It’s Cyber Monday, everybody, and you know what that means! /unzips pants

Links

International Object Podcast S2E2: Brandon Stroud - I can’t stop casting pods! Listen to me talk excitedly for nearly two hours, because I don’t get enough of a chance to do this sort of thing. A great conversation about terrible things. [International Object]

NBA Lockout Laboratory: Is Being Tall The Only Thing That Matters In Basketball? - Hilarious. Jon on a video blog is the best, but he should be dressed like he’s going to work at Radio Shack at all times. [SB Nation]

Women Be Tramplin’: The Most Insane Black Friday Moments You Will Ever See - You know how I spent my Black Friday? Hanging out at home, not being trampled to death, then going out at 9 at night and buying two seasons of ‘Roseanne’ from Target for 4 dollars. [UPROXX]

Ten Skits That Prove ‘The Muppet Show’ Was For Adults More Than Kids - Alternate title, “ten skits that prove ‘The Muppet Show’ was better than most other shows”. Johnny Cash/Rowlf and Time In A Bottle are two of my very favorites. [Warming Glow]

A Compendium of Cool Comics Cosplay: November 25th - With a title like this I’d hoped they’d be cosplaying as pilgrims and Indians, but whatever. Discussion point: cosplay stops being cool or sexy when you get professionally taken photos of it. [Gamma Squad]

“Streets Of Music” – Review Of 9th Wonder’s The Wonder Years - Not what I thought it was going to be. [Smoking Section]

Alternate Posters for the Expendables - Internet jokes aside, Chuck Norris makes me feel really uncomfortable. The way he says WHAT’S YOUR GAME?? in the Warcraft commercial like I’m a goddamn terrorist and he’s still Firewalker is the worst. [Film Drunk]

10 Awesome Vintage Tattoo Parlors From Around The World - Very cool. Maybe I should go to one of these to get my Ultros from Final Fantasy VI tattoo. [Buzzfeed]

The 10 Worst Rock Tattoos - Awwww, Starland Vocal Band? They suck! [The FW]

The Biggest And Most Ridiculous Celebrity Hair Of The 80s. What Were They Thinking? - Uh, that having your hair like this in the 80s is a great way to get ladies to sleep with you in the 80s? [FARK]

25 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Network’ - If Moviefone wants to turn IMDB trivia pages into articles they need to get cracking, there’s a great thing about Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones just DYING to be common knowledge. [Moviefone]

The Jon Hamm Problem: You Can’t Be Handsome And Funny. Pick One. - At first I was like, “well, at least now I know why I’m not handsome”. Then I wondered, “what if I AM? Oh god I’m not funny” and then I jumped out of a window. [Pajiba]

CagePotato Tribute: The Failure To Intimidate - I’m going to parody this and talk about the failure to Elimidate. Worth it for the Gina Carano On The Scales photo. [Cage Potato]

You may have woken up screaming from feverish nightmares last night and somehow just known this, but Madonna is performing at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The news broke on SB Nation earlier today, and if you’re like me you’ve spent the last few hours going back and forth between “great, another 60-year old thrusting their hips at me between Dorito’s commercials” and “at least it’s better than the f**king Black Eyed Peas”.

It’s impossible to mention Super Bowl halftime shows and not mention the reason why they’re only allowed to be manned these days by responsible corporate types — we are still living in the shadow of Janet Jackson’s enormous metal titty and its impromptu appearance in 2004. Classic Madonna may have sought to top Janet, but modern Madonna is basically a yoga mom who only gets dragged out with Britney Spears or the cast of Glee need someone iconic to dance with.

Here’s a quick survey of Twitter opinion, courtesy of Off The Bench:

@PeytonsHead
Madonna is performing at the Super Bowl? Maybe the Bills really are good this year, considering we’ve warped back in time 20 years.

@bruce_arthur Bruce Arthur
Madonna performing at halftime of the Super Bowl? I bet Joe Montana and John Elway will really enjoy that before they play the second half.

@joshlewinstuff josh lewin
Madonna playing SB halftime this yr after BEP last year.. we keep creeping backwards here, people. by SB48, it’s going to be Boz Scaggs.

@gourmetspud Gourmet Spud
They need to stop letting Al Davis’s grandfather pick the Super Bowl halftime acts.

The Super Bowl halftime show is just like everything else in the world: run by the elderly, because nobody young knows how to handle it. Here’s to hoping she goes full 90s Madonna on us and makes out with Naomi Campbell onstage to the terror/delight of all.

Every now and then a pro wrestling-related clip nobody should’ve seen pops up on the Internet and decides to go viral. Today’s clip, courtesy of our friends at Buzzfeed, is quite possibly the most masculine thing ever recorded and a living interpretation of every Chuck Norris joke you’ve heard as performed by monster trucks, electric guitar and Sgt. Slaughter. To catch you up to speed:

Following his third tour of duty in Vietnam, Sgt. Slaughter retired from service to pursue his life long dream of wrestling. After gaining the world championship belt and super stardom, the Sgt then moved onto rock star, monster truck tug of war champion and GI JOE. They just don’t make them like they used to.

Highlights of the video include the finest of 1980s girls in Bud trucker hats, the tape wearing out at the part where a lady starts jacking off an exhaust pipe, Sarge’s “battle battalion” not looking too different from the Village People and a bunch of monster truck and funny car drivers calmly lip syncing parts they should be screaming. In case you were wondering, Sgt. Slaughter did all those things in the blockquote but the guy who played him didn’t — he actually started off as a flamboyant character in the mid-70s, and if you need confirmation of military time not served, listen to Jesse “The Body” Ventura (Navy UDT veteran and former Navy SEAL) talk about it.

Regardless, the fictional version of the army guy had a pretty amazing life up until the Gulf War, when he decided to side with Iraq. Man, Sgt. Slaughter was always kind of a lying jerk, wasn’t he? Those Joe PSAs are meaningless now. I’m gonna go put my fingers in the light sockets no matter what Flint tells me. Ah well, at least you can’t take “monster truck tug of war champion” away from him.

[via Buzzfeed]

Out here, you’re tested. You face an opponent experts say can’t be beat. You fight. You bleed. You prevail. Our country’s down, but we’re not out. To come back, we need a leader with a proven record, not just rhetoric. Tim Pawlenty took on The Unions and won. He shut down a government and won. He took “Miracle on Ice” footage from the 1980 Winter Olympics and added it to his Presidential campaign ads without asking anyone’s permission and … well, okay, so that didn’t turn out so great.

From the Des Moines Register:

ABC Sports may slap presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty with a cease-and-desist letter for improperly using its footage in a political advertisement, a company official told The Des Moines Register today.

“It’s a violation of our copyright and exclusive proprietary rights,” said Louise Argianas, director of rights and clearances for ABC Sports.

The struggling Pawlenty campaign launched “The American Comeback,” a television commercial with a down-but-not-out theme, in Iowa on Wednesday.

America needs a leader who doesn’t understand basic laws. You’ve got to love that we’ve come so far with the “Obama is a socialist” thing that now he’s just blatantly being called an evil Russian from the 80s. Brigitte Nielsen should start following him around. Pawlenty’s big comeback doesn’t look like it’s going to work, so maybe next time politicians will stick to depicting children being murdered by nuclear holocaust and leave our precious sports history alone. I hope this ad was taped on the same VHS Pawlenty used to record himself pulling sweet lightsaber moves.

In a related story, President Barack Obama is prepping a campaign ad using footage of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase. Hundreds of white guys relentlessly chase a black guy, and by the time they catch him nothing has been accomplished.

[h/t Puck Daddy]

The rivalry between Sweden’s Björn Borg and New Yorker byway of West Germany John McEnroe is so storied it has its own Wikipedia Page. The page chronicles their matches in detail, expounds upon their “Fire and Ice” nickname and breaks down everything from who won the most on hard courts (McEnroe) and who won most on carpet (Borg). Nowhere does it say why they got old and started making out with each other to sell boxer briefs.

But here we are in 2011, living through the “Björn <3 John" line and a declaration of their love for in front of the world's press at the boating lake in Wimbledon Park. The report from Telegraph Online’s fashion section (ugh) starts off telling you what you need to know, then descends into a horrible E! Network bumper about portmanteaus and “coy smiles”.

Borg, who has built up a nice little sideline in men’s underwear over the past 14 years, has teamed up with McEnroe to push a limited-edition range of jersey boxer briefs, with some of the proceeds from sales going to the John and Patty McEnroe Foundation.

In keeping with the air of bromance, there were four buff male models draped across deckchairs on a jetty over the lake, wearing nothing but pants and coy smiles and looking for wall the world like they were auditioning for a Christopher Isherwood biopic. McEnroe was dressed a bit more modestly in Ralph Lauren jeans and a crisp white shirt under a very snappy plaid Tom Ford jacket with wide lapels.

The combination of this news and the image of Borg and McEnroe in 1978 makes me think way too much of that scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Richie shaves off all his hair and tries to kill himself.

What’s next, Magic and Bird teaming up to sell skinny jeans?

I’ve been silent on this issue for entirely too long. For the better part of 20 years, I’ve waited patiently, building a case against the man who would turn the sports world on its ear with his own shameful act of greed. And now, in the midst of an NFL lockout and a pro basketball apocalypse, I feel that I’m finally ready to step forward and expose the biggest fraud that athletic competition has ever seen.

The identity of this villain might surprise you. It might even shock you. I might fill you with spastic bouts of ennui, but don’t let any of that stop you from hearing THE TRUTH. It might be too late to bring this slimeball, this wretched bastard to justice, but it’s not too late to warn anyone else that might stand in his narcissist, egotistical path. No, I’m not talking about Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, or FIFA president Sepp Blatter, or even former Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. Or even Tom Sizemore, whose portrayal of Rose in that ESPN movie was balls-awful. No, I’m talking about someone much more dangerous, odious, and crass. Someone who almost got away with his deviant ways. Read the rest of this entry »