One of my greatest fears is dying in an elevator. I’ve been dreaming about dying in one since I was a little boy. My second greatest fear is having to see another movie “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan”, so when Dallas Cowboys defensive end Jason Hatcher found himself trapped in an elevator I had two kinds of scary flashbacks — one, to the image of me falling, falling, and suddenly stopping forever. Two, The f**king Happening.

The good news is that Hatcher got out of the elevator without a lot of incident, so I can share the tweets here and make fun of him for coping with social media. The bad news is that at no point did Hatcher unexpectedly deliver a baby or have an unexpectedly born baby named after him. Those are literally the only good things that can happen to you while you’re trapped in an elevator.

Please click through and enjoy the short story, which ends up sounding a lot like an old episode of the Outer Limits.

[h/t Sportress of Blogitude]

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all been there. What started as a healthy discussion has deteriorated into whoever disagrees with you quoting three paragraphs of your text and dissecting it line by line, sending you into a furious hand-jive that ends with namecalling and hurt feelings. A few days later people are posting “lol this thread” and everybody involved ends up looking stupid, so you shake hands and move on with your lives. That’s a big part of Internet culture (anonymity + discussion platform = saying things you regret), but hopefully not a lot of the people Fire Joe Morganning your thoughts are spokesmen for an NFL Team.

Enter: Pat Hanlon, New York Giants spokesman and budding trollface.

The summary of last night’s events, via Pro Football Talk:

Some of that perception remains, but Giants spokesman Pat Hanlon has been doing his best to blur those lines one tweet at a time. He regularly mocks the Jets, and took to Twitter Wednesday night to counter the perception from Giants fans the team is falling apart.

What follows is a tweet-by-tweet rundown of what a professional spokesman thinks constitutes “countering a perception”.

Read the rest of this entry »

He looks photoshopped in, doesn’t he?

Metta World Peace née Ron Artest took off to Nevada over the weekend to host a night at the Chateau Nightclub & Gardens at the Paris Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, and like a lot of Vegas tourists he decided to take in a show. That show happened to be Celine, Celine Dion’s residency performance at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Most people who go to that will tweet “went to see Celina Dion in Vegas, liked the show” or “went to see Celina Dion in Vegas, did not like the show” (that one would be me), but not Artest. Here’s the Spark Notes version of what went down:

1. Ron Artest is Ron Artest
2. Ron Artest decides to go see Celine Dion in concert
3. Celine Dion changes Ron Artest’s life
4. Ron Artest gets frustrated that his Twitter followers don’t know who Celine Dion is and think he’s joking
5. Ron Artest has an existential crisis, considers the idea that he might be dumb and is driven to improve himself
6. Ron Artest gets in over his head

The last two days of @RonArtest are succinctly chronicled here for your observation and amusement, and because somebody needed to make a permanent record of this. Please click through to enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

As hard as you try, it’s hard to hate nearly-aborted Denver Broncos quarterback and college football hugging legend Tim Tebow. His religious beliefs make him one of the ten most influential athletes in the world and he always seems affable, even when talking about growing up with missionaries and sponsoring orphanages. So outside of longstanding, biased college football rivalries and Derek Jeter style TIM TEBOW SUCKS talk, who could develop thorough enough of a mean-on for Tebow to crack that Average White Boy persona and hurt his feelings? Who could do it well enough that one of the most hated people in sports (and one of the most beloved, because that’s how it works) would think you’ve gone too far and stick up for him?

Enter: Merril Hoge, former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, current ESPN football analyst and 183rd Pokémon. Merril has taken to Twitter and ESPN radio to but Tebow “on full blast”, and while it doesn’t read as the most literate thing in the world, Hoge is a football authority and what he says has some weight behind it. The “Tebow Thing” evolved into a monster of bickering fan support and 100+ retweets, and sometime around Hoge saying Tebow doesn’t “poses [sic] a skill set”, Miami Heat star LeBron James started chiming in. And you don’t need me to tell you that LeBron James “chiming in” usually kills the conversation.

To make the transition from Twitter to Twitter easier for you to read, please enjoy the Tim Tebow Sucks argument through the fingertips of the men who lived it.

Read the rest of this entry »

While he’s not nearly as colorful in his opinions as Darnell Dockett, Orlando Magic guard Gilbert Arenas is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining athletes on Twitter (as I’ve occasionally pointed out) because his jokes are often far funnier on the unintentional scale than they are in his head. Since his return to Twitter, Arenas has already been fined by the NBA for cursing while invoking David Stern’s name, taken us on a blind date, given away a few billion pairs of shoes, and started a plank war with Dwight Howard. Needless to say, he gets the most out of Twitter.

But on Tuesday, Arenas offered us a glimpse at his serious side. What started as a trip to his local 7-11 for a free Slurpee on 7/11, became an exercise in civil rights. Because Arenas referred to the 7-11 cashier as “Muhammad”, he received a little backlash from his followers, causing him to defend himself with a diatribe about racism. For instance, did you know that if you’re from Los Angeles, you can’t possibly be racist? All that and more in this week’s @Storytime with Gilbert Arenas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Arizona Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett is a Renaissance Man. In the last week and a half he’s live-blogged a run-in with the police and purchased an alligator as a response to almost being bitten by one. Now, the only man to date to use wealth and social media properly is live-blogging his own response to the Casey Anthony trial, a trial America has been forced to follow in detail whether they want to or not thanks to the bumrush of television and online coverage. Seriously, it’s everywhere. I opened up my copy of Great Expectations and found an illustrated chart of Casey’s imaginary friends folded up and crammed inside.

So begins part two of our Darnell Dockett @Storytime series. A couple of warnings: this is reproduced from Dockett’s Twitter, so beware some foul language and adult situations even if the heavier stuff is edited. Also, there is a picture of Dockett’s son in some extremely small pajamas. And he’s trying to go to sleep in them! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Please enjoy a recap of (and a shared emotional response to) the Casey Anthony trial courtesy of a guy who owns an alligator and knows Kim Kardashian.

Read the rest of this entry »