Yesterday marked the start of the 2011 Running of the Bulls, the most popular part of the seven-day festival of Sanfermines in honor of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain. This is one of those things I can’t really report about without editorializing, so I’ll let good old Wikipedia fill in your blanks.

Spanish lore says the true origin began in North-eastern Spain during the early 14th century. While transporting cattle in order to sell at the market, men would attempt to speed the process by hurrying their cattle using tactics of fear and excitement. After years of this practice, the transportation and hurrying began to turn into a competition, as young adults would attempt to race in front of the bulls and make it safely to their pens without being overtaken. When the popularity of this practice increased and was noticed more and more by the expanding population of Spanish cities, a tradition was created and stands to this day.

The modern purpose of the run is to transport a bunch of bulls from the off-site corrals where they had spent the night, to the bullring where they would be killed in the evening, and to charge Bohemian tourists with no sense of compassion 250 bucks to stand on somebody’s balcony. Ah, sorry. I don’t want to push my beliefs on anybody, but I do want to present to you a huge gallery of pictures from the event. They’re beautiful shots, and I guess it’s hard to take a picture of anybody doing anything during the Running of the Bulls without it looking like a critique on humanity. It’s apparently important to a nation’s culture, like our professional football games, and we can’t hold it against Spain and the Spanish that most of the people paying to attend are devolved goons, like at our professional football games.

Enjoy. And be sure to be in Pamplona for the running next July and every Summer after, should you decide this looks like a great way to spend an afternoon.

[header photo credit AP / Daniel Ochoa de Olza]

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The first thing you hear when you click play on this video is people going HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING. Spanish basketball phenom Ricky Rubio rides down an escalator, and the people are all HE’S WEARING A BLAZER AND A SHIRT AND SHOES, AND HE’S WEARING A HAT AND HUMANS ARE NEAR HIM. Seconds later, people are wooing and hooting, and some guy says LOOK AT THE PAGEANTRY. The pageantry of someone wearing clothes and using an escalator to change floors and walking in an airport.

Such is the new life of Rubio, picked fifth overall in the 2009 NBA draft, as he replaces Kent Hrbek and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the (assumedly shared) consciousness of Minnesota. After walking through an airport (and this is not a joke), Fox Sports is writing about how his personality is a defibrillator to a franchise in need of life. Imagine the Minnesota Timberwolves as the Washington Nationals and Rubio as Stephen Strasburg, only Spanish and biting a basketball. Did anybody describe what Strasburg was wearing when he landed in the D.C. airport? Did he have two functioning arms?

I’m hoping Rubio turns out to be a huge deal, just so one of the biggest stars in the NBA will look and act like Chachi from “Happy Days”.

[video via SBN, h/t to our own Cajun Boy]

Yes that reporter Sara Carbonero is his girlfriend, but it’s cooler if you pretend that she isn’t. Eat your heart out, Joe Namath! You’re a disgrace to sideline reporter kissers around the globe. My favorite part is when he plopped one down on her eye. If I ever won a major championship I know exactly what I’d do now; hold a competition with my teammates to see how many sideline reporters we’d kiss. By the end all of the reporters would be wearing surgical masks to protect themselves but let me tell you what, that ain’t stopping me! I’d also demand a t-shirt gun so I could shoot champion garb at the losing team (and maybe hamsters), but I digress.

I’m sure you all know about what happened yesterday at the World Cup so I’ll spare you my inane analysis and just give you the good parts. The Dutch were playing extremely physical all game as it devolved into a kicking and shoving quagmire that thankfully brought us this epic moment:

KARATE!

Oh yeah, and psychic octopus Paul won again. He’s gonna pull so much tail. Hit the jump for more Sara Carbonaro.  Read the rest of this entry »

This man has deluded himself into thinking he has huge muscles.

Spanish back-up striker Fernando Llorente has come off the bench to energize Spain in their run for World Cup glory, and he’s attributing all of his ‘chaos sowing’ to the shirt that kind of makes him look like the Incredible Hulk. This shirt doesn’t have any special effects like tiny nipple clamps that send surges of electricity to fire up his pressure points or a man training bra, no all it does is allegedly intimidate his opponents by making his pectorals and company extra bulgy so that his enemies cower in fear when his thunderous footsteps enter their realm of kicking, like a fighter jet with Roseanne Barr painted on the side.

My question is, if the shirt’s so good why hasn’t it earned him a starting job?

One of the secrets of the success of Fernando Llorente’s physical playing style is a skin-tight shirt that makes him look like The Incredible Hulk, according to the powerful Spanish striker.

“Everyone was laughing because (the shirt) was very tight on me and I looked like Hulk,” the 25-year-old said in an interview published on Friday by sporting goods maker Adidas.

“But I feel very comfortable with it and it also helps my physical performance,” he added. -Yahoo! News

Physical performance? Don’t you mean wind resistance? Whenever I played soccer in my younger days I was always the smallest person on the team so I always had a t-shirt that simulated the feeling of an extremely inept parasailer. In that situation I blamed my shirt for my shortcomings. The lack of any sort of discernible soccer kicking talent was always secondary. Now excuse me as I scour my house for that graduation shirt I received for passing the fifth grade. If I turn into Gourmet Spud you can blame the shirt.

Take one last look at Abraham Lupus Frohman III, because he’s going into the mothballs. You know what that means: despite Barack Obama’s pandering to the Danish, Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics was finally put to sleep.

In fact, between the four remaining cities [Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Madrid were the others], Chicago was the first city to be eliminated in the initial voting. Sorry Chicago, the tribe has spoken.

Also eliminated: Tokyo. Sayonara, amigos…I’m actually pulling for Rio now, since they’re only one hour ahead of North America’s east coast and avoiding the internet during the summer will only be more annoying seven years from now.

I’d like to thank Mr. Frohman for his service to With Leather and wish him a warm and happy retirement, preferably in a well-lubricated locale. Godspeed, sir.

4TH UPDATE: Here are the highlights in case you missed the match, or just want to relive your jaunt onto the MNT bandwagon.

3RD UPDATE: It’s over! USA Wins, 2-0!

2ND UPDATE: USA’s Michael Bradley gets a red card with four minutes left. America’s a man down. That’s not good.

ZOMG! Clint Dempsey just scored on a loose ball! It’s 2-0 America! We’re good now!

Nineteen-year-old Jozy Altidore scored in the 27th minute of Team USA’s Confederations Cup semifinal with Spain, giving the MNT a 1-0 lead that they’ve managed to carry into halftime. Spain has since responded with well-timed attacks that have barely come up unfinished, and one has to think that the Americans can only dodge so many bullets before the world’s No. 1-ranked team finds the back of the net.

The second half just started. We’ll recap the game when it ends. You can follow the game here if you’re stuck at work. ESPN forgot to load this page with annoying videos, so you should be good.