on outstretched arms like sexy scarecrow in field of sex. It gives me ability to drink champagne of expense with Jay-Zed. He is poor compare to the Prokhorov. So are you. These two? Things to think about, Carmyelo.
(Really. He is like tiny villager next to The Prokhorov. My height superiorness is Jay-Zed's one hundredth problem.)
I ship badgers to strangers all over world. They open boxes. Find badger. Much trouble in their houses, the badger causes. I do this to show them good things in life. Power. Chaos. Badger meat, so delicate the fork cannot hold it. It slips off when I dine on it on yacht, and I and Lyudmilla and supermodels! We laugh, so tender is the badger and the sunsyet and our good feelings toward each other.
At night we set stuntmen on fire. Watch them race on the water. Dance like beach party. These things you will share with me, Carmyelo. In Denver you no doubt became friend of yak. We have yak steak for you. We have badger if you are worthy of badger. One never knows until badger meets lips.
To share the nice things. That is all I want, Carmyelo. You win and together I give you anything you want. Girls and money you know. I desire more. Yacht made of beef jerky for sharks to break teeth on. Size 22 long suit made of stitched Euros. Robot wives. Jetski vending machine, one dollar each. To taste wind on back of telepathic hippo.
I have dreams like any man. Average dreams. Share them with me. We make greatness one basketball goal at time.
4. Barcelona Loses To Barcelona. The biggest match of the week in the Champions League ended with a stunning Andrei Arshavin goal to put Arsenal up 2-1 over the seemingly invulnerable Barcelona, a team who spent the first twenty minutes or so of the first half mobbing the ball and playing what appeared to be flawless soccer. All hell broke loose when Barcelona turtled up and played conservative football in the second half, but take David Villa off the pitch and you sort of deserve what's coming to you, especially with Arsenal putting its best hyper-aggressive Barcelona impression on in response to a one goal deficit. Now all they have to do is win a game at Camp Nou! Sounds easy enough!*
*Not at all!
5. Miguel Cabrera's Amazing Mugshot.
I can't be too angry at Miguel Cabrera. He'll be punished legally for his DUI this week, and his life is now a complete wreck due to the mistake, so a word saying DURR DUI IS BAD is entirely unnecessary. What should be commended is his taste in alcohol (mmm, scotch), his candor (chugging in front of the policeman because yeah, you got me, and one more drink plz), and his sunshine-filled mug shot. Two types of people smile in mugshots: smartasses and genuinely crazy people. Cabrera is one, and I think it's nice of him to do things like smile in mugshots to let other people know that whoa, a totally crazy person is coming through, y'all. In conclusion: DUI is bad, crazy people are easier to deal with when clearly marked, and scotch (mmm, scotch).
6. Spring Training Starts, Meaning Everyone's Lost 15 Pounds And Is In The Best Shape Of Their Lives. Nothing's happening in spring training, really, but let's take a break from the fountain of spring training cliches and Albert Pujols' contract drama to remember what spring training is really all about. It's 1993, and I'm going to Clearwater to watch the Phillies in spring training because they're just down the road from my house on US 19 in Pinellas County. Any excuse to "go to USF on a college visit" would do, so I went despite not caring at all about the Phillies.
Children surrounded the batting cage. The sun shone off the helmet of John Kruk as he shuffled into the batting cage, a cluster of lank mullet curls creeping from the back of his headgear. He took the plate with a veritable fog of beer vapor surrounding him. The crowd watching batting practice perked up and anxiously awaited a clearly hungover Kruk's first swing of the day.
The ball lobbed in, and Kruk's first weak, discombobulated swing popped the ball uselessly into the netting of the batting cage directly over the plate. Kruk paused, and then yelled out as loud as humanly possible
"F*&#BALLS!!!! F#@#! S#@$BURGER! DAAAAAAAAMMMMIT!!!!"
He then turned back, spat out a rope of inky brown tobacco slime, and then gestured toward the ring of children and shocked older men surrounding the cage.
"Sorry about that."
He then repeated this cycle for twenty pitches or so with every increasing filth pouring from his mouth on every pitch. Spring training, y'all!
7. The Lakers Lose To The Cavs, But Really It's Just A Means To An End Here. The lowly Cavs did defeat the Lakers this week, but it's really just a dodge to point out another moment of Ron Artest's greatness.




