I'm gonna try to win the Pulitzer with this one.

Austin, Texas, has 8-10 festivals every weekend, but this weekend was a big one: the 7th annual Fun Fun Fun Fest, featuring a reunited Run DMC, everyone from Public Image Ltd to X to f**king Kreayshawn and a cannon that shoots tacos. It’s the weird little brother of SXSW, and it’s the best.

It’s also full of sports, and because 1) I was there, and 2) I run a sports blog, I documented all of it to share with you here. I actually got to participate in some of it, too. My jobs as a returning judge for the Air Sex Championships and hosting gig for a veggie hot dog eating contest got me billed as a “Yellow State Artist,” meaning I performed (as it were) on the same stage as David Cross, Eugene Mirman, H. Jon Benjamin, Saul Williams and a magician who did a racist ventriloquist act and pulled ribbons out of a chicken’s ass. It was one of the coolest, best experiences I’ve ever had, and that’s not even mentioning how I got a crowd of hipsters to join me in a Daniel Bryan “YES” chant.

Inside this Golden Treasury of sports photos you’ll find:

- Skateboarding and BMX at “Ride The Plank,” sponsored by Project LOOP
- Pro wrestling courtesy of local pals Anarchy Championship Wrestling
- Mechanical bull riding
- The aforementioned Air Sex Championships, which gets covered a lot on With Leather these days and is exactly what it sounds like.
- The veggie hot dog eating contest

Stick around until the very end to see a shirtless fat guy in a horse mask squaring off against a punk rock pornstar. That is not clickbait, that actually happened. I love you, Fun Fun Fun Fest.

Read the rest of this entry »

As an extremely, extremely low-level celebrity in the Austin, Texas, area, I’ve gotten to participate in a lot of cool things. I’m co-hosting a veggie hot dog eating contest at this year’s Fun Fun Fun Fest, I’ve participated in a Megaphone Show at the best comedy theater in town and during Fantastic Fest (not to be confused with Fun Fun Fun Fest … we have a lot of fests) I was asked to be a judge at an Air Sex Championships show.

Of course, that was just an exhibition for the festival. The formal competition round for the next cycle of Air Sex Champions returned to Austin on Wednesday night at The Highball, and because I guess I did an okay job telling people they were good or bad at f**king invisible objects the first time, I was asked back as a judge. If you remember our exclusive coverage of the last time they were in town you’ll recognize a few returning competitors, but most importantly you’ll recognize me, sitting there at the table in the background secretly reverting back into 6-year old Super Christian Brandon and asking God to forgive me.

Big thanks to Lex Lybrand of Greenless Studios for these glorious action shots of the event. If you haven’t been to a live Air Sex show and it comes to your area (and it will … it tours nationwide), check it out. If not, I’ll bring a camera on stage with me next time and show you some horrible angles you’re missing from the crowd.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s With Spandex guest is Veda Scott, a talented young wrestler who you may’ve seen interviewing stars backstage at Ring Of Honor, hyping upcoming events from the CHIKARA offices or competing in the ring everywhere from Beyond Wrestling in the Northeast to Absolute Intense Wrestling in the Midwest. Oh, and she just graduated from law school.

In episode 4 we laugh about concussions, talk about Veda’s announcement as one of the eight women competing in Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s American Joshi Queen Of Queens tournament, throw shade at community college documentary filmmaking classes, discuss our favorite episodes of ‘Forensic Files’, compare and contrast our identical housecats, complain extensively about Kings Dominion turning three great old rides into one terrible super coaster and the value of pro wrestling perfection. It was a great conversation. About 20 minutes of it in the middle is nothing but bar exam study questions.

Go ahead and give it a listen. You love her already.

Subscribe to With Spandex on iTunes (finally) here: With Spandex on iTunes

RSS Feed: With Spandex

Direct download of the episode here: With Spandex Episode 4 – Veda Scott

Follow Veda on Twitter: @itsvedatime
For more information on the ACW Queen of Queens tournament: American Joshi Queen Of Queens
For more information on CHIKARA’s Chikarasaurus Rex iPPV and free Veda-filled pre-show: Chikarasaurus Rex

Podcast notes:

Read the rest of this entry »

There are two major perks to living in Austin, Texas, and I’ll let you decide which one is better:

1. We have a festival for something every two weeks.
2. We’re one of the stops on the nationally touring Air Sex World Championships series.

If you haven’t seen an Air Sex competition before, you’re in for a treat. Possibly a stomach ache too, but definitely a treat. Air Sex works just like Air Guitar, except instead of pretending to play guitar you’re pretending to rail or be railed by any number of invisible persons, things and objects. It’s … an experience.

The Air Sex Championships rolled into town to help unofficially kick off this week’s Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival as both comedy and oddity, and With Leather representatives were there to exclusively capture the action.

Reader discretion is advised. Sort of.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, this happened.

After something like four months of vague promising, I’m happy to present to you episode one of With Leather’s brand new pro wrestling podcast, the appropriately named “With Spandex”.

If you’re a fan of the Best And Worst Of WWE Raw column, give this a listen. Every week I’ll going to be talking to a performer, writer or personality from THIS BUSINESS~, and this week I’m lucky enough to debut the show with Austin, Texas, and Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s own Rachel Summerlyn. She’s the blonde with another guy’s blood in her hair in the banner image. Yes, she is that awesome.

Check out episode one of the program below, with some helpful visual aids regarding what we’re talking about to follow. I want you to treat this just like the Raw column — I want to see your comments, Facebook likes, tweets and shares. I also want to see you at Anarchy’s show on Sunday, but we’ll get to that later.

Direct download available here: With Spandex Episode 1 – Rachel Summerlyn

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]