Happy Labor Day, everybody!

Whether your “labor” today involves skinning the Nemean Lion or just getting through the day without getting so drunk you fall into your pool and drown, we at With Leather (“we” meaning me and Burnsy) wish you a happy holiday. We’re going to keep it light today, because you probably aren’t on the Internet anyway.

If you are, then maybe you’re bored enough to check out some of last month’s features. If you haven’t read them before, check them out, and laugh until your belly hurts about how much I could’ve used your hits in August.

Links

Sports On TV: The Wire’s 15 Greatest Sports Moments |With Leather|

Never Grow Up, Internet: The Best Olympic Pooping Diver Photoshops |With Leather|

Sports On Tv: The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’s 20 Greatest Sports Moments |With Leather|

Meme Watch: McKayla Is Not Impressed |With Leather|

Bane Kiffin: ‘Calm Down Pac-12! Now’s Not The Time For Fear’ |With Leather|

The Best And Worst Of WWE SummerSlam 2012: Live From Los Angeles, California |With Leather|

Channing Tatum Visited Arizona Cardinals Practice, Let’s Bring Back Marvel’s ‘What If…’ |With Leather|

A Golden Treasury Of Cheesy Late-80s/Early-90s WWF Promo Photos |With Leather|

The Best Of Brooklyn Decker On DeviantArt |With Leather|

Everything You Need To Know About Derek Jeter’s New Girlfriend |With Leather|

I know that sounds weird, but this is sports related and not a weird thing I’m into, I swear.

I live in Austin, Texas, where 60% of the population thinks sprouts taste good (they do) and 100% are working on a screenplay. My friends at Greenless Studios (the people who made the With Spandex podcast possible) are getting ready to shoot Summer League, an awesome softball versus kickball movie, here in town. They’ve set up an IndieGogo to raise money for incidentals, because that’s what happens these days.

I’m well aware that you do not come to a comedy sports blog to give money to people, and I would not dream of making a habit of requesting it from you, but I’m doing it here for two reasons:

1. This is my feature film debut (I’m playing a pub trivia master, because I’m a colossal nerd) and I want to be able to eat some tofu cutlets and shit while I’m filming, and

2. If they raise enough money they can afford to rent that duck costume and include a ridiculous mascot scene, giving me a second role in the film and turning me into Austin’s elite Internet version of Peter Sellers.

If you want to help out a good cause, consider stopping by and IndieGogo’ing yourself a DVD. I’d offer to autograph it for you too, but I am literally nobody. The thing ends in a couple of days, so if I can say I pitched in to make the thing a success, I’d feel awfully good about it.

Besides, it’s cute girls playing baseball while I stand around in the background. That’s a movie you want to see. Help us out.

Am I a nerd? YES! YES! YES!

If you live in Austin and read this site on the reg, chances are you were one of the tens of thousands of people in attendance at last night’s Monday Night Raw Watch Party, informally known as the Best And Worst Of Raw Live. On ice. And don’t quote me on the attendance, there were lights in my eyes the entire time and I’m just assuming that’s how many people were on the other side.

Anyway! If you watched Raw you know it was:

1. Three hours long
2. Suicidally dreadful
3. 85% commercial break

That being said, the combination of an arduous three hour Raw and the performance anxiety/high/cooldown combined has forced me to post this announcement: This week’s Best And Worst Of Raw column will be posted first thing in the morning on Wednesday, unless you want me to write up the version I saw with everything muted.

Maybe that would be better.

Until then, head over to The New Movement and find out where and how you can support the talented men and women who helped make the Raw party possible. For a live perspective on Raw that DIDN’T involve anybody calling Hornswoggle a “dick in a fruit roll-up”, check out John Canton’s Raw Deal at TJR Wrestling.

That’s WWE’s Derrick Bateman on yesterday’s episode of NXT, talking to Chickbuster Kaitlyn and wearing a With Leather t-shirt.

And I’m done. I’m hanging up blogging forever, because unless the Phillie Phanatic and I end up as a tag team at Wrestlemania I don’t think my job snarking about sports news and/or Dolph Ziggler’s Jiffy Pop ass can get any cooler. This comes less than a month after one of our readers brought an @MrBrandonStroud sign to an episode of Raw, and I can’t tell you how surreal it feels to watch something I’ve been watching for decades and go “oh hey, there’s me”.

In case you’re wondering, that’s the shirt you would’ve won by participating in one of our trivia challenges. Check out the segment for yourself after the jump, and imagine me doing the dancing emoticon in real life. This one:

Read the rest of this entry »

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather
- Follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud
- Like us on Facebook.

Links

Direct Messaging For UPROXX Commenters Is Here! - I’m still not 100% on why this is necessary, but hey, new feature! [UPROXX]

The Best Of #Troy And Abed - Cool. Cool cool cool. [UPROXX]

Re-Take: 25 Celebs Playboy Should Have Spent A Million Bucks On - Some of these are great, but come on, Christina Hendricks? She’s pretty, but the Playboy Photoshoppers would break their hands. [Smoking Section]

If Your 5 Favorite Memes Offered Online Degrees - None of these are as funny as the Education Connection Girl. “I WENT on the inter-NET!” Fantasy threesome: me, Flo from Progressive, the Education Connection lady. [Gamma Squad]

James Franco Reviewed Twilight - So did I. “Twilight is terrible, everybody knows that, right? Okay, the end.” [Film Drunk]

Game of Thrones Teaser Trailer: Needs More Tyrion Bitch-Slapping Joffrey - I was going to watch season one of ‘Game Of Thrones’, but then I took an arrow in the knee. [Warming Glow]

This Jim Henson Tribute Art Show Rainbow Connects With Our Hearts - Argh, my heart. Seriously, even pictures of Jim Henson make me want to burst into tears now. [UPROXX]

The Best And Horrifically Worst Of The 2011 Air Sex World Championships - In case you missed it yesterday, here are a few of the bravest people in Texas making love to ghosts. [With Leather]

Plastic Bag Turns Boring TV Interview Into Must-See TV - This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. [The FW]

Friendly Waving Bear Is Friendly, Waving - I don’t know if Reddit knows it or not, but YouTube is FULL of videos of bears waving. I’m surprised this isn’t a thing already. [High Definite]

Game Over: The Greatest Video Game Maneuver Ever Accomplished - Like every story you’ve heard someone tell a cashier at Gamestop come to life. Let’s get the Mythbusters or whoever to see if somebody could do this in real life. [Unreality]

25 Things You Didn’t Know About Three Amigos - haha I didn’t know there were 25 THINGS about Three Amigos. [Moviefone]

The 10 Most Bad Ass Movie Posters of 2011 - Somehow “Harry Potter looking at Voldemort” got called “bad ass”. We have weird standards. [Pajiba]

On Sunday night, WWE presents their third pay-per-view event in 35 days, Vengeance. The show is headlined by a Last Man Standing Match between WWE Champion Alberto Del Rio and John Cena, as well as a match between World Heavyweight Champion wig-splitter Mark Henry and the returning Big Show. It will also feature the last drop of milk being drawn from the damaged, quivering teet of wrestling fans, so we thought we’d make it fun.

In celebration of the UPROXX™ Network’s brand new commenting system, With Leather is introducing the first (and possibly only) WWE Pay-Per-View Predictions Challenge. All you have to do is register with the site and post your predictions for who will win each match and how (pinfall, submission, disqualification, count-out, that sort of thing) in the comments section of This Very Post. If you get them all correct, you’ll win a $250 gift card from Amazon.com that you can use to buy … whatever you want, really. Wrestling DVDs. 10 copies of That’s What I Am. Anything. Just remember to get them in before the show on Sunday night or it won’t count.

Here’s the announced card.

1. World Heavyweight Championship Match: Mark Henry © vs. The Big Show

2. Last Man Standing Match for the WWE Championship: Alberto Del Rio © vs. John Cena

3. Tag Team Match: Triple H and CM Punk vs. R-Truth and The Miz

4. Randy Orton vs. Cody Rhodes

5. Divas Championship Match: Beth Phoenix © vs. Eve Torres

6. Sheamus vs. Christian

7. United States Championship Match: Dolph Ziggler © vs. Zack Ryder *or* WWE Tag Team Championship Match: Air Boom © vs. Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger

That’s going by some announcements that’re supposed to go down on Smackdown tonight, although they announced Air Boom vs. Ziggler and Jack Swagger on Monday, so we’re just gonna have to play that one by ear. If you want to make your predictions early, just go ahead and include predics for them both. If more than one person correctly picks the results and finishes, we’ll pool the winners and use Raw as a tie-breaker. Just remember, the pay-per-view happens THIS SUNDAY NIGHT, so anything posted after 7 PM EST tomorrow will be disqualified.

So yeah, sign up for an account with UPROXX and make your choices. This is open to anybody who signs up, so tell your friends and neighbors to come on over and participate. Share it on whatever dirt sheet forums you frequent, pitch it to the Wrestlecrap guy, tweet it to Bill Simmons, whatever. Let’s make it an event! And then have two more events immediately afterwards!