This past weekend was about legends. It was about honoring the old guard and celebrating one sport’s superstars. As you can obviously tell from the banner image, that sport is dog surfing. On Saturday, the 6th annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon competition took place in Del Mar, California, and the event, hosted by the Helen Woodward Animal Center, raised more than $100,000 for orphaned pooches. And I like to imagine that they all live in a really cool surf academy called “Surf’s Pup!” because that would be awesome.

The star of the weekend was Buddy, the 14-year old Jack Russell terrier, who not only became the first dog inducted into the Surf Dog Hall of Fame, but also won his fifth Surf-A-Thon title. He’s like the Boston of dogs.

“That last heat was probably the best of Buddy’s life,” Bruce Hooker, Buddy’s owner, said during the ceremony.

(Via Ohmidog)

Adding: “But it still wasn’t as good as the heat he got from those poodles after the event, AMIRIGHT?” Who doesn’t love a good dog sex pun?

Other highlights included the first-ever dog surfing world record, which was set by Australian Kelpie Abbie’G when she rode a wave 65-freaking-yards, as well as a failed attempt for most dogs on one surfboard. Better luck next year, adorably terrified dogs!

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Who says that September 11 has to be a downer? This Sunday, as we all settle into our couch grooves for another season of NFL action, an event of epic proportions will be taking place in Del Mar, California. Not only will dogs of all breeds, ages, and sizes be taking to Dog Beach for our favorite annual event – Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon – but the Helen Woodward Animal Center will also be announcing the first inductee into the event’s brand new Hall of Fame. That lucky pooch is Buddy, a 14-year old Jack Russell terrier.

“This honor is validation that Buddy’s a good surfer,” [Buddy’s owner Bruce] Hooker told HuffPost Weird News. “He’s a special dog.”

Former surf journalist Nedra Abramson, who now organizes the Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon, agrees, hence the decision to honor him as the first inductee.

“Buddy does it for the right reasons,” she said. “He loves to surf — and he does turns! It’s like he’s a reincarnated surfer. He’s brought the sport great notoriety.” (Via Huffington Post)

There’s plenty of other praise in the article about why Buddy and Bruce do what they do and the insinuation that the dog is surfing for “the right reasons” is hilarious enough. But screw it, the event is incredible and it helps dogs find new homes, so they could tell people that Buddy’s doing it to score major dog poon and I’d still rub his tummy and call him a good boy. Now if I could just get my dog to learn how to do anything.

Check out Buddy in action after the jump.

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Watching Huntington Beach, California, little league pitcher Braydon Salzman get cranked in the face by a *PINK* sound effect and a line-drive is not funny. There’s no way you could expect him to react in time. Even a line-drive leaving the bat of a 40-pound little leaguer could severely injure or even kill you. If you watch the video, it starts off scary — you don’t know if the kid is going to come up with both of his eyeballs. He can’t make the play at first, but he eventually stands up under his own power and gets an ovation. That clears the way for something very special to happen: super slow motion replay.

Super slow motion replay can make almost anything funny (and beautiful, come to think of it), and you can’t help but laugh watching the ball crush this kid’s flat-ass brim and knock him to the ground. The announcers point out that he’s hurt and scared, but “more upset that it might’ve ruined the brim of his cap … he likes it so straight!” Something about the analytical tone of the call makes me laugh out loud.

As if this wasn’t funny enough, the next pitch the kid throws bounces in the dirt and ricochets into the umpire’s balls.

[h/t Failblog]

Nobody in the NFL knows how to handle the fights and shootings that went down Saturday at Candlestick Park. Yesterday, 49ers owner Jed York used them as an excuse to push the 18-game season, because “people without season tickets” were the cause of violence. Today, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the NFL and local police “strongly support” ending the annual preseason contest altogether.

Though the two teams haven’t told each other that they don’t want to play the game any more, the NFL source said that there is no way the game will be played next year, the year after and maybe longer than that.

It’s likely that the discontinuation of the annual games won’t be announced—the match-up will just disappear from the preseason schedules of both teams next year (when it was due to be held in Oakland) and will not re-appear.

Is it weird to anyone else that “more football” and “no football” are the only two plans of action?

As it was astutely pointed out by Chris Chase over at Shutdown Corner, a guy in Raiders gear shot a guy in an anti-49ers shirt, so is there a problem with 49ers fans and Raiders fans or just sports fans in metropolitan California? Is taking football away from football fans the answer? Does every away team who shows up and witnesses fan violence have to leave forever? Do we build an invisible, semipermeable dome over San Francisco, or play 49ers games in a walled-off high-rise for the rich citizens?

That’s an exaggeration, obviously, but how hard is it for somebody in the NFL front office to say “hey, maybe we shouldn’t feed these guys beer all day and let them roam around unsupervised in the parking lots”? I don’t feel comfortable thinking we need a police escort every time we’re in public, but Jesus, it’s better than dying for football.

Normally, Tosh.0 posts on With Leather involve web redemptions for the Phillies tazer kid or the “boom goes the dynamite” guy. Best case scenario, Manny Pacquiao has just punched him in the face and you need to know about it.

This week’s requisite Tosh post spotlights the $150,000 Tosh.0 Marathon, wherein thousands of people gathered to run on treadmills on Hermosa Beach in California to see how far they could get before a Kenyan runner finished first. As if that weren’t enough, the marathon featured magicians, stairmasters, improv sketch comedy and a bunch of horrible racism that is okay because he’s kidding. You can check out the video below, but be aware of all the cursing and slow motion lady-running before you click play.

The best part is even Tosh being unable to mock the affable Kenyan guy at the end. I did the math, and if I’d participated in this with my sharp 17-minute mile, I would’ve logged about 7/10th of one before giving up and having fun on the beach.

[via Tosh.0]

Back in April I put up a video of Real Madrid winning the Copa del Rey, then promptly dropping and running over it with a double-decker bus. That’s the sort of mishap that mishappens once in a lifetime, right? Well, it turns out Real Madrid is really into committing vehicular manslaughter on the things they love, because now they’ve dropped a woman and run over her with a golf cart.

A rundown of events (cough) via Brooks Peck at Dirty Tackle:

While the players were being transported around the [UCLA] campus, one female fan decided to bum-rush one of the moving carts. She apparently didn’t consider the science of what happens when a person runs directly into a moving golf cart, because she got run over. The cart stopped momentarily before zooming off on its merry way.

The best part is the Hit And Run, because the guy filming just sort of goes “heh” and everyone moves on with their lives. No additional information is known about the victim at this time, but I’ve got a couple of working theories:

1. The woman was trying to commit suicide in the most uptight, Caucasian way possible (via a golf cart carrying a soccer team on a California college campus).
2. The woman was simply blind and jogging in the wrong direction.
3. The woman is Kevin James, and this is one of 800 similar jokes in his next movie.

Regardless, this is the least alert soccer team of all time. I hope you guys never crash your plane in the Andes Mountains, you’ll be dead within 20 minutes.