"What is a lamp, you nincompoop? It's a Major Award. I won it!"

When Josh Sundquist was 9-years old, he was diagnosed with bone cancer and the doctors gave him a 50/50 chance to live, according to his website’s bio. Ultimately, he had his left leg amputated after a year of chemotherapy, and I don’t know about you folks, but I don’t know how an adult could deal with that, let alone a 10-year old kid. But when doctors informed Josh at age 13 that he was cancer-free, he decided that he wanted to be a skier. Not only that, he wanted to compete in ski racing, which just makes me feel like an ass for skipping the gym for the past two three four five every month.

And not only was he eventually named to the US Paralympic Ski Team, and not only did he compete at the 2006 Paralympics in Turino, Italy (he didn’t win any medals, but neither did you), and not only is he the only athlete in history to be named to the Paralympic Ski Team and the US Amputee Soccer Team, but he also has a hell of a sense of humor about everything. That’s why he’s a bestselling author, a national spokesman for the Combined Federal Campaign, and the winner of this year’s athlete Halloween costume contest.

Josh dressed up as the lamp from A Christmas Story, and yes, it’s as fantastic as it sounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a kid who grew up fearing the pink aisle because of what it said about me, I’m happy kids like this are starting to exist.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I spent Christmas Eve facepalming in Cowboys Stadium and I don’t even like the Cowboys. If you got gifts and want to let strangers know about them, tell us what you got in the comments section below. We’ve got staggered, “thread” style commenting enabled now, so people can troll you directly.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather
- Follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and Burnsy @MayorBurnsy
- Like us on Facebook.

Links

On A Christmas Story, Its Lessons For Hip-Hop & Biggie Smalls - “Rich and chocolate like Ovaltine!” – Ludacris, probably [Smoking Section]

New And Improved And Watchable Jingle All The Way - This makes me want to spend all day watching Commando. [UPROXX]

The 100 Greatest Christmas Shows - My pal Mike Westfall’s list from 2004, which sadly cannot include Annie Edison putting baby Jesus in the tree. Still a pretty definitive list. [Progressive Boink]

All I Want For Christmas Is A ‘Game Of Thrones’ Teaser And A Fresh Prince Reunion - My weirdest and most Abed-like career goal is to buy (or recreate) the set from The Fresh Prince, live there, and occasionally have James Avery stop by and hang out with me. Getting him to say WHAT THE BLAZES would be a bonus. [Warming Glow]

20 Screaming Santa Visits - I feel like kids who cry on Santa’s lap are fundamentally wrong, and this should be an indicator that what you’re doing isn’t working. A child should not be terrified of someone who wants to give them tons of gifts and already has their parents’ permission. They’re going to suck when they get older. [Buzzfeed]

The Colts Choked When They Tried To Suck - That gif is just the greatest thing in the world. And yes, the Texans blowing that game was a Christmas present to Indianapolis and/or St. Louis, you can’t convince me otherwise. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Hey Zelda Fans – The Timeline Exists, And Here It Is - I can’t believe I’m actually looking at this thing. It’s like I’ve found my way to El Dorado. [Gamma Squad]

Every Batman Suit Ever - Also, a great reminder that everything ever said by Batman not written for The Animated Series or the Justice League cartoon is f**king stupid sounding. [Film Drunk]

The 25 Greatest MMA Photos Of 2011 - MMA would be 100% better if they didn’t do that forced staredown thing every single time. Also, pro wrestling would be better if they didn’t try to do the MMA staredown for their video packages every week. [Cage Potato]

Lindsey Vonn Says She Isn’t Dating Tim Tebow - … but isn’t “opposed” to dating him. Well, hopefully that changed after this weekend. [Sportress Of Blogitude]

ACW: Delusions Of Our Childish Days 2011 - The Dirty Dirty Sheets review of the latest Anarchy show in Austin. Still not 100% on why I’m not their correspondent for these things, but hey. Rachel Summerlyn in a Santa suit. [DirtyDirtySheets]

Chris Weidman asking Santa Claus for a win over Tom Lawlor on Saturday at UFC 139 is funny enough, but Santa not knowing what that is and thinking “MMA” means military is the stuff of legend. That’s the downside of being stuck up at the North Pole negotiating the theories of light-speed travel and using slave labor to make Christmas Holiday toys all year, you don’t get to keep up with what’s happening on TUF.

Maggie Hendricks at Cagewriter provides a thorough analysis:

Santa has no idea what the UFC is, but that’s OK. He’s pretty busy this time of year, so he doesn’t know that Weidman is 6-0. The elves didn’t tell him that Weidman won his last bout in a first-round guillotine, and that he is bringing excellent wrestling skills into the cage against Lawlor.

The opposite of this video would be funny, too. Imagine Cain Velasquez sitting on the Easter Bunny’s lap at his local mall and asking for a victory, only to have the Bunny be all, “whatever, you need to challenge more, I’m a symbol of pagan fertility, not a miracle worker”. And come to think of it, I want all of our folkloric heroes to be knowledgeable about mixed-martial arts. Next time I lose a tooth, I’m putting it under my pillow alongside some Bellator predictions and see if the Tooth Fairy thinks I’m full of sh*t for picking Chandler over Alvarez.

A few things before we place our votes.

- Be sure to read The Best And Worst Of WWE Hell In A Cell before reading this week’s report. Yes, there was a pay-per-view on Sunday. Another one!

- For those of you who want to follow the column more closely, be sure to – like us on Facebook!, Follow us on Twitter so you never miss an update, or follow me personally (I’ll talk to you about wrestling, I swear). We had a few technical difficulties earlier today, so I apologize for the lateness of this.

- Okay, you got me, I was busy screen-capping Kaitlyn.

- The last few columns have seen a decrease in comments, so don’t let that happen. Drop us a comment when you’re done reading and let me know what you thought of the show or the report.

Enjoy the column, or at least the first 90 minutes.

Read the rest of this entry »