And, you know, also Louisville for winning the national championship. But mostly Rick Pitino, and his OH GOD WHAT I DON’T WANNA DIE fireworks avoidance. The poor guy has nightmares of Uncle Sam living under his bed. Also, he’s a vampire. More on that after the jump. (via OTB)

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Links

Your Complete Guide To 90s Stars Who Have Randomly Popped Up On ‘Mad Men’ |UPROXX|

UPROXX Video: Is ‘Mad Men’ For Real? |Warming Glow|

Amanda Bynes “burst into tears when she attempted a cartwheel and her wig fell off” |Film Drunk|

Real Life Phil Dunphy Steals The Show At Chicago White Sox Loss |With Leather|

Russian Bears Getting Crunk On Jet Fuel Are Our Anti-Drug |Gamma Squad|

Yeah Yeah Yeahs To Concert-Goers: Put Those “Motherf*cking” Cameras Away |Smoking Section|

Report: Four Gay NFL Mascots In Discussions To Come Out Together |Kissing Suzy Kolber|

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Hey, remember hockey?

The NHL eliminated 16 more days from the regular-season schedule Monday, and if a deal with the players’ association isn’t reached soon the whole season could be lost.

The league wiped out all games through Dec. 30 in its latest round of cancellations. (via BostonHerald.com)

That’s … basically the saddest thing, and no amount of me editorializing on it can make it better. I’m not Barry Melrose over here, the best I can muster is, “enghhhhh give me hockey back you stupid assholes.” It’s looking more and more like the 2012-13 NHL season won’t exist, so I might as well get comfortable reporting about the Swedish Winter Classic, wherein somebody made international hockey better by adding a bunch of fire to it.

Via Greg at Puck Father:

This year marked the 100th birthday for [Swedish Elitserien hockey team] Brynäs [IF], and the franchise celebrated the moment with Canadiens-esque hyperbolic grandeur: An outdoor game in front of 15,000 fans at Glaveboken Arena vs. Timrå IK, in minus-12 degrees weather — so cold that the players’ water bottles kept freezing during the match.

To deal with the cold, they played some techno music and LIT EVERYTHING ON FIRE.

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I don’t know what’s going on in Myanmar, and I don’t know why they have something called a Fire Balloon Festival, but apparently it involves setting up a hot air balloon, then f**king it up so spectacularly that it descends in a ball of fire and sets off a bunch of fireworks, killing everyone. It’s just like that scene in O Brother Where Art Thou? where the police wagon catches fire and all the ammo fires on its own, only … less believable?

I’m pretty sure that all you need to know is “Myanmar” and “FIRE BALLOON FESTIVAL,” so here’s the clip:

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Like millions of Americans, there was a time when I thought that competitive eating was awesome. I’ve also loved poker, Hooters swimsuit pageants, World’s Strongest Man competitions, American Gladiators, MySpace, and The Office. The problem is that when something gains a great deal of popularity in a relatively short time, the people behind a pop cultural phenomenon never know when to say, “Stop.”

I don’t see the charm, anymore, in watching Joey Chestnut practically suffocate while devouring 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes. And no, it’s not because I think we should be more concerned with all those starving people in Africa our own country. Obviously, we should, but the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest doesn’t exactly make me lose the most sleep. And no, it’s not because a bunch of protesters showed up to Coney Island and apparently want us to eat kittens. I couldn’t anyway, I’m allergic. I’d just like it if for every eating contest we hosted, we also held two math contests or two engineering fairs.

But instead of rambling on about how embarrassing it is that competitive eating has become synonymous with America’s Independence Day – even our baseball teams welcome it now – I’ll at least enjoy the fact that approximately 5,000 miles away, an eating contest brought happiness to our armed forces and their families at the U.S. Army Garrison in Baumholder, Germany. I just wish their contest could have been at Coney Island, too.

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Hey, welcome back. How was your Independence Day, assuming you’re American? Mine was great. It’s so dry in Texas right now that a Bic lighter flick would set half of Austin on fire, so my fireworks experience was limited to what I could see on TV and what I could see glaring out of my window into the parking lot at like 11:30.

Sports

PoV: Bo Jackson Climbs An Outfield Wall - Bo Jackson’s legacy these days is basically Tecmo Bowl, but he was really something special in his prime. Imagine Albert Pujols, except super fast and scaling walls. That’s either the best baseball player ever or a terrifying nightmare. [Smoking Section]

Fausto Carmona’s Bogus Journey - If you were Away From Computer yesterday (and you probably should’ve been) we did a full day of updates, including this little gem about Fausto Carmona’s haphazard rollerblade trip to first base in Saturday’s Tribe game. As my good friend Davey Vega put it, “he should probably just retire”. [With Leather]

When Patriotism Goes Wrong: The Best of Fireworks Fails - We also covered “sort-of not sports” yesterday, including this gallery of people getting hit (or pretending to get hit) in the johnson with fire. [With Leather]

Welcome Back, Doomsayers - Kissing Suzy Kolber returns from its sexy vacation, so now there is 100% less of that busty Dolphins girl on my With Leather sidebar. [KSK]

Not Sports

Thor Sequel to Be Less Shakespearey - …which is too bad, because it’s going to be opening on the same weekend as Batman 3, Spider-Man negative one, Iron Man and Hulk Ultimate Team-Up, What If: The Movie starring The Punisher and probably Wolverine, six concurrent Superman movies, a Booster Gold mini-series and parts 1 and 3 of a Flaming Carrot trilogy. Picture of Kat Dennings somewhat related. [Film Drunk]

Man Who Unleashed Rebecca Black On the World Tries Again - I like that the guys who were so bad at music and videos it became a phenomenon are now saying they “masterminded” Rebecca Black’s rise to stardom. Sure, and I masterminded my toe into the coffee table this morning. [Uproxx]

Over 12 Minutes of Batman: Arkham City - I may have to stop blogging for a couple of weeks when this gets released. If you come to With Leather and it’s just two posts by Burnsy and gallery of me playing PS3, you’ll know what happened. Dear God, make this come out right now. [Gamma Squad]

The Ten Best Corgi Blogs On the Web - Arguably every corgi blog on the web is one of the best, except for that weird racist one. I’m just kidding, but you know there’s a racist corgi blog somewhere. If not, I’m gonna start one. [Warming Glow]

Happy Independence Day, With Leatherites! While I’m sure we could all talk about how Real Madrid offered to make Rudy Fernandez the highest paid player in Spain for the next six season and how that should have the NBA owners crapping in their pants, or how Kobe Bryant wants to take a group of elite NBA players on tour in China (and probably never return), or we could even talk about how the NFL players were offered a 50-50 revenue split with no money off the top but they’re still not happy because they don’t want to pay into their own retirement funds, we won’t. At least not today.

Because today is about some dudes who signed a piece of paper to give us the right to enjoy a three-day weekend each July by getting totally sh*t-hammered and making asses out of ourselves in the name of the good, old U.S. of A. And our founding fathers also gave us the right to purchase Chinese fireworks – often illegally – and put our lives in jeopardy with them. So I took a few seconds to scour YouTube for some of the better fireworks fails and I realized that thousands of people out there have no clue what “fail” means. And even more people think that poorly staged fireworks nut shots should be on Tosh.0.

Regardless, I put together this little collection for your enjoyment, and I’m sure that I left out some good videos because daddy is feeling ouchies from 3rd of July boozery, so feel free to remind me and I’ll add them in. Otherwise, have a safe and happy one and try not to burn off your eyebrows. Unless you’re Pete Sampras.

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