Entries Tagged 'Sports' ↓

Say What You Want About the Chinese, But They Sure Know How to Put on a Show.

Boom, shake the room…

I was actually kinda blasé about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, at the outset, so I didn’t really tune in, initially, or check out the opening ceremonies.

Boy, was that a mistake.

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Sex: The Olympic-Sized Subtext

A champion in her own right….
Go, Paraguay: Javelinist Leryn Franco shows her winning form

Sex for the sport / The metaphor I kick is rhythmic
So listen / No competition / My love’s Olympic
The pace that I set heats the mind until it’s scorched
Waiting for the games to begin with my torch comes the javelin
The distance, it can’t be measured
The pleasure, too deep / Infinity marks the record…

“Sex for the Sport,” Channel Live,
Station Identification (Capitol, 1995)

Surrounded by fellow countrymen, she stepped into the Beijing National Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest,” during the 2008 Olympics’ opening ceremonies. When the camera pulled in for a close-up, all a planetful of horny guys wanted to know is, Who is that? What is her sport? and Does it show a lot of skin?

“Well, at least I’m not in 52nd place.”As it turns out, her name is Leryn Franco, she’s 26, from Paraguay, and throwing the javelin shows more skin than gymnastics, though less than beach volleyball.

As it also turns out, she wasn’t really all that good at what she did, placing 51st in her field. (Czech athlete Barbora Špotáková got the gold. “Leryn Franco is Hot; Sucks at Javelin” read one blog post.)

So, what? Throwing a 600g spear isn’t how Franco makes her money.

This is:

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Greatest Olympian Ever? Really?

Count ‘em.
Michael Phelps, golden boy: Sports Illustrated‘s latest cover

Swimmer Michael Phelps’s devastating performances at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are literally the stuff of legend, now, with that sport’s meets done. As raves for his outstanding feats continue to pour in—eight gold medals in China, more than any other athlete ever at one Olympics, and fourteen golds total, when adding in his six Athens 2004 wins—the question is being raised everywhere that sports is debated: Is Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian ever?

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Pursuing the Elixir of Perfection

At rest…
Float on: Swimmer Dara Torres (Photo for TIME by Justin Stephens)

Dara Torres’s record-breaking return to Olympic-level swimming at age 41 has not only stunned sports officials but unintentionally made the American a worldwide poster girl for middle-aged vitality and strength. The nine-time Olympic medalist and mother of a two-year-old daughter is the oldest woman to ever contend at this level in her sport. Her recent qualification to battle in Beijing means that this will be her fifth Olympics. No American swimmer has ever competed in so many.

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Swimming Can Be Pure Torture.

“Breathe.”

Someone went through a lot of trouble to fake this protest against the Beijing Olympics, above, and get it to look like an Amnesty International effort. (Click on the image to see its details—like the AI logo and eratz URL—at full size.) But even after the organization disclaimed it, via Boing Boing, it still retains its primal power.

Maybe Vick Should Become a Cop.

The Three Stooges?
Beats dogfighting any day: Three of Sean Bell’s five killers

This past December, former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in Federal prison for dogfighting.

Of what significance is the fact that, for that cruel sport, he will serve far more time than New York Police Department detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, above, will do for killing Queens resident Sean Bell, in a hail of 50 bullets, the morning of his wedding day? Continue reading →

Bravo, Gawker. Bravo, Observer.

Wintour and Newhouse

The sole issue more amazing than the blatancy of VOGUE’s having mined crude racist imagery for their April 2008 LeBron James/Giselle Bündchen cover has been the whiteout of surrounding media on the issue.

Before and AfterHere, in New York, neither The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The New York Sun, or The Village Voice have cracked a word on this subject, online or off. Newsday wrote something, before the direct pairing of the cover and H.R. Hopps’s 1917 Destroy This Mad Brute—Enlist poster, right, was widely known. As for television, local and network, zero.

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Monkey See, Monkey Doo-Doo: How VOGUE “Honoured” LeBron James by Smearing Black People with White Supremacy & Gorilla Feces

Before and After
Everything but the helmet: LeBron James meets his doppelganger

“Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said the magazine ‘sought to celebrate two superstars at the top of their game’ for the magazine’s annual issue devoted to size and shape.

“‘We think Lebron James and Gisele Bundchen look beautiful together and we are honoured to have them on the cover,’ he said.”

“But magazine analyst Samir Husni believes the photo was deliberately provocative, adding that it ‘screams King Kong.” Considering Vogue’s influential history, he said, covers are not something that the magazine does in a rush.

“‘So when you have a cover that reminds people of King Kong and brings those stereotypes to the front, Black man wanting white woman, it’s not innocent,’ he said.”

“Vogue cover starring LeBron James is called racially insensitive by some,” Megan Scott, The Associated Press

Annie Liebovitz“Lying,” photographer Annie Leibovitz’s late lover, Susan Sontag, famously said in an essay, “is an elementary means of self-defense.”

Perhaps knowing this is why both Leibovitz, right, creator of VOGUE’s controversial April 2008 cover photo, above right, and Anna Wintour, VOGUE editor-in-chief, below, both 58, have remained absolutely mute since accusations began to fly, over a week ago, that their coy image—featuring Cleveland Cavaliers point forward LeBron James, 23, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, 27—was a less-than-subtle piece of racist indoctrination.

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