Speculation had been swirling for the past week or so about the identity of this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model, and all signs justifiably pointed to our favorite 19-year old supermodel Knicks fan, Kate Upton, earning the honor. After all, she was mentioned no less than 764,872,358,725,361 times on this website in 2011, and I’m pretty sure that’s the top priority that SI uses when choosing each cover model. Also, it didn’t hurt that multiple online gossip sites had leaked the Upton news days ago, but we’re going to pretend like we didn’t know so we don’t look like morons wearing only these party hats over our crotches.

As for Upton, she couldn’t be happier, and I’m not basing that on her smile, because my binoculars broke yesterday. Instead, I’m just going by this quote from People Magazine:

“In the beginning you’re pretty relaxed, you’re not thinking of new poses and it just feels really natural at that point,” she says. “At Sports Illustrated everyone’s so nice and it’s like a family, you don’t really think too much into it. I just have a lot of fun and be myself. It just comes so naturally.”

Upton’s cover was officially revealed on the Late Show with David Letterman last night, but it was reported that a shipment of the magazines was delivered to a gas station in Michigan early. That gas station? Shangri-La.

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Links

Australia Is Getting DC Comics License Plates? From The 80s? - One day I’ll live in a happier world where I’m able to drive a car and let people know how much I love the comic Prez at the same time. [Gamma Squad]

Now With Us, The Very Public Face Of Grief - I’m happy to have KSK around for stories like this. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

I Can’t Stop Looking At This - Matt Ufford reveals that he doesn’t find America’s Next Top Model’s Allison Harvard attractive, an issue that causes us to come to blows in real life. I don’t care what elite fighting force you were a part of, I will go down swinging. [Warming Glow]

38 Seconds - In all seriousness, though, With Leather wants to wish everybody out there a happy Veteran’s Day. Be sure to check out Uff’s latest piece on the veteran experience, because it’s pretty goddamn outstanding. [The Classical]

Endurance Football, Or, Football Played On A Mile-Long Field - I love everything about this, and am calling dibs on a roster spot should a real game of it ever go down. [SB Nation]

Mark Henry 2010 Vs. Mark Henry 2011 - It’s amazing how far you can come in a year. Also, “Mark forgetting how chasing works” is one of my shoot favorite wrestling moments ever. [Fair To Flair]

Apparently Asteroids Will Have A Writer - I hope this is a success so I can finally get my gritty, reimagined Pitfall! pushed through. (spoiler: it explains why the alligators are there) [Film Drunk]

12 NBA Young Guns To Watch (If There’s A Season) - You can’t just be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean, earn your keep. [Smoking Section]

DMX On Dr. Drew’s ‘Lifechangers’ - He should feel DMX’s testicles on-air to see if they’re real. [RealTalkNY]

First Listen: Childish Gambino – ‘Camp’ - If you haven’t heard it yet, NPR is streaming the entire album for free. ‘That Power’ is my favorite song of the year. The rest of the album is a close second. [NPR]

PWO Four Year Anniversary Video Preview - There are few things in this world I miss more than Cleveland. Check out this retrospective to see who all those Oh-Bro indy wrestlers I’m namedropping in my Best and Worst of Raw column are. [Dirty Dirty Sheets]

Quote Of The Day: Gina Carano Says Fighting An Opponent Feels Just Like Having Sex With Them - I would like to fight Gina Carano. Just saying. [Cage Potato]

The big horse racing event of the weekend was clearly the 28th Breeders Cup Turf at Churchill Downs and its $26 million purse on Saturday, as 18-year old Joseph O’Brien, riding St. Nicholas Abbey, became the youngest jockey to win the event. And while that’s all fine and dandy if you’re a fan of Irish horses, the real horse racing fun began last Thursday in Australia with the Crown Oaks race during Oaks Day. I mean, as if I even had to tell you that.

The race was a “star”-studded affair with celebrities like Elizabeth Hurley, Joan Collins, some girl named Ruby Rose, former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, and a slew of other people I’ve never heard of showing up to watch horses run in a circle. But the brightest star of the bunch was Sarah Jessica Parker, who was in the country/continent to promote her new, incredibly aptly-titled film, I Don’t Know How She Does It. Parker looked fantastic as she waved to the crowd and posed for pictures with the winning jockey, Danny Nikolic. However, there was a brief scare when she tripped on the track and medical personnel attempted to put her down.

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As most of our half-drunk, all-miserable middle school social studies teachers taught us, Australia was destined for coolness from the very first day that the British started shipping their criminals there. In fact, it’s pretty disappointing in retrospect that the American colonies couldn’t make Georgia cooler than it is, but we can’t change history. We can only celebrate what it has given us.

In this case, Australia’s history has given us great things like kangaroos, boomerangs, giant beer cans, the first two Crocodile Dundee movies, and newspaper stories about koala bears in car crashes. This past weekend, though, Australia outdid itself, as 357 women of all ages (but mostly within our key pervert demographic) gathered to recapture the most important world record of all-time – the longest bikini parade.

Australia had previously broken the record a few years back but it was later captured by efforts in Las Vegas and most recently the Cayman Islands. But now this prestigious honor returns to where it belongs, in the Down Under with a hoard of attractive women. Alas, I would be lying if I said I did not want for other countries to continuously challenge this record for the sake of competition. And if they could do it every week around Tuesday, that would work perfectly for our traffic.

Enjoy the best of Australia’s newest and most important world record.

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In 2007, Englishman Marek Turowsk had a dream – he wanted to set the world land speed record for a couch. It’s a bold, silly dream, sure. But who are we to deny a man’s ambition? Within a year, Turowsk showed the world that dreams do come true, as he launched his couch with a rocket or engine or something like that inside of it to a mind-blowing speed of 148 km/h. My conversion may be off but I think that’s like 1,000 miles per hour.

Sadly, Australia’s Paul McKinnon said, “F*ck your couch” this week and shattered Turowsk’s record by driving his couch 163 km/h. That’s like light speed, I think. So why do you do this? Better yet, how do you do this?

“It’s the oddest vehicle we’ve ever built,” he said.

“With race cars, you can use the aerodynamic body kit … but with the couch, it was a matter of just doing what we could. We tried to break the airflow with the coffee table.”

(Via The Herald Sun)

As for that “Why?” question, the answer is pretty simple – money. The coffee table was presumably added because the coffee company Ice Break came up with the idea for McKinnon and his team to break this record so they could add a coffee table to their couch and call it cross-promotional. Whatever, a company could offer me a million dollars to swallow a condom full of scorpions and I’d probably check to make sure my camera was charged.

I just miss the days when America had competitive leisure furniture vehicles. Time to find your priorities, Obama.

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Anderson Silva defeated Yushin Okami at UFC 134 without even really trying, but the weekend’s best fight took place in Australia on Friday night between the Melbourne Storm and the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles. Melbourne’s Adam Blair and Manly’s Glenn Stewart went toe-to-toe after a little push and shove, a little push and shove, a little push and shove, WHACK from their teammates and it is all you want a rugby fight to be.

The announcers and slow motion replay made it sound and look pretty awesome (and it looked like two T-Rexes trying to claw each other in the face), but not everyone enjoyed it.

“It certainly wasn’t a good look for our game,” said Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy.

Like anything else that happens in the world, YouTube is divided into two camps: Camp one says this is normal and should be expected from a sport where rule one is to beat the sh*t out of each other, and camp two says “thugs” or “thuggery” or some form of weirdly-veiled cultural insult. Judge for yourself.

[h/t Off the Bench]