We support all of the leisurely pursuits here at With Leather; we’re not consumed with the debate over which activities are sports and which aren’t. We bring you this next piece of video, compliments of Steve Hall at Ad Gabber, with that premise in mind. Sadly, if you’re not into theme parks or consumer product testing, you’re not gonna get much out of this. Except maybe a sore wrist and some chafing. See what I did there? Read the rest of this entry »
Via Hot Clicks: Here’s Independent Leaguer Josh Womack, and he’s about to blow your mind. Independent League, by the way, is just like the minor leagues, but without the big-league affiliations. So instead of having almost no chance of getting called up, those guys have zero chance. But this move that Womack pulls off with the bat is more entertaining than most baseball games. How you do think he learned to do that? If you said steroids, congratulations! You just won the door prize.
We occasionally bend the definition of “sports” to take a look at video games here, and today the off-topic focus is on Atomic Games and Konami, which are making Six Days in Fallujah, a third-person shooter in which players adopt the roles of real Marines who were in the battle of Fallujah in 2004. From the LA Times:
The idea for the game… came from U.S. Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, N.C., that makes combat simulation software for the military… “The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that’s what they grew up playing,” said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami Digital Entertainment.
One is Mike Ergo, who was in a Marine infantry battalion during the battle in [Fallujah] and is a consultant on the game. “Video games can communicate the intensity and the gravity of war to an audience who wouldn’t necessarily be watching the History Channel or reading about this in the classroom,” said Ergo, now 26 and a junior at the University of California at Berkeley. “In an age when everyone’s always online or playing games, people’s imaginations aren’t what they were, sadly. For this group, books may not convey the same level of intensity and chaos of war that a game can.”
I dunno. As much as I keep reading compelling essays about how video games are the next great platform for story-telling — the new wave to unseat books/movies/TV — I’m still not really comfortable with people getting entertainment from a battle where people I know (for example) lost an eye to an RPG and got shot in the arm. But then, maybe that’s just a sign I’m getting old.
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The U.S. Pole Dance Federation held its U.S. Pole Dance Championship in New York City this weekend, and although a standing court order kept me from attending, I’m happy to direct you to this recap of yesterday’s competition. The article comes with the standard note that the competitors are NOT strippers, and the victor was Las Vegas-based “aerialist” Jenyne Butterfly (almost certainly her real name), a three-time champion at Pole-a-palooza. From the recap:
[W]hile pole dancing has certainly gone from erotic to aerobic, not all the sensuality has been lost. At the championship, five-inch heels, belly-button rings and tattoos were just as prevalent as washboard abs, well-toned biceps and calves the size of peaches…
[Butterfly] took the stage as the night’s second to last performance and showed why she truly is “The Pole Queen.” … At times, one arm supported the entire weight of her outstretched body… By the time Butterfly capped off her performance with her signature “flag move” — think of her as the flag on a flagpole — the capacity crowd was on its feet…
“It feels really good,” Butterfly said afterwards as the crowd streamed out the theater. “I’ve never won a medal for pole dancing before. Normally, they just hand me an envelope of money.”
Well, it beats having to pick it up off the stage, anyway. (Video after the gallery.)
It’s a crazy slow day in the sports world, so I thought I’d share this fun little tale of whimsy and pigeon-smuggling.
An Australian traveler was caught with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip to the Middle East, customs officials said Tuesday. The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage…
They found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and held to each of the man’s legs with a pair of tights, according to a statement released by the agency. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant.
Oh yeah. You can’t let those eggplants loose in Australia. They have no natural enemies there.
This is just one of those stories where no amount of information can ever satisfy everything I want to know. Why pigeons? Why from the Middle East? Does Australia not have pigeons? How do you survive a ten-hour flight with pigeons strapped to your calves? And did the authorities also seize the bear pelt on this guy’s legs?
So, to close out the day, do you want (A) another human interest story about one of the players in the Super Bowl, or (B) video of a guy flying around in a water-powered jetpack set to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. You and I are gonna get along just fine.
