- 12:08 PM
- 12/03/24
| Name: | Chico Amadeus Louise Veronica Ciccone Boutros-Boutros de la Bangs Garcia |
|---|---|
| Location: | Gotham City |
| Social Media Account: | chicobangs2 (AIM) |
| Member since: | January 29, 2002 |
| Last visit: | September 28, 2008 |
chicobangs has posted 48 links and 3,234 comments to SportsFilter and 19 links and 722 comments to the Locker Room and 1 column.
The Life And Death Of The English Football Song:: Popmatters explores, with examples, the history of the terrace chant, its sporadic forays into the recorded music world and the popular music charts, and its occasional (sometimes even successful) crossing into American culture, providing (among other high and low lights) the darkest moment in Walter Payton's storied career.
posted by chicobangs to culture at 11:20 AM on September 23, 2008 - 9 comments
An Open Letter From Roger Ebert To Jay Mariotti: Mariotti is an easy target at the best of times, but his abrupt departure from the Chicago Sun-Times, right after they paid his way to China for the Olympics, left his most distinguished now-former colleague more than a little out of joint. And no one writes a screw-you letter like Roger Ebert.
posted by chicobangs to culture at 05:11 PM on August 28, 2008 - 14 comments
What do you get the hockey fan who has everything?: Well, Graeme Patterson in Halifax has hooked up a synthesizer/organ to a table hockey game.
"The sk1 somehow had each key hooked up to each player (eg: A=goalie, C#=right winger etc...) and when the keyboard was played they would move around and such."
(More pictures here.)
posted by chicobangs to hockey at 02:29 PM on July 10, 2008 - 9 comments
Dave Zirin interviews Ralph Nader: about the idea of a fan's bill of rights, the NBA referees' scandal, and the still-growing dangers of taxpayer-funded stadiums.
Before Ralph Nader was the guy no one wanted to be stuck talking to at the Presidential Election party, he was one of the most important consumer watchdogs the United States ever had. Here, the always-excellent Dave Zirin brings out the childhood Lou Gehrig fan in him, and lets the erstwhile politician get a few things off his chest.
posted by chicobangs to culture at 01:27 PM on July 09, 2008 - 6 comments
An incredible collection of photos: from yesterday's Turkey vs. Switzerland rain-soaked Euro 2008 match, courtesy of Alan Taylor's phenomenal photoblog at the Boston Globe.
posted by chicobangs to soccer at 01:26 PM on June 12, 2008 - 26 comments
I stayed away for a couple of weeks, but I don't have a history anymore either. Has my years-long slate been wiped clean?
posted by chicobangs at 01:00 AM on August 29, 2008
Those all sound like Arena League names, not even WNBA ones. I guess Barons is acceptable. the rest are kind of crap. Thunder's the worst one. Which means it's the one they're going to pick, right?
posted by chicobangs at 03:50 PM on July 30, 2008
Well, thank goodness this conversation is never going to come up again.
posted by chicobangs at 03:21 PM on July 19, 2008
Apoch, in cycling there is no "bench." Everyone is in the game from the starting gun, and there are no time outs. In the NFL & MLB, not only is steelergirl right about more players, but you've also got 3 or more people per position on the depth chart ready to jump in the game if you go down. Cycling isn't like that. Every team has one rider going for the overall championship, but the whole team has to run the whole race, and there's a time limit every day too, so if you finish a certain amount of time behind the winner in any stage (I think it's a half hour), then you're automatically eliminated. For sprinters, the mountains are hell for this. You'll see a few of them drop off the end every day, especially through the alps. The structure of the sport is wildly different. And yes, the fact that they're actually prosecuting people, and harshly, means it looks worse for cycling than it is, but that's because unlike the North American sports, they're not sweeping it under the rug anymore. There will be a bad few years, and then it'll get better. I'll stick with it through this hard time, but I know most people won;t. That's fine. Better this than having drugs (and people trying to hide them) kill the sport completely. You think that can't happen to the NBA or the NFL? Really?
posted by chicobangs at 12:29 PM on July 14, 2008
He's just not Green Bay's favrite QB anymore.
posted by chicobangs at 08:56 PM on July 11, 2008
I've been watching it every morning, just like last year and the year before. It seems they caught him, he's out of the tour, he's actually gone to prison, and so that's it. Yes, another quality rider bites the dust, but we're just in the middle of the dark ages of the sport. Watching it, watching the fans and the reaction of the commentators and the reaction of the non-US press, I now am pretty sure that the Tour (and thus, the sport) will come out the other end of this and be okay again, and relatively soon. The egos are always going to be there. They'll have to be checked in some other loophole-free way in order for the sport to move forward, but I believe (foolishly, maybe, but still) that that's possible. The meatheads in the ESPN multiverse didn't give a damn about cycling before the drug stuff hit the sport, and they won't afterward, and compared to other sports, that doesn't touch cycling all that much. If you're taking your cues about sport from Jim Rome and Jay Mariotti, headlines like this aren't gonna help you get into cycling, but right now all they have going for them is that the core fans are going to be able to maintain it until they can figure out how to regulate and enforce the doping issues properly, at which point the sport's international (and North American) profile will start to rise again. It does suck for fans of the sport in the present tense, though.
posted by chicobangs at 08:50 PM on July 11, 2008
So there are two Spofi leagues as it stands now: the incumbent auto-renewing one and the new one. Are we going to keep both? It's fine, it's just -- kind of redundant.
posted by chicobangs at 09:47 AM on July 11, 2008
It better be on wheels, is all I'm thinking.
posted by chicobangs at 03:28 PM on July 10, 2008
I don't know about you guys, but depending on how many of these he can crank out, my Christmas shopping could be finished in record time this year.
posted by chicobangs at 02:35 PM on July 10, 2008
Oh, yeah, absolutely, they totally are. Totally. Seriously, go for it.
posted by chicobangs at 02:32 PM on July 10, 2008
Key players can switch teams and put you over the 3 per team limit. Or leave the EPL altogether. But hey, go ahead. Bet the farm on Cronaldo and Adebayor, and take the rest of the summer off. You deserve it.
posted by chicobangs at 03:43 PM on July 09, 2008
It would require not just legislation (though that would help) but a change in the paradigm. Owners extorting tax money out of municipalities to pay for stadia is a story as old as time, and fans have too much invested emotionally and financially to just let these people walk, so they capitulate every time. Now that it's worked in Seattle, every other owner in the NBA can do exactly the same thing, holding Seattle over their local legislature. It sucks, hard, but the city whose citizens put their foot down is the city whose citizens wind up without a team to cheer for. I don't give MLB, NFL or NBA a dime of my money anymore for exactly that reason. I don't miss them, and they clearly don't miss me. So short answer, I don't know how to fix it.
posted by chicobangs at 03:32 PM on July 09, 2008
I clicked through, got to the players page, and thought, what the hell am I doing? Although I did just lose the job I had that blocked this site, so fuggit, let's try again. Carburetor Dung FC is in the hizzy. (Note to self: keep a close watch on the transfer wire for the next month, ffs.)
posted by chicobangs at 01:52 PM on July 09, 2008
Regardless of what you think of Nader as a politician, there is a lot of truth in what he says in this interview.
There are much more serious problems affecting people in our country, in our community and in our world, to be sure. But people deserve a sanctuary where they can trust what's going on is going to be based on the merits and not influence-peddling or shenanigans of various sorts, and that's sports. One reason people are attracted to sports is because things happen on the merits. Teams win or lose on the merits of their players and coaches and managers. When that trust is betrayed, you can see that there's a real letdown among the fans.
posted by chicobangs at 01:29 PM on July 09, 2008
Seven years of Lion angst ought to end
Millen may be pathetic, but he's also embedded in the rock there. The CEO of Lehman Brothers is an office-temp gig compared to being the GM of the Lions.
He'll leave when he's bored, or when Daddy Ford wanders off. Not a minute before.