Junior Seau was the most noteworthy former NFL’er to die in the past few weeks, but he wasn’t the only one.

Former Giant Stacy Robinson passed away at the age of 50, following a three year battle with multiple myeloma. The news was obviously overshadowed by Seau, who was a bigger star and died under far more disturbing circumstances (which we will discuss later in the review,) but I think it deserves some attention.

The fact that Stacy Robinson has died makes me sad. Not only because I am a human with emotions, but also because his name evokes a very specific memory for me.   That memory has very little to do with Stacy Robinson. I have no memory of ever seeing him play. I had to look him up to see what position he played. All I knew was that he was a member of the Giants’ 1986 championship team.

This is because of a t-shirt.

I was a few months past 8 years when the Giants won the NFC championship game against the Redskins. I watched the games every week with my dad, I knew who Phil Simms, Lawrence Taylor, Carl Banks and Joe Morris were, and I got very excited that I was going to watch the Superbowl. That was the extent of my football experience.

At some point in between the NFC Championship game and the Superbowl, my father bought me a bootleg t-shirt from a street vendor in lower Manhattan. I remember it being huge, but I wanted to wear it anyway.  It was the coolest shirt I had ever seen in my entire life. That was before I read the front of the shirt.Over a huge Rose Bowl emblem,  It read “New York Giants Super Bowl 21 Champions.”

“But, Dad, ” I asked, “How do they know? They haven’t played the game yet.”

“I guess they just expect the Giants to win,” he told me.

That was not good enough for logical little Justin. I decided I couldn’t wear the shirt until after the Super Bowl, and then, only if the Giants won. So, I got nervous. The ability to wear this t-shirt to school became the most pressing issue in my life. Every day, I would come home and look at it, study it really. There was a lot going on. There was the Rose Bowl logo, there was Roman Numerals, there was a Giants emblem and, on the back, was the entire 1986 Giants roster.

I read the roster over and over again. Two names jumped out at 8 year old me. One was Pepper Johnson. PEPPER! There’s a guy named Pepper? Is that his real name? It must be a nickname. Hey, dad, what’s his real name? Why do they call him Pepper?

The other name was Stacy Robinson. HOW CAN THERE BE A BOY NAMED STACY?  Do you think that’s why he became a football player? Is he tough because people made fun of him for having a girl’s name? Is it short for something? Are there other men named Stacy? Dad, do you know any other men named Stacy?

The Giants obviously won.  I went on to wear the t-shirt even though it was so huge it hung below my knees. Kids at school may have told me it was cool. Maybe Kevin Pollack or Clint Miller got jealous. I don’t remember. I hadn’t thought about any of it in 25 years.

Until this week, when I saw the name Stacy Robinson and it all came back to me.

Sports Illustrated: May 14th, 2002

AFTER THE JUMP: BOXING AND HORSE RACING? NO THANK YOU!

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Some men freak out when they realize their hair has begun thinning. I started going bald when I was 16, so, for me, it was never a sign that I was getting old.

Other people get worried when they spot a gray hair. Again, not an issue for me. I have very little hair on my head, but, for the most part, it has maintained it’s original color.

This doesn’t mean I’m not susceptible to follicle related age despair. Something happened this weekend that jarred me to my core. Early Sunday afternoon, I walked by a mirror in my hallway and… I caught a glimpse of Giamatti.

Allow me to explain. Back in November, I decided to grow a beard. I think it looks good. Most people seem to agree. I have gotten a number of compliments over the past few months. But, there’s one person in particular who HATES the beard. That person is my mother. She has been unwavering in her absolute hatred of my facial hair. Why? One reason. In her words, “YOU’RE GOING TO LOOK LIKE PAUL GIAMATTI!!!”

I didn’t put much stock into this proclamation. My mother is unhappy with a choice I have made. She will use whatever tools are at her disposal to try to dissuade me. In my family, the tools that are most often and most effectively wielded are horrible spirit crushing insults. It’s how we get our point across. So, that’s what I assumed the Giamatti comment was. It was an insult that I batted away and moved on from.

Then, Sunday afternoon happened. I walked by that mirror in the hallway. I didn’t look directly at it. I just caught a glimpse through the corner of my eye. But, this is what I saw:

Let’s be clear. Paul Giamatti is a fine actor. I recently watched the film “Win Win.” He was fantastic. He also seems like an awfully nice man. That being said, he is not a particularly handsome gentleman. And he is not the person a 33 year old man should want people to be reminded of when they meet him.

I woke up this morning and I trimmed the fuck out of my beard. It is super close cropped now.  I’ve been walking back and forth past that same mirror, trying to catch glimpses out of the corner of my eye. So far so good. No Giamatti.

Happy Mothers Day

Sports Illustrated. May 7th, 2012:

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The internet loves to talk about that show “Girls” on HBO.  Well, this website is featured on the internet, so it seems we should get into the act. (And to commenter “Beefcurtains,” who commented on the email to my brother I posted last week with a single word, “gay,” I say thanks for reading.  You are going to HATE what comes next. Go fuck yourself.”)

Here’s a recent email exchange between King Ing, BShrek and myself.

King: have any of you guys watched this show GIRLS?

Justin: It’s a fat girl whining while some dude fucks her in the ass and then cums on her arm. THAT IS A TRUE STATEMENT. Watch Veep instead. It’s great.

BShrek: I actually think Girls is tremendously awkward and hilarious. And Brian Williams’ daughter is super hot.

Justin: Well, that’s because you don’t think of yourself as the fat girl.

Most of the discussion of this show has framed it as Sex and the City for younger women. I don’t think that’s accurate.  I think its actually Curb Your Enthusiasm for ladies.  And that’s another show I can’t sit through.

I don’t deny that Curb is hilarious. Every time I force myself to watch it, I laugh. I just don’t think I watch it like the rest of you. When you watch Larry David interact awkwardly with other people, you’re constantly shocked by the inappropriate things he says and does. I’m never surprised. I have the exact same socially awkward instincts that he does.  I exhaust myself on a daily basis fighting the urge to act like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Why would I watch it at night? Would it be smart for a recovering alcoholic to go home and watch a show about drinking? Should a pack rat watch hoarders?

So take that aversion to awkwardness and add to it discussions of lady parts and abortions. That’s what Girls is. The main character is just Larry David with an active vagina. Does that sound pleasant? Does that sound like something I would enjoy?  Obviously not.

Plus, I read that Brian Williams’ daughter won’t be doing any nude scenes. That’s too bad. She’s hot.

Sports Illustrated: April 30th, 2012

AFTER THE JUMP: JUSTIN IS A BEACHED WHALE!

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My brother had a pretty big birthday this week. Here’s the email I sent him to mark the occasion:

30′s a big deal for a lot of people. It marks the passage of time or the end of childhood or the dawn of new era or some such shit. I kind of forced myself to make a thing out of it when I turned 30. But, I’m a drama queen. I like to add significance to seemingly unimportant things, just so I have something to obsess over.  I don’t think you’re like that. But, even if you are, I don’t think its something you should spend too much time thinking about.

From where I stand, you’re way ahead of schedule. You’ve already done things that people twice your age could only dream of. And the best part is, you’re just getting started. The first 30 years were just prelude to what promises to be a life full of accomplishment, impact and triumph.

Bottom line, you make me proud. So, Happy Birthday. I’m glad you were born.
-Justin

PS- I DIDN’T GET YOU A GIFT.

Sports Illustrated: April 23rd, 2012

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It’s been about 13 hours since I became a big time Hollywood player. So far, so good

During the first commercial break of last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, they showed this graphic:

Eli Manning hosting SNL? What a great idea! I should know. I already had it.  On February 7th, I wrote a post called “Eli Manning Should Host Saturday Night Live.” It was about how I think Eli Manning should host Saturday Night Live. (Creative title, right?)  I outlined an entire episode, from skits to digital shorts to weekend update. I can only imagine Lorne Michaels and Seth Myers are big time SCP fans. And while I am truly honored and grateful that they may be reading, I do have one caveat. IF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS STEAL MY IDEAS, I WILL COME AT YOU WITH A FURY THAT MAKES MAD TV LOOK LIKE THE JAMIE KENNEDY EXPERIMENT!

I’m just kidding.  I’m a big fan. Feel free to use my ideas. JUST GIVE ME CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, YOU BOTTOM FEEDING HACKS.

My initial episode guide was written right after the Superbowl. While most of the ideas still hold up, a lot has happened in the world since then, so here a few new ideas to throw into the hopper.

This was initial idea for the cold open:

Fred Armisen does something stupid. He sits at a desk and plays a politician or President Obama or some foreign dictator and just makes a bunch of stupid topical jokes that have already been made by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert earlier in the week. It’s not funny and it goes on a bit too long.  But it ends with”Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night,” and we’re off.

Let’s throw that out the window. Instead, we have Eli sitting in his dressing room, getting ready for the show. Someone walks in. It’s someone with SNL gravitas. Maybe it’s Lorne Michaels or Tina Fey. Ideally, though, it’s Alec Baldwin. He asks Eli if he’s nervous, Eli says, “yeah, a little,” so Baldwin begins a pregame pep talk. Pretty quickly, the speech devolves into a Gregg Williams style bounty rant, but instead of advising on Frank Gore’s concussions or Alex Smith’s weak arm, Alec is placing bounties on SNL cast members. He holds up head shots. “This is Bobby Moynihan. He has asthma. I want you to make him laugh so hard he wheezes. I want him sidelined. i don’t want to see him play Snookie. This is Abby Elliot. She has bladder issues. If a joke hits her just right, she will piss her pants. I want to see a wet spot so big that even her father AND her grandfather have to change their clothes.” (This will flow right into the monologue I already wrote, during which Abby Elliot compares her family of comedy royalty to Eli’s family of football royalty.)

Rihanna is the musical guest. Whenever she’s been on in the past, she and Andy Samberg have done a “Shy Ronnie” digital short. “Shy Eli” seems like a pretty obvious choice. Maybe he and Ronnie are football teammates.

Finally, I think we have to add a Tebow sketch. Here’s how that’s going to go. Eli is at the mall. He’s sitting at a table in the food court. All of a sudden. a guy with long hair and a beard, wearing a Tebow jets jersey, sits down at the table with him.

“Excuse me, Mr. Manning, right?”

Eli says yes, and the guy starts ranting. It’s now that we realize, its not just some guy in a Tebow jersey. It’s JESUS! And he’s pissed. Turns out, he really liked Denver and he is not happy that he had to move to New Jersey and read the New York Post and eat bagels.  He mentions what Pat Robertson said about the Broncos being punished for getting rid of Tebow and he agrees that it’s going to happen. He says something about not wanting to go anywhere near Rex Ryan because he’s most comfortable wearing sandals. Jesus goes on for a while before Eli finally is able to step in.

“Hold on, I’m not Peyton. I’m Eli.”

Jesus responds: “Oh. Oh jeez. (get it??) I’m so sorry. I’m really embarrassed about that. I’m actually a really big fan of yours. Every time you beat Belichick, that’s a win for our side. Congratulations on the Superbowl.”

Eli just stares at him in silence. Jesus takes a long, loud slurp from his large food court soda. Then he waits a beat before saying, “That Tiki Barber’s kind of a douchebag, huh?”

—–SCENE—–

So, there you go, SNL. There’s a perfect formula for a funny Eli Manning hosted episode of Saturday Night Live.  I hope this helps. I’ll be watching. DON’T FUCK ME OVER!

Just kidding. I’m a big fan. Big Fan.

Sports Illustrated: April 15th, 2012

AFTER THE JUMP: JUSTIN HAS A COUNTRY NAME CHANGE AND PONDERS A HOMOSEXUAL LOVE AFFAIR.

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Bruce

Bruuuuuce!

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEE!

What did you do Friday?  I saw Bruce.

Springsteen at the Garden. There is no better way to spend an evening.

And what a show it was. The E Street Band, which now has somewhere between 15 and 35 members, was in top form. The energy never lagged through a show that lasted about 3 hours. The stuff from the new album fit right in with the old classics and they even pulled out some deep cuts for the die hards. (Kitty’s Back! Lion’s Den! ((until right now, I did not realize the cat heavy nature of the setlist))

The show came at the absolute perfect time for me too.  Friday was my first day off after working ten in a row.  So, when Bruce sang about the troubles of the working man, he was talking about me. Well, kind of. His characters tend to be construction workers or border guards. When he sings Promised Land, I’m not sure he’s thinking about a guy who spent two hours on Thursday trying to come up with clever Kanye West/Kim Kardashian puns.  BUT IT’S HARD!!!

If you’ve never seen a Springsteen show, you should go. If you haven’t bought the new album, go buy it. If you don’t think watching a concert for three hours on a Friday night can instantly wash away two weeks of stress, exhaustion and tension, then you’re hopeless.

Sports Illustrated: April 09, 2012

AFTER THE JUMP: LET’S FIGURE OUT WHAT’S UP WITH KING ING?

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Have you ever seen bad stand up?  I’m not talking about watching a special on Comedy Central that doesn’t make you laugh. I mean sitting in a club or a bar and watching someone stand in front of a microphone and fail.   The performer keeps throwing out jokes and the audience gives back nothing. It’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world.

But at least the people in the audience came for comedy.   It’s not like he walked into a bank and started telling bad jokes to people while they waited in line. The audience knows what the guy is trying to accomplish, even if he’s not reaching the goal.

Last night, I had an online fantasy baseball draft.  As any fantasy player knows, Yahoo provides a chat option so people in the league can communicate in real time while picking their teams.  Sometimes, that’s a lot of fun. If everyone is into it, throwing barbs and ripping on each other, the chat can be the best part of the night. But, other times, it just doesn’t happen. Maybe the people in the league don’t know each other that well. Maybe some of the people are drafting while they’re doing something else. Maybe there’s just nothing to say.  Last night was one of those.

Except for one guy.

One guy kept making comments.

“Hey, nice pick, guy… if this was 1991.”

“Oooh.. I hate doing this, but I’m gonna have to take this guy.”

“Wow. Two second basemen in a row? You must know something the rest of us don’t”

And it continued like that through the whole draft. No one else posted a comment. Just one guy throwing out bad jokes to an audience that wasn’t buying.  And, the whole time,  I imagined him sitting there with a self satisfied grin, thinking to himself “Man, I am tearing these guys up! They don’t even have comebacks.”

Let’s revisit the stand up from earlier. At some point, the audience feels bad for him. You don’t want him to fail. You just want it to be over. You want to watch him put the microphone back in the stand, stare at his feet and slink off the stage, ending the collective misery for everyone.  But, what would happen if the comic ended his terrible set, threw down the microphone and pumped his fist triumphantly?  What if he misread the room completely? What if he thought he had absolutely killed and the only reason the audience didn’t laugh was because they were stunned by what a funny motherfucker he is?

That would be really annoying, right?

Sports Illustrated: March 26th, 2012

AFTER THE JUMP: SUPERMODEL CHRISSY TEIGAN AND HER PERFECT LOOKALIKE!

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I am serious. If Justin doesn’t have a picture like this up in his next SI review I will lose my mind. (Some might say I already have)

If Chrissy Teigen can go half Albert Pujols, so can you!

Rush Limbaugh calls Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. Feminists, liberals and everyone else who believes in proper civil society blast him for making such vile comments. The right wing knows they can’t defend his words, so they respond, instead, by painting a false equivalency between what Limbaugh said and what comics like Bill Maher and Louis CK have said about Sarah Palin.

This isn’t about that, (Though, if you want to read a pitch perfect take on the whole situation, Michael Ian Black wrote one.)

This is about the way in which members of the right wing presented their argument. A Fox news anchor said that Bill Maher had called Sarah Palin “the C-word” and “the T-word.” Hearing that ruined the rest of my day, because what the fuck is “the T-word?”

Is it tit? Did Bill Maher call Sarah Palin a tit? Probably not. More likely, he called her a twat. But, it took me a long time to figure that out. And if it takes me, a human with a dirty mind and an absolutely filthy mouth, that long to come up with twat, how long is it going to take the average easily offended, closet case repressed Fox News viewer to come up with it? They probably never will.

My thesis, therefore, is that “The T-Word” is not a thing.

There arefour acceptable “The _ -word’s.” They are “The F-Word,” “The B-Word,” “The C-Word” and “The N-Word.”

Let’s break them down one at a time.

The F word is Fuck. It is one of the two most popular curse words in American english, second only to shit. But, to fuck is to “do it,” so our culture assigns extra shame to it. As a result, children and news anchors say “The F-Word” when trying to convey it.

The B word is Bitch. It is also very common but, unlike fuck, you’re allowed to say bitch on television. So, who says “B-word?.” As far as I can tell, it’s Human resources people who are relaying accusations of hostile work environments made against male corporate executives by their secretaries or female colleagues. (For the record, the men who call secretaries or female colleagues bitches have tiny cocks. ALWAYS.)

The C-Word is cunt. It is the worst word in the English language. It is a vile, horrible euphemism for vagina which no woman should ever be referred to as. (I think it a lot, but rarely say it out loud.)

The N-Word is… so offensive that I’m literally scared to even think it, because what if someone can hear my thoughts and then punches me in  the brain. We all know what it means. Let’s just move on.

That is it. There are no others. This is non-negotiable. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking cunt.

Sports Illustrated. March 19th, 2012

AFTER THE JUMP:  THE WORLD’S FATTEST TWINS. ON MOTORCYCLES!!!!

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I don’t think I’d call what I have obsessive compulsive disorder. Instead, I’d just say I like things to be in their proper place.

There’s a reason a couch and a coffee table make indentations in the carpet. It’s so you know exactly where the couch and the table go.
When you’re putting clothes in a dresser, the proper order of the drawers (from top to bottom) is socks, underwear, sleeping clothes, every day t-shirts, backup t-shirts, shorts. The silverwear tray goes (from left to right) spoons, forks, knives. You can’t argue with that. It’s basic logic.

There’s a place for everything and everything has a place.

This week I bought a new book case. The one I already owned was past capacity, so I spent six months looking for a second one. And after all that careful planning and internet window shopping, I walked into an Ace Hardware and bought the first one I saw.

The real fun started when I got it home. That’s when the reordering of books began! I was able to break things down into categories, then sub-categories, then by author within the subcategories. It was the greatest feeling in the world.

Books on politics get split between national and local. Each gets its own shelf. National is further broken down by era. A book about the 1948 election is next to a book about the 1960 election, which kicks off a Kennedy subset that runs from JFK to RFK to Teddy. That’s followed by a book about the ’88 election, then Game Change about the ’08 election and Renegade, about the inner workings of the Obama campaign.

Novels by Steve Martin kick off another shelf. They’re followed by Bossypants by Tina Fey, because they’ve worked together on SNL, 30 Rock and in the movie, “Baby Mama.” From there it’s Sarah Silverman, because she’s a funny woman like Tina Fey. Then Patton Oswalt because he’s a stand up similar to Sarah Silverman. Then Dennis Leary because he, like Oswalt, has done voices in animated films. Next is the logical step to author Sarah Vowell, since she did a voice in the Incredibles. She’s followed by Chuck Klosterman because they were once on the same live episode of WTF. Closterman leads into Dave Eggers because I was introduced to both of them at the same time. Eggers links to Nick Hornby because Hornby has written for Eggers’ publishing company, McSweeneys. Then Jay McInerney, because like Eggers and Horbny, McInerney was once considered the voice of a new generation. Same goes for David Foster Wallace, who comes next. It ends with Johnathan Franzen, who was friends with DFW.

See how logical it is?  And how much fun? I’m not crazy. I’M NOT.

Sports Illustrated: March 12, 2012 

AFTER THE JUMP:

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