Every Friday we pick the winners of the weekend’s hottest matchups, using a proprietary blend of cursory knowledge and straight up randomness. Home team in ALL CAPS.

TONIGHT

PHILLIES (-1.5) over Nationals. How will the Nationals blow it tonight? My money’s on “scoreboard falls into the Nats’ bullpen.”

Lakers (+5.5) over NUGGETS. This series won’t make it to seven games. Not that it matters. What’s one game in a two-month playoff format?

D’BACKS (+1.5) over Braves. Atlanta’s pitching has been gone for some time, but Chipper Jones is getting old, Francoeur is struggling, and there aren’t enough pieces for this team to contend anytime soon.

Saturday Soccer Parlay
SM Caen (+375) over BORDEAUX, MONACO (+650) over Paris Saint-Germain.

SATURDAY.

MAGIC over Cleveland. Magic in six. Stan van Jeremy gets his team into the finals.

Penguins over RED WINGS. Pittsburgh in seven. Based on absolutely nothing.

You know why everyone gets bent out of shape over power rankings? Because they always suck, without fail. Except when we do them. Then they kick ass.

1. Jessiqa Pace. She’s the woman who nearly stopped that Formula One race in Monaco. Also stopping tonight: my streak of avoiding self-mutilation.

2. LeBron James. He has carried his team to Game 6, but can they get to Game 7?

3. Homeland security. Barack Obama bobbleheads seized at the border? I don’t know if that qualifies as irony, but it’s still awesome.

4. Old-School Ads. Here’s a wonderfully sexist ad for Suburu circa 1970. Oh, what it must have been like to objectify women in mass marketing. Glad that never happens today.

5. the University of South Carolina. It’s hilarious that they call themselves “USC,” for one thing, but then they celebrate being over .500 with a full-page newspaper ad? Keep on telling yourselves how great you are, South Carolina. Eventually, somebody foolish enough will actually believe you.

Oh, and that totally reminds me of this. How did that pep talk go, Dr. Lou?

5. The MMA career of Jose Canseco. I smell another book deal!

6. Percy Harvin. Wisdom and age aren’t always directly correlated.

7. Pandas. Not to go totally panda-free this week, here’s a photo of a little panda born in Thailand. I mean…that’s either a panda or a penis with an arm.

8. The Cleveland tourism videos. In fact, TNT got Mike Polk creator to make another one. Awesome.

9. Bacon. Not even Bacon can avoid getting his phone stolen in New York.

10. Twitter. Still pointless.

Don Chavez and Buzzfeed had the poop on this bullfighter from Spain that was gored in the chest during a “performance” on Wednesday. From BF:

Israel Lancho is currently in serious condition after undergoing surgery for a 20cms hole, and we’re assuming the bull was put down shortly thereafter.

I can only hope that bull got on a boat and came to America, where we either kill the damn thing and throw it on the grill, or just let him hang out until we run out of other stuff to eat. If you hadn’t noticed in the image, that’s a goddamn SWORD in the bull’s back. Nothing better to do in Spain than dragging on the killing of animals for show? Michael Vick is plotting his comeback in the wrong country. F’ck Spain.

Watch the DC video after the jump, if you like. I’m sure it’s as disturbing as you’d expect it to be. But watching the rest of his clown posse drag him to medical attention is somewhat gratifying. Not that I’m bitter.
Read the rest of this entry »

I hope everyone realizes that the Year of the White Guy post from a couple weeks back was in the spirit of fun. It would be great to live in a world where black people and white people could hang out with each other and not crack on each other’s traditionally-perceived deficiencies, but we don’t. Anyway, in the same vein of that earlier post, here’s a great spoof of Kanye West’s “Amazing” serving as a tribute to the white basketball player. It’s quite awesome, if not humorously racist.

|Shoals @ The Baseline via KOGOD|

In the wake of the UEFA Champions League final and crazy-assed soccer fandom worldwide, a bus driver in Nigeria who also happened to be a Manchester United fan ran over four celebrating FC Barcelona fans after Barca defeated Man U 2-0. From the monolith:

The crowd in the town of Ogbo were celebrating Barcelona’s victory after Wednesday night’s match when the bus drove into them. A police spokeswoman said 10 people were injured and the driver was arrested.

“The driver had passed the crowd then made a U-turn and ran into them,” she said.

I’m really just blown away by this whole thing; it’s as weird as a couple of African-Americans in Florida getting into a fistfight over the Stanley Cup final. But I think people that are really diehard for one team have to be a frustrated lot. And I’d think bus drivers in Nigeria would have plenty on their plates to begin with. I’m sure they come home to their wives after a rough day and scream, “One of these days, Umbachukwu! Bang, zoom, to the moon!”

Charles Barkley hasn’t been much fun since he was pulled over for DUI last New Year’s Eve. He’s said all the right things about being more responsible and blah blah he still wants to gamble.

“Nobody ever complains about gambling when you’re winning. I’ve never heard a guy say, Hey, I’m winning too much money, I’m going to quit gambling.’ But my gambling had gotten to be a problem. I said I was going to take some time off,” he said.

Barkley said on the air during the NBA playoffs last June he wasn’t going to gamble for “the next year or two” after he was sued by a Las Vegas Strip casino for failing to pay $400,000 in gambling markers, or loans. He repaid his debt to the Wynn Las Vegas casino along with a $40,000 district attorney’s fee.

Barkley said he has missed making bets during football season and likely would gamble again someday.

Charles, you wanna make a bet on football? Buy a UFL team. You’ll lose less money than if you took the points on Auburn the entire season. Yeah, obviously, there’s isn’t jack going on today if we’re yapping about stuff Charles Barkley might do. I might paint my entire body green and run down Washington Boulevard kicking in car windows while screaming “WE COME IN PEACE!” But that doesn’t make it news.

|AZ Central, via FanNation|