Where Has My Country Gone? Adidas Doing Adidas

The Olympic uniform was released at the PGA Merchandising Show in Florida today, and I think I'm going to be sick.

Listen I'm not hear to talk about how Adidas was founded by a Nazi. That's neither here nor there. I'm here to focus on the facts and #FactsOnly even though Adidas was founded by a man named Adolf who equipped the Nazi Army. 

I'm also not here to discuss the fact that people have been charged with treason for lesser offenses than allowing a German outfitter to be the official sponsor of the United States Olympic Team. Again, that's not what I want to talk about.

I especially don't want to discuss how Adidas is such a well-run operation that they told Michael Jordan, "Thanks, but no thanks," when he wanted to sign with the outfitter upon turning professional.

None of those things matter to me right now.

What I do want to talk about is how disgusting these uniforms are. America has one of the easiest color schemes ever not to fuck up. Red, White, and Blue sells itself. Don't mess with it. 

Seriously, they're wearing a flag shirt. That's not a joke. That's for real.

Yet again Adidas accepts an impossible challenge and earns Best In Show. Let's take a look at some of Adidas' Greatest Hits.

Quietly Adidas' Finest Work was somehow ruining UCLA's jerseys, which were long thought to be the gold standard in college uniforms.

  

You want to know how bad Adidas golf apparel is? The two most famous German golfers alive are Martin Kaymer and Berhard Langer. Neither wear Adidas apparel (Kaymer does wear an Adidas shoe). Hell, both even have club deals with TaylorMade-Adidas and don't wear their clothes. You literally can't pay them to wear Adidas, and THEY'RE GERMAN!

I don't understand why we are even letting Germans design clothes. Has anyone ever looked to Germany for artistic inspiration?!? No, by definition they are the opposite of artistic. They are mechanical and efficient. That's why we let them build cars and planes (until they started using those planes in an attempt to take over the world). That's their lane.

And, don't give me, "Well they won the bid," nonsense either. If ISIS won the bid, would they get to outfit us too? I didn't think so. It's time we stop negotiating with terrorists. And, make no mistake, what Adidas does to a uniform is terrorism. Where has my country gone? Thanks Obama....

Solving the World's Problems One at a Time: With or Without Beans?

What started as a meaningless conversation, led to important discussion as my friend Dylan made the statement that chicken noodle soup is overrated.

I'm of the opinion that chicken noodle soup can't be overrated because it's not considered better than it is. It may be too common, but it's not overrated. No one thinks that shredded cheddar from a bag is the finest that cheese has to offer, but it's still used more than often than sliced Brie. The same goes for ground beef and prime steak.

The argument then became that chili is better than chicken noodle soup. I conceded that good chili beats good chicken noodle soup 10 times out of 10, no question. However, the popularity of chicken noodle soup resides in the fact that you know what you're getting. It's never going to disappoint. Never once in your life have you had chicken noodle soup and been truly surprised at the result, good or bad.

Chili on the other hand has way too much range. You can absolutely have a bowl of chili that changes your life, but you can just as easily have one that sends you to an early grave. This is the plight of chili. There are too many bad bowls out there for the good bowls to overcome. It's not a fair fight.

Here's where the discussion took a turn for academic. "What's your stance on beans?"

Being a champion of truth and justice, I of course was a non bean guy. I thought it common knowledge that authentic, original chili recipes do not include beans. Spirited debate ensued, and before long I was reading histories of chili. (Side note, there is an International Chili Society)

Here are the facts. The website lists two recipes for chili in the history neither include beans. The best defense of beans in chili can be summarized by saying, "It's what you want when you make it. You can put anything in there you want," which is the worst defense ever. It's that kind of thinking that landed goat cheese on pizza, forever ruining the perfect food. If we accept beans, where does it stop? Pretty soon nasty, disgusting (probably toxic for all we know) goat cheese will wind up in chili if we accept this thinking. Well not on my watch! I won't stand for this type of injustice.

When it comes to beans in chili, just say no because the truth is if you give an inch, the enemy will take a mile. #SaveRealChili


 

The Worst Time of the Year is Quickly Approaching

It's that time of year where we only have one meaningful football game left, and the TV lineup is starting to legitimately stink. We're still months away from HBO's Murders Row of Spring Programing of Thrones/Silicon Valley/Veep/And the always forgotten yet always entertaining Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I simply can't even remotely bring myself to care about college basketball yet, and my NBA team is in a hopeless place where it will make the playoffs, but the roster is aging and hope is fading.

February blows. It's an awful month with terrible weather, and a painful reminder that not only are you single but more importantly, you are as far away as possible on the calendar from football. Plus as the years go on and so too does my waistline, summer is becoming less enjoyable by the day.

I'm in a dark place, and when I find myself in times of trouble, mother betting speaks to me. 

Seriously, I don't know why or how, but every single year about this time, the end of football sends me into an emotional panic, and I feel like I have to bet on anything and everything in sight. But, here's the worst part. I get gun shy. I find bets that I love and don't bet them, and then every bet that I do make on a Monday night basketball game, I lose. It's like clockwork. Fact, I win every bet that I never place.

Last night for instance, I loved Golden State (-5) at home against the Spurs, absolutely loved it. I actually wanted to marry it. However, that little demon in my brain told me, "You can never bet against Pop in a big game,". You can guess how it went.

I was then given a tip to lay the points with Furman last night who also covered with ease, but you know the story. I was in the middle of recording a show and didn't get the bet in in time. So is life. 

Only one thing to do. Keep calm and bet on.

Three Despicable Violent Criminals Recreate Shawshank and Escape

(Source) - A prosecutor pursuing a case against one of the three men who broke out of a Southern California prison reacted: "Oh, my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out."

Hossein Nayeri, a former Marine who had escaped to his native Iran in 2012, faces charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown told The Orange County Register the man is "diabolical... sophisticated, incredibly violent and cunning.”

Brown says Nayeri helped kidnap a marijuana dealer in 2012, burned him with a blow torch and forced another suspect cut off the dealer's penis because Nayeri thought the man had buried money in the desert. Soon afterwards, investigators say he left for Iran, but they caught him while he was on his way to Spain to visit family.


The three men sawed through a quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall and got into plumbing tunnels before sawing through half-inch-thick steel bars as they made their way behind walls to an unguarded area of a roof atop a five-story building. There, they moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using the bed linen.

Wow, talk about a moral dilemma here. On the one hand I LOVE a prison escape story, while on the other, I would prefer not to have a psychopathic, violent criminal leading the brigade. At first I thought the comparison to Hannibal Lector was a bit much, but then I read that he burned a man with a blow torch and allowed it.

Why can't life imitate art? We're completely fine with Andy Dufresne's escaping Shawshank because he shouldn't have been in there in the first place, but when someone actually escapes a prison in real life, he has to be a diabolical, violent criminal.

For once I wish I could just have my cake and eat it too. Why can't we have a group of escapees who were all wrongly convicted of something trivial, like not paying a speeding ticket that collected interest and forces a lifetime sentence. I really want to pull for the escapees, but these guys are despicable. All three have attempted murder charges and are violent felons.

Sigh. It turns out that prison is mostly filled with bad guys. Go figure.

Lookout Bitcoin! There's a New Currency That's Hot in the Streets

Full disclosure, I was perusing the Internet looking at arenas that had been built recently because I'm a sociopath. I was legitimately rooting for the Rams and Chargers to move to LA so that I could see new renderings for whatever the Raiders do for a stadium. I love stadium porn. Side note, Omaha (not the city but the school) has a $81.6 million dollar arena, and LSU still plays in the PMac. That's laughable.

In my search, I noticed that Ole Miss used a strange currency to pay for their new arena. Apparently, a football recruit can be used to pay for building costs. Recruiting season never disappoints.

PS - If the cost of one recruit could cover a new arena, everyone would have a new arena, something that I'm not opposed to. I could put spankbank on hold for a while and just use fly through renderings of all the new venues. Fingers crossed.

The Internet is a cold, dark place, and I wish Adam Driver the best of luck

No two places -- outside of the military, perhaps -- will toughen you up and give you a thicker skin than attending boys' school in your formative years or having a job on the Internet. The only thing as ruthless as pubescent boys is an anonymous message board or comments section. I have done both. #Blessed.

Welp, the latest target of for the Internet is none other than Adam Driver AKA Kylo Ren.

I'll be the first to admit that as soon as Ren took off his helmet and exposed his face, my first thought was, "Man, those are Finebaums,".

Fortunately for Driver (and also one of the aspects that makes him appealing), he was in the military (Marines) and didn't achieve fame until much later in life, so he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. Either way, it looks like we will only see more of these memes as his star begins to grow, and more importantly as he makes more Star Wars Movies.

Suicide Squad Trailer Number Two Thoughts

OK, first things first, I am 100 percent going either to need to wear dark pants while watching Robbie as Harley Quinn, or I'm going to need a private screening, something which I can't afford. So, dark jeans it is.

It's simply not fair that the actress that I currently find the hottest on the planet is playing the fictional character that I find the hottest. We all have a default type. Mine is blonde and awful, covered in insanity. AKA Harley Quinn.

However, I have legitimate concerns here. Why on earth is David Ayers not having Robbie use her Jersey/New Yorker accent that Quinn is famous for? We already know she can kill it.

Seriously, I don't understand this move. It cheats the character. We immediately assume every chick with that accent is insane, just like everyone assumes that anyone with a Southern accent is immediately stupid. It's just good science.

Now on to the rest of the movie which appears to be a train wreck because there is way too much going on, way too many cooks in the kitchen.  

Unfortunately, I had a hunch that Heath Ledger's performance has forever ruined any hope we have for another electric Joker performance, and this trailer confirms my suspicions. Jack Nicholson's Joker was great because Nicholson is great, and he just played himself in face paint. Ledger's Joker was great because he hit the heart of the character. He has is great because he is the antithesis of Batman. He has no moral compass because he is amoral, not because he's completely batshit insane, which is pretty obviously what Jared Leto's Joker is going for in Suicide Squad.

It's not Leto's fault either. I hope the pay day was too much to turn down because even if I were an Oscar-winning actor like Leto, you can't win in this role. Ledger's performance is too fresh in everyone's mind, largely because it's on basic cable every six hours and even if you don't like comic book movies, you like Ledger's performance and have seen it. No one wants to see the kiddy, pun-using prankster version of the Joker either, so Leto only has two choices. Either he just does a knockoff Ledger, much like Tim Roth did with Christoph Waltz in Hateful Eight, or he has to go completely over the top. Hence, we see the Joker swimming in a bed of knives. Thanks, but no thanks.

Overall, I think the trailer did what trailers do now, show us the whole movie in two-and-half minutes, but I owe it to Robbie to give her my $10. It feels like it's going to be a solid 6. Whatever, see you in August, my flame, my muse.