Somewhat Manly Nerd

Power of the cocksword.

I just saw Lesnar take a beating that would have killed most normal people, and put most MMA fighters into a coma. Yet he came back the next round and choked out his opponent, Shane Carwin.

Remember when I said the best heavyweight in the world wasn’t in the UFC?

Lesnar is without a doubt the scariest motherfucker alive. I mean, he already kinda was, but there was still Fedor, who — even though he was a bit of a chubster — was an “undefeated” crazy Russian dude. But now he has lost, and Brock just beat a guy who had never let an opponent past the first round. Carwin tired himself out, shocked that Lesnar was still breathing after taking one million punches to the head.

It was a heavyweight main event that lived up to the hype. And it was a fantastic job by the ref not to stop the fight while Carwin was pounding on Lesnar while sitting on top of him, making him bleed all over the mat. Lesnar was defending and attempting to fight back the entire time — just not very well.

I still think the fight before (Akiyama – Leben) was more entertaining, but everyone knows going in that a heavyweight fight isn’t going to go more than a few rounds, nevermind all five of a title fight. For Lesnar to come back from the fucking precipice of death to winning the fight is just godly. I’ve never been a Lesnar fan, outside of marveling at what an absolute beast he is, but fuck, he’s won me over completely. I’d even root for him in a Fedor matchup, because U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Sleigh Bells – Rill Rill

Usually I’d pick something like “Tell ‘Em” or “Crown on the Ground” from this Sleigh Bells album, Treats, but I’m trying to lighten it up a bit with my first song posting in a long while. Also, I didn’t want to steal straight from 3:10 to Joba‘s sixth-to-last post on his now-retired blog. I loved “Tell ‘Em” when I clicked on it there, but it took me until yesterday to check out the entire album. And now I’ve listened to it about half a dozen times. Yeah, this song is awesome solely due to its sampling of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That” but it utilizes it well, so whatever. I can only imagine kids growing up now listening to this and not being aware of its source. Kinda like me and Puff Daddy’s “Come with Me”. I mean, really, who the fuck was Jimmy Page? God, what a pathetic kid I was.

I’m just going to post this video without any commentary, because if you haven’t seen it already, I don’t want to spoil it.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, have I?

- I feel like such a massive douchenozzle for ever doubting David Wright. I didn’t draft him with either of my first-round draft picks in fantasy, and he was gone by both my second picks. And then I allowed him to go for $33 in my auction draft. That actually is decently high, but I paid more for Prince Fielder. What a fuckface I am.

- I admit it: I’ve never gotten the appeal of the “Auto-Tune the News” thing.

- I just saw some people describe the first two seasons of Friday Night Lights as soap opera-y. Sorry, I only watch soap operas with amazing production values that air on AMC.

- Speaking of which, I think I’m going to end up buying this poster.

- It’s kinda amazing how FIFA consists of more national teams than their are member states in the United Nations. Especially considering how much a joke FIFA seems to be.

- It took until I was 24 years old for me to get my first, “I used to have a crush on you.” I feel like that’s kinda sad.

- Red Dead Redemption convinced me to tell myself not to buy any games for a while (except for Starcraft 2). Steam constantly makes such a pronouncement extremely difficult to adhere to. Really, Left 4 Dead 2 for 10 bucks? Yet I resisted. Perhaps I am developing some semblance of willpower.

- I think we can all agree that The Shield has one of the best series finales of all-time. But it also has one of the best series premieres. What other show(s) can say that?

- Do not slam your putter length-wise into the ground, no matter how half-assed you might think the slam will be.

- Girls really do dig guys with iPhones – I witnessed it firsthand. Maybe I should carry around my iPod Touch and pretend it’s an iPhone.

- INCEPTION is less than three weeks away. I wonder how many (more) wet dreams I’ll have about it between now and July 16th.

- In case you were wondering: yes, oil is still pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. I say we nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. I’m so original.

I feel bad that I didn’t write a blog post about Landon Donovan’s epic goal in the 91st minute. Maybe I need negativity to write blog posts. I haven’t written about the Mets recently and they are 10 games above .500 and leading the NL wild card standings, and it took a loss by Fedor for me to write a blog post after another few days off after saying I was back. So yeah, I guess I like writing about failure.

As I’m sure all of you know, the U.S. lost today to Ghana in the knockout round of 16 in the World Cup. It was disappointing, but it’s not like the U.S. deserved to win, considering they still hadn’t learned that play starts with the first whistle. For the second time in four games, they allowed a goal in the first five minutes.

I’m going to try to be as serious as possible in this post. On Twitter today, I posted a bunch of joking, but derogatory things about soccer; I don’t feel they were unfounded, though. I think flopping (@QVT replied to me that it’s not called flopping — I would like him to comment on here and tell me what it’s called) is a major issue that causes many Americans to dismiss the sport. You’d need a 2160p television set to see some of the “contact” on which fouls are inevitably called due to a guy jumping through the air and holding his leg. And some Americans were all too content to join in, as pointed out in this blog post.

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Fedor Emelianenko lost for the first time tonight. Yes, he had a loss on his official record, but he had never lost. Yet tonight he not only lost, he was forced to tap out. It wasn’t a decision, not a spectacular knockout, but an armbar inside of a triangle choke that ended Fedor’s unbelievable reign.

Stolen from Bloody Elbow’s comments section:

To steal from Bloody Elbow once again, that very post sums up the fallout perfectly:

1. Fedor Emelianenko – The big one. As Luke Skywalker told the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, it was Fedor’s overconfidence that proved to be his weakness. The Russian paid no caution to Werdum’s guard and paid the biggest price possible. When Fedor begrudgingly tapped, he lost the aura that made him so appealing to the MMA fan base. He’s no longer FEDOR, but simply Fedor.

It’s a rule in MMA that EVERYONE loses, even the very best of fighters. The sport is too unpredictable and one mistake can end a fight. Yet Fedor always seemed to find a way to win. And accomplishing this as a heavyweight made his legend as immensely epic as possible. He wasn’t just the best “pound for pound” fighter in the world, he was the best fighter, period, full stop. There could be no talk of him moving up a weight class. He fought someone who was 7 feet tall!

So is my post from a year ago still true? I know the YouTube video is still badass, but Fedor just lost to Fabricio Werdum, who was the 9th ranked MMA heavyweight, and also a fighter who was released from UFC. Dana White is eating it up, as evidenced by this post on twitter.

I don’t know how to feel, because I didn’t even get to watch the fight as it happened. I found out Fedor lost by a “Holy. Shit.” on Twitter and someone on MSN telling me that Fedor had lost. I didn’t quite believe it, until Twitter updated again and I saw a string of about 10 people saying “Oh my fucking God” in different ways. The feed I was watching cut out right as the fight started, and since it ended only a minute later, I wasn’t able to find another working streaming in time. Fuck my cheap ass.

But I’ll say I’m pretty disappointed that we’ll never see an undefeated Fedor fight an undefeated Brock Lesnar, which was what every MMA fan — casual or hardcore — was pining for before Fedor joined Strikeforce instead of UFC. Since then, I feel like most people have split into two camps, one of which is extremely happy tonight, the other crying themselves to sleep. The former group consists of people pissed at Fedor seemingly ducking the best competition available, while an example of the latter would be whoever made that YouTube video.

At least Stephen Strasburg is still a God, right? Oh wait, he’s on the Nationals. Shit.

An early Saturday morning — these don’t happen often for me. What better time to write an insanely long post where I attempt to cover two dozen things. I think I’ll start out just talking about baseball, but perhaps I’ll make my way to the World Cup, or the Stanley Cup Playoffs, or the NBA Finals, or the French Open. Man, I have missed a lot of potential bullshit to write about this past month. read more…

The longer you don’t do something, the harder it becomes to start doing it again. I’m sure I could state that much more eloquently, but I think that gets the point across. I’m sure this applies to many of you reading this. Why is this the case? Procrastination can build upon itself and only continues in self-perpetuation because just the thought of what you’ve been procrastinating from makes you ashamed, forcing you to quickly distract yourself with something else. Or at least that’s what I read on the internet. Not that I’m ASHAMED that I haven’t blogged in a while, but I’m definitely a bit annoyed with my own laziness. Roy Halladay’s perfect game couldn’t even get me to write. What kind of baseball fan am I?

I think I’ve used golf to distract myself from everything recently. Although maybe I’m just straight up addicted to it. Having a friend or two who’s there to support and also take part in the addictive behavior only serves to magnify it. Want to play every Monday and Wednesday? Want to go to the practice green? Want to talk putting when you stop over to hang out in my backyard at 4 am on a Friday night? Yeah, sure.

Starcraft II would be the other distraction addiction. I’m going to end up pre-ordering the special edition any day now, I’m sure. Sigh. I really thought that after my initial dip into the beta only lasted a few embarrassing weeks that I was done being obsessed with such an unforgiving multiplayer game. But then a few friends got beta keys a couple of months later and I got sucked back in and now I haven’t known how to spend my gaming time since the beta went down. As a result, I am watching Starcraft II VIDEOS. I am officially a junkie. What gaming drug could ween me off this? Civilization IV? No, that’d be even worse. Besides, its successor is coming out in a few months as well. I think it and SC2 are the only two videogames I care about at this point in time.

I could use this as an easy segue into E3 discussion and how I hate motion controls, but I can leave that for another post (possibly a non-existent post). I probably should be distracting myself with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay more, as it’s the most fun I’ve had reading a novel in a long, long time. Perhaps I will wrap up this “welcome back” post to myself on this note and go read it.

Or start on a post about the “Year of the Pitcher“. Or not.

This weekend’s links are presented to you by this clip from Peep Show, since I’m all about trying to make use of my invites to the UK TV torrent tracker thebox.bz.

Accidental Penis – No, this is not a blog of “penis slips”, but pictures of stuff that look like penises. Much more Safe for Work.

The Fangraphs UZR Primer – This is just about all one could ever want to know about the now ubiquitous fielding metric that is a component of Fangraphs’ WAR calculation. I can’t believe I read it all.

A Few More Predictions – Joe Posnanski goes off and writes another few thousand words about baseball — words that you should read.

Shit My Kids Ruined – A tumblr blog of shit…ruined…by kids. I got nothing. Just click for schadenfreude.

Gateways to Geekery: Spaghetti Westerns – I’ve already seen The Good, The Bad And The Ugly; now I need to follow the rest of this guide to awesome westerns made over in Europe.

Harmful Drinks in America – I thought about not including this, because I feel like some of the comparisons are either wrong or just retarded, but they do emphasize the fact that most of the food (or drink, in this case) out there is slowly killing you.

I don’t even know what to write in my semi-amusing intro this week. I missed my Friday cutoff, but due to the glory of WordPress, I can pretend this post was actually posted before midnight. On the other hand, Twitter doesn’t seem to be very responsive tonight when it comes to me searching my own tweets for some easy copy and paste.

Anyhow, hit the jump for baseball number goodness.

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