Anyway, if you’re one of the 700,000,000,000 who’ve descended upon my grand home town of Austin, Texas, for SXSW, I have two points of business for you:

1. Pick up your trash. I mean, seriously, Jesus, what were you, raised on a barn? We aren’t Philadelphia.

2. Any chance you’d like a pair of complimentary tickets to the world premiere of Summer League, the softball kickball film featuring With Leather editor-in-chief Brandon Stroud in not one, but TWO roles, just for being a With Leather reader?

Here’s your chance, friend. The film premieres on Monday, March 18, at the Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane (5701 W. Slaughter Lane), red carpet and all, and the showing is completely sold out. However, I wear a duck mascot costume for a portion of the film and therefore have hella pull and can snag you a pair of tickets.

Here’s all you have to do … shoot the film’s director, Lex Lybrand, a message on Twitter. Tell him that you’re a fan of @WithLeather and you want to see his flick. There are only two tickets to be had, so he’ll do a random drawing based on whoever’s messaged him on … let’s say, Friday, and let you know if you’re the winner. Then boom, you’re at the red carpet premiere high-fiving a dude you know from a sports blog, watching a great little movie made by some passionate locals.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen me in my duck costume, hold on to your butts:

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So the guys at Steady Burn dug up this video of people that dressed up as zombies and, with those people apparently not entirely familiar with zombie canon, decided to play a game of kickball. And apparently, none of them had seen Dawn Of The Dead, because these zombies can’t run a lick. Clearly, this outfit of zombies needs a fresh helping of BRAAAIIINS! Or at least a better script supervisor.

Steady Burn, which has already introduced us to D.C. guerrilla kickball protests, arrested pirate kickballers, kickball brawls in Florida and almost everything else kickball-related, continues its kickball, uh, kick by tipping us off to zombie kickball. Apparently there's an annual game played in Portland, Maine where people dress in tattered clothes and smear fake blood on themselves before staggering around a field with a red ball. Either that, or they contracted the horrible virus that causes them to become the walking undead. Please, oh, please be the latter. No? Dammit.

Combining the deathly slow with a game that calls for a moderate amount of speed may seem odd, if not hilarious, at first.

But it's a purposeful juxtaposition, said Catherine Krupsky, an organizer for this year's match.

"How mundane is a kickball game, but how bizarre is it to see hordes of zombies walking around the Eastern Prom," she said.

Great. This sounds like the work of hipsters. Don't they know not to take lightly the zombie menace? Why, they probably listen to Fela Kuti's "Zombie" and quote heavily from Max Brooks books while playing. Luckily, hipsters and zombies can be dispatched in the same manner: head shots. Like zombies, you may be attempted to empathize with them because they possess something resembling the human form. Don't be fooled. Fire! Quickly! Before they're upon us in greater numbers!

There is never a dearth of examples for why adult kickball leagues are a blight on human existence, but there have been an especially high concentration of stories lately to build a case for justifiable eugenics against the further breeding of the kickballing scum. One visionary organization, the Anti Yuppie Kickball Guerilla Front, is taking the initiative to rid our city parks of the vermin, as profiled by recent kickballing news clearinghouse Steady Burn. With one handy conspiracy chart, they show how the horrible skein of influence flows from these playgrounds of the iniquity. Their noble mission statement:

We, the Anti Yuppie Kickball Guerilla Front, do advocate all ridiculous direct action and pranks persuant to the collapse of kickball for Young Professionals in the greater Washington, DC area. For too long have we sat idle while all the chumps, douche-bags, yuppies, and stripey-shirt imported assholes of this town coalesced their power under this banner.

The recommended subversion tactics include stealing the kickball, paying homeless people to disrupt games through disgusting and revealing acts, and, naturally, violence. If you combine the latter two, paying the homeless person then beating said homelessman and robbing them after they've executed their mission, it adds a hint of Grand Theft Auto-esque fun. 

(Full disclosure: I both reside in Northern Virginia and played in one of these kickball leagues a few summers ago. I only did it for the boozy hook-ups with recently relocated and lonely intern girls, I swear! The Ape be not proud. *Sigh* Don't cry for me, I'm already a douche.)  

If not providing much in the way of actual sports news, this week has offered up a trove of kickball-related hilarity. First, there was the pirate-garbed fellow arrested at the Macy's in Manhattan. Further down the coast comes news of a 100-person brawl that interrupted a kickball game in Tampa. The cause: that secret YouTube video that causes girls to fight when they see it.

A city-sanctioned kickball game at Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park on Wednesday night devolved into a brawl involving about 100 people, according to a preliminary police report.

However, none of the kickball players or organizers appears to have been involved in the fight, said Tampa police Lt. Rocky Ratliff.

Ratliff said that from what he has learned, a group of girls about 16 to 22 years old were fighting about something on YouTube. He didn't know any more about the circumstances.

I can only hazard a guess, but I'm thinking the girls were jostling for chance to make sweet monkey love to Italian Spiderman.  I know I am. Perhaps they were watching some of the girl fights posted here and wanted to do one better. Could be that they were annoyed by that new Weezer music video that alludes to a couple of the YouTube clips that South Park has already spoofed.

Whatever the cause, police were able to quell the melee, at least until it spilled out into the street and involved weapons.

Within minutes, another fight broke out across the street involving the same people, who at this point had armed themselves with sticks. Again, a crowd gathered and the officers had to force their way through the crowd. No victims or suspects could be located, so no arrests were made, police said.

That's some top-notch crowd control, coppers. Rocky Ratliff is still a cool name, though.

A guy who plays in an ironic kickball league where they dress up in costumes IN NEW YORK was awarded the gold medal in the Douchebag Olympics yesterday. He then went to Macy's to buy a new collared polo to pop whilst riding the train home to Billyburg. Unfortunately store security didn't take a shining to his pirate costume (too many anachronisms. I mean cell phone? Really?). Also he was carrying a sword, which is considered a weapon both in contemporary cities and on the high seas. The result: AAARRRRRRRested.

A man who was carrying a rusted pirate-style sword through Macy's flagship store in Manhattan is facing charges of criminal possession of a weapon.

Police say 29-year-old Lawrence Jackson was brandishing the curved sword while visiting Macy's Herald Square store Sunday with his girlfriend.

He told police he was carrying the sword because he is a member of a kickball team whose players often wear pirate-themed costumes. He maintains he was on his way to a game when he was arrested.

On the way to the game in the home furnishings section? That's a great alibi for professional athletes. Tank Johnson can have an arsenal of guns because he plays for a Cowboy-themed team. You do want his costume to be believable, don't you?