Last week, a group of students from California’s Woodcreek High School decided it would be a totally radical and boss idea to pay tribute to Miami Heat superstar LeBron James before their team’s big game against rival Roseville High. The tribute in question was James’ pregame ritual of tossing baby powder into the air, and that’s a fun ritual for James because he is one person tossing one little handful of powder.

You see, when a large group of people chooses to toss many handfuls of powder into the air, bad things can happen. For instance, people who are not expecting a large cloud of white powder to envelope them in a confined space could freak the f*ck out and start a human stampede that results in hundreds of terrified people trampling each other.

Fortunately, the result of this stupid tribute was just good, old-fashioned schadenfreude.

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And now for your sort of creepy but also sort of touching story of the day… California dude Dana McGregor originally adopted his pet goat, Goatee, so she could chomp on the foliage around his home. But then he grew to love Goatee as a pet, so he started taking the nanny goat places with him, like most people would with a dog. This included trips to San Onofre State Beach, where he eventually taught Goatee how to surf with him, as you can see in the above image from their surf excursion this past Wednesday.

While I’m not quite sure how it happened – if Goatee was already preggers or if McGregor found her a goat stud – Goatee eventually gave birth to a billy goat named Pismo. Of course, McGregor taught Pismo how to surf, too, because why not? So we now have stories, pictures, and videos of surfing dogs and goats, which closes yet another chapter in my long, thorough novel, “Why Cats are the Most Useless, Meaningless Little Balls of Allergy Death on the Planet”. Available this fall in paperback.

After the jump, check out McGregor’s special tribute to Goatee, The Surfing Goat, Goatee & Me.

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"How much ya bench?"

Part of the fun of obscure world records used to be the element of lunacy that was still combined with some sort of unique talent that made the person setting each record so remarkable. Instead, we’ve celebrated the World’s Fattest Man and Woman, the most people gathered in one place while dressed like something, and especially the most women gathered in one place in just bikinis. And now, thanks to the fine people at RecordSetters, anyone can basically set a world record for anything. How easy is it?

So wait, can anyone set a world record? Heck yes. All you need is a unique skill, a video camera and a bit of imagination. Beyond that, the rules are simple: records you submit must be quantifiable, breakable and include sufficient media evidence. Creativity is highly encouraged.

What categories are acceptable? We make it our policy to never subjectively judge submissions, as long as our basic guidelines are followed. We strongly encourage feats that push human achievement in a positive direction. See our RecordSetter Principles below.

That’s right, if you have an idea and a video camera, you can be a RecordSetter. Just like San Diego’s John Van Zant, who set his own world record last month when he bench-pressed his dog 36 times in 30 seconds on live local television. I know what you’re thinking and yes, the dog does look absolutely thrilled to be held in the air and shaken around.

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If you’re a Boston Red Sox fan still shaken by the 2011 collapse and the loss of Terry Francona and Jonathan Papelbon, you should probably sit down, because it’s about to get a lot worse. By way of Sean McAdam at Red Sox Talk:

Play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo has signed a contract extension to remain with NESN, but the network’s Red Sox telecasts will be without in-game reporter Heidi Watney next year, industry sources indicate.

Watney, whose contract had also expired, is leaving to work for Time Warner Cable in southern California. Time Warner Cable lured the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West and KCAL-TV last February with a landmark 20-year deal said be worth in excess of $2.5 billion.

To make matters feel even more like the last five minutes of Childish Gambino’s ‘That Power’, Boston Globe reporter Chad Finn explained via Twitter that Heidi is from California (in case you’d convinced yourself she was a New England native) and had been homesick for most of the four years she spent trying to do her job and not bend over in front of anybody at Fenway Park.

But, as the old saying goes, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I’ve put together a montage of photos and videos from Heidi’s time in Boston, and every time your heart sinks thinking about her standing center-court in an empty Staples Center, holding a microphone, interviewing nobody, you can flip back through and remember the good old days. Good luck in Los Angeles, Heidi. I hope a beautiful blonde can find fame there.

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Hey Dodgers fans, remember the good old days, back when Frank McCourt was a principled, passionate businessman who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and led L.A. to championship prosperity alongside his beautiful, fresh-faced wife Jamie? Are you able to recall how Baseball Camelot dissolved into a two-year long hodge podge of bankruptcy, behind-closed-doors usurping and “who owns which parking lot”-style tough guy back-and-forth? Well, 24 months and $20.6 million in legal bills later, the McCourts have reached a Dodgers-related divorce settlement, readying fans for a return to … well, one of those times.

From the LAT Sports page:

Frank and Jamie McCourt have reached a divorce settlement under which she would get about $130 million and relinquish any claim to a share of the Dodgers, multiple people familiar with the agreement told The Times.

The settlement would remove Jamie McCourt as an obstacle to Frank McCourt’s plan to retain ownership of the team by selling the Dodgers’ television rights in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The agreement also would appear to set up a winner-take-all court showdown for the Dodgers between Frank McCourt and Commissioner Bud Selig.

As straight-forward as that reads, even that gets followed by a “the people familiar with the agreement spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement has not been finalized”. That’s really the defining statement of the costliest divorce in California history; if the Los Angeles Times posted a story saying “Frank McCourt says sky is blue” they’d have to follow it with “however, due to outstanding legal claims, the McCourts would like to announce that the atmosphere and light scattering contribute to the sky’s purported blueness, though the science could neither be confirmed or denied at this time”.

The other key is the “winner-take-all court showdown” line, which hopefully leads to Frank McCourt and Bud Selig battling each other with pugil sticks on raised platforms above a room filled waist-high with Manny Ramirez dread-wigs.

Like this, but with just a little more sexual tension.

Skydiving instructor Alex Torres has found himself out of a job and under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration after a recent stunt that he pulled off with the help of Skydive Taft administrative assistant, Hope Howell. Last weekend, the duo woke up early and took off in a company plane for a little tandem dive… *plays Barry White song* … and they had sex all over the sweet morning sky.

Torres, who I should also mention is an adult film star known as “Voodoo,” and Howell began having sex in the plane before jumping out and continued bumping uglies a few thousand feet over the city of Taft, California, all to get the attention of Howard Stern. And while no police charges are being filed because “no one complained,” the sex act apparently upset one teenage boy, and now the FAA is investigating Torres and Howell because:

“Anyone who allows an activity to occur that could affect his or her ability to concentrate on flying the aircraft or could result in the pilot being physically jostled or lose control of the aircraft could constitute a violation of federal aviation regulations.” – Ian Gregor, FAA Spokesman

Oh come on, Bobby Buzzkill. This is just the man trying to keep us down and flaccid. All that’s happening here is a case of a kid who didn’t like the mean man choking the woman’s bottom mouth so he told on them. And last time I checked, you can’t really punish two people for doing something that there’s not really any proof they did. It’s not like there is video of the whole thing going down.

Haha, just kidding, there’s totally video.

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