Tag Archives: Brandon Leftridge
Leftridge: TV Time: Justified Returns Tonight, Women Everywhere Swoon
Since I’m such a fantastic predictor of sport’s happenings (especially when it comes to the NFC, apparently [Go Saints! Go Pack!]), please allow me to explain—through inarguable telepathy skills, as it were—what will happen on this Tuesday night’s third season premier of FX’s original series, Justified.
– US Marshal Raylan Givens might could shoot somebody.
– Boyd Crowder will have spiky hair, and be endlessly fascinating, like a spider who’s read a lot of deeply influential books on psychology.
– There will be mud, and drugs.
All right, so it’s pretty obvious—yet again, if you’ve been following along—that I’m not too good at this whole “betting” thing. It’s either an indictment of my stupidity, or my inability to reason; the future makes no sense to me, and therefore, I’m blind when it comes to an accurate vision of possibility. This is either a blessing, or a curse. On one hand, I invent my own future… on the other, I lost my house recently to a crafty Indonesian with a slick tongue and deceit held deep within his solitary golden tooth.
Sorry, honey.
But thank God I’ve still got my TV—somehow, miraculously—and Tuesday night, I’ll be watching the proceedings as they unfold deep from within Harlan County, Kentucky.
Leftridge: NFL Playoffs, Take 2; An In-Depth Analysis of Murderers, Dragons & Chapped-Lips
Like the late, great Jerry Reed said, “When you’re hot, you’re hot.”
Perhaps more importantly, he followed that up with, “when you’re not, you’re not.” And when it comes to picking playoff football, my friends, I am not. I’d feel bad about this if I prided myself on my ability to accurately predict the winners, but I don’t. I know I’m terrible at it. That’s why I don’t gamble. I don’t put my money where my mouth is, nor will I ever claim to. Instead, I put chicken wings where my mouth is. This weekend. While I watch what is certain to be some tantalizing NFL action.
I said last week that the Wildcard round was going to be bad, and it was. At least I didn’t—what’s the expression?—have intercourse with the dog in that regard.
Leftridge: TV Time: Hell on Wheels Makes the Most of Racial Epithets, Violence & Whore Talk
If you’re easily offended by the gratuitous use of racial epithets, lots of hot whore talk, or violence perpetuated with frightful indifference, Hell on Wheels may not be the show for you. If, however, you’re cool with “injun,” and the occasional n-bomb, find nothing indecent about tattooed-faced ladies of the night sleeping with black men and you think it’s cool to watch dudes get shot in the mouth at close range (the smoke seeping out of his mouth as he lay dying was a particularly devilish touch), then climb aboard AMC’s gritty offering about burgeoning life in a brave new world.
Though Hell on Wheels is about the westward expansion of the Transcontinental railroad in 1865, that’s only a small part of the wide picture the program is meant to paint.
Leftridge: The Playoffs Will Get Better Next Weekend, I Promise
This year’s round of NFL Wildcard playoffs is a little like watching Jeff Bridges eat an apple; it’s not apt to be the most entertaining thing you’ve ever seen, but goddamnit, THAT’S "THE DUDE" EATING AN APPLE. Anything that guy does is entertaining. I’d pay money to watch him trim his goatee and balance his checkbook. Similarly, you can’t not watch the NFL playoffs, even if it is the slightly wilted side-salad at the beginning of what promises to be an otherwise fantastic meal.
It seems a foregone conclusion at this juncture that the NFC will come down to the Packers and the Saints in the Conference Championship. Additionally, it’s likely that the Patriots will face either the Ravens or the Steelers in the Divisional round next weekend. In between, there doesn’t figure to be a whole lot of mystery.
The action kicks off Saturday, with a sexy-ass matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Houston Texans.
Leftridge: The Dirty Dozen Top Malt Liquors for New Year’s Eve
Money’s tight. You just spent a shitload to fix your son’s cleft palette, your wife had her hours at TJ Maxx cutback so far she’s barely working at all and the student loans from your worthless animal husbandry degree are piling up faster than elephant shit at a circus.
Life sucks.
But New Year’s Eve waits for no man, and you need to get lubricated and loose. Champagne’s a little rich for your blood and wine makes you blackout and do unspeakable things to your life-sized poster of Bo Jackson. So what’s that leave?
Malt liquor.
But in this battered economy, malt liquors are a dime a dozen. How does one get the most bang for their buck? Simple. I’ve designed a complex formula that utilizes alcohol content by volume, divisible by cost per cubic cent, multiplied by incident of “punching a police-horse” in the snout. Here are the winners.
Leftridge: This Year in Sports
So it’s that time of year when we sit back and take stock of the “calendar that was” with a grueling list meant to encompass a million things that happened over the past 12 months. Every publication that’s worth its weight in readers compiles some sort of regurgitated inventory of “Top Sports Things That Happened,” and “2011 Highlights in the World of Athletics.” (or trout-fishing, independent movie-making, shit you ate at your in-laws for Sunday dinner, etc. You get the point)
Frankly, I find it a tedious task and I for one will not participate. People like lists because they’re easy to skim and skip around, but I ask you: do you really like lists? Or do you read them because you’re supposed to like lists?
Therefore, I will painstakingly go month-by-month through 2011 to briefly recap the highlights and the lowlights in an effort to encapsulate things that happened. In sports. Let’s start with January, since, well, since it’s the first month, I suppose.
January:
Roberto Alomar, who may or may not have AIDS (this site’s too crappy for links– just google it), and Bert Blyleven are elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jeff Fisher (Tennessee Titans) and Eric Mangini (Cleveland Browns) get fired, and the 49ers hire Jim Harbaugh, who I thought was really cool when I was younger because I had a football card where he had spiked hair (this is the same reason Kevin Seitzer was my favorite Kansas City Royal).
The Seahawks become the first team with a losing record to win a playoff game. Jesus weeps.
The Chiefs, who somehow won the division and weaseled their way into the playoffs, get beat like a drum by a much better Baltimore Ravens team.
Leftridge: Gift Giving Ideas for Just About Anyone
With Christmas only a stone’s throw away, I’ve decided to take the guess work out of gift-giving.
Nobody really knows what Grandpa wants and Dad has enough "executive" golf-themed items for his desk (exceptionally funny because Dad doesn’t work at a desk– he’s a ‘slicer’ on the hog-slaughtering assembly line… Get real).
Surprise them with a gift for the ages!
Have them talking for weeks afterwords! Whatever… Just buy one of these goddamned things and call it a day.
Leftridge: TV Time — The Walking Dead —
The first thing you need to know about The Walking Dead is that it’s a show about love.
We’ll let that sink in for a moment.
Are you adequately recovered from my claim? Good.
So yeah, it’s a show about love, first and foremost. It’s about love, and human nature, and the evil that men do, and familial relationships and sociological interactions. It’s basically a primetime soap opera about a group of people, and the way they treat life, and the way life treats them. It’s a soap opera about people thrust together unwittingly into less than desirable circumstances. And zombies.
Yes, zombies.
And to many, that’s what this show is, or what it means. It’s a tale of a bunch of people banded together by fate, shooting the shit out of zombies in order to procure themselves a better tomorrow.
And though the zombie brains may splatter, and their rotten faces be exploded under the cool blast of a 12 gauge, this show is still about the humans behind the gun, a poetic testament to those forced into a life of murderous indifference.
Leftridge: Calling All Coaches- Who’d Like to Come to Kansas City?
So Todd Haley is gone, and though it’s only been a few days—that he’s undoubtedly spent sitting on his couch in basketball shorts, scratching the scruff on his neck and wondering where it all went wrong—we’re already picking over the corpse of his career and making wild assumptions and wish-lists concerning who might be next in line. The life of a head football coach is probably not a fun one, and it provides all of the safety and job-security of a one-legged lobsterman on a rickety fishing boat.
But shed not a tear for the plight of the oft-embattled NFL coach; the average 2010 salary was a cool $3.25 million. And yeah, it’s a year-round job, despite its seasonal nature, and it consumes you. Your family life probably suffers, you have no free-time and your insides are just one giant ulcer of second-guesses and game film. That said, I mean, come on… $3.25 million.
Tales From the Tweet: KU Livin’ Large, Albert Getting Fatter & Milwaukee’s New Kick to the Nuts
So unless you’ve been living trapped beneath Charlie Weis’ fleshy, ample backside, surviving on small pockets of trapped air and renegade Cheetos that were feared lost forever, you already know the big news of the past week: there’s a new head footballl coach at Kansas University.
And if you’re like me, you spent yesterday glued to your Twitter feed, as 10 different local sports talk personalities Tweeted the same lines from his lengthy press conference. Alright, so that’s only a half-truth. I went back afterwards and read them all, however, and managed to learn the same things over and over again.
@nate_bukaty (810)
“Charlie Weis enters the room.”
I’m on the edge of my seat… my ever-so-slightly quaking seat.
@bobfescoe (610)
“Weis has entered. Using a cane. Bad hip and knee #kufball”
Apparently, the “Rascal-Mobility-Scooter ramp request” was not met. Strike one, Dr. Zenger. He’s going to hold this against you when he rolls out of town in another year and a half.
Leftridge: TV Talk: RFD for You and Me
What you choose to watch on a daily basis says a lot about your character. If you’re watching MTV in this day and age, you’re probably into debacles of human embarrassment, and you probably like to masturbate watching young, pregnant teenage girls scream at their ill-gotten infants.. If you’re into ESPN, you’re probably pretty boring, but you’re at least the kinda guy that can handle his own around the coffee machine (nobody has a water-cooler anymore, whatever the fuck that is). And if you’re into VH1, you probably like watching older quasi-celebrities make asses of themselves AND the early morning top-40 countdown ensures that your teenage daughter might raise an eyebrow over a plate of bacon when you offer an admittedly lousy critique of Gaga’s newest offering.
Keep trying, dad!
If you’re like me, however, you just realized that Time Warner Cable, that heathen of all metropolitan public cable monopolies, is now offering RFD, without demand, and as often or as little as you’d like it. If you’re like me—and God help you if you are—you fall on the “as often as you’d like" side of the fence.
For those left outside of the barb-wired, hay-strewn circle, allow me to explain what RFD is.
Leftridge: Tales from the Tweet: Orton’s Ouchy, Goldilocks’ Woes & Emotional Gourd
Dateline: Southside Chicago. Home to rampant murder, rape, robbery, drugs, thick mustaches and ‘da Bears. With Chicago taking on the lowly Kansas City Chiefs, the fans didn’t take long to make the Windy City proud:
@mellinger (Sam, KC Star sports columnist)
“11:15 am…first gratuitous use of a taser witnessed outside Soldier Field.”
I love Chicago—even lived there for a spell—but man, the Southside of that fine city is a wreck. If you’re not going to a Bears game (you can get tased anywhere, to be fair) or a Sox game (you probably WILL get tased here—by a fan, or a player, or an ump), you have no business venturing south of about 15th street. Nothing good happens there.
Oh, and then there was the game. The quarterback play was abysmal:
@SSJ_WHB (Steven St.John, 810 am)
“I want Palko and Hanie to fight….Loser leaves the NFL….Winner leaves, too….#Chiefs”
But that’s why we went out and picked up Kyle Orton, right?
Tales From the Tweet: Gill’s Last Gasp, an Albino Lion & Lou Diamond’s Stolen Identity
‘Tis the season for cherishing what you’ve got. For some, this means a job, a home, a family, some food, a nice Sleep Number bed… whatever. Turner Gill—who was fired by KU on Sunday—has most of these things, I’m sure. Well, except the job. Oh, and plus $6,000,000.00. That’s right, the man who succeeded Mean Ol’ Mangino was given his walking papers after he managed an unbelievably horrid 1-16 record in the Big 12 over his two year reign of terror. But don’t cry for him, Argentine, Kansas, he’ll be just fine.
@KUNews
“Turner Gill has been relieved of his duties as Head Football Coach at the University of Kansas”
@mellinger (KC Star Sports Columnist)
“When Turner Gill lists his accomplishments on his resume for his next job, "halftime lead over #Mizzou" should make the top five. #KUfball”
@nate_bukaty (810 am)
“I never find joy in a person losin his job, and I believe Turner Gill to be a very good man, but Dr. Zenger did what needed to be done.”
People like to say that they hate it when people get fired; when it comes to sports, this is often nothing more than a ridiculous cliché. Simply put, sports dehumanize people. It rightfully puts team and organization above all else. Theoretically, all of the moveable parts grow into a giant, convulsing, hissing machine. And when a piece of that machinery breaks down, or fails to provide the function that it’s supposed to, you replace it. It’s that simple.
Leftridge: Say Goodnight to the Border War
Without rivalries, football would be little more than (mostly) fit men scampering around a well-manicured lawn in tight pants chasing a ball no bigger than an obese Chihuahua. Dubious, at best.
Rivalries, however, give us conflict, lend intrigue and substantiate purpose.
Who were the Hatfield’s without the McCoy’s? Dirty hillbillies, that’s who.
The 2004 Red Sox World Series win wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if the road to the championship hadn’t included a historic run through the New York Yankees and a bloody, sweat-soaked sock.
Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat fought epic, timeless battles against Ric Flair in the days of the NWA, back when it was acceptable to have a wrestler embrace the persona of a dragon.
You get the idea.
Leftridge: Facts About the Kyle Orton Pick-Up; Chiefs Subtract with Addition
Fact 1: The Chiefs picked Kyle Orton up on Wednesday, before more deserving teams (see: teams in actual playoff contention) could do so. If you’re the Chicago Bears, the Houston Texans, the Detroit Lions (come on—we all know it’s a matter of time before Matt Stafford separates his shoulder reaching for his soda at a Wendy’s drive-thru), the Philadelphia Eagles (Vick is more vulnerable than an emaciated pit-bull in a throat-tearing-contest… too soon? Nope) or the Dallas Cowboys (see: the Detroit Lions’ conundrum), you’ve gotta be super-pissed.
What business do the god-awful Chiefs have in making this move? Well, none, really.
Leftridge: A Thanksgiving Blessing for That Which We Do Not Deserve
It’s important to remember what we’re thankful for right?
Isn’t that what this Indian-murdering holiday is all about? Well, first I suppose I’m thankful for my forefathers who murdered all of those Indians. Without their noble efforts, who knows where we’d be (and since I’ve got a good-bit of Indian blood in me as well, I’d like to say, "Patience, brothers. Our time will come once again.
Tales from the Tweet: a Jumbo Dose of Pinkel, Big Z to KC? & Canseco’s New Gig
At this point, you’ve already decided whether Mizzou head coach Gary Pinkel’s punishment was justified or horribly hypocritical. You’ve probably even seen the dash-cam video where he stumbles around, embarrassing himself and his university. If you’re a Mizzou alum, or fan, you’ve probably taken the attitude that, “Come on, who HASN’T had a drink at dinner with friends and driven home? The fact that everyone is making a big deal of it is the REAL issue.”
If you’re a KU fan, or a K-State fan, or even if your team is in the SEC (most SEC fans seem angry by their conference’s newest inclusion, in general), you’ve probably taken the attitude that, “He could have killed a school-bus of special needs children! He should be drawn and quartered like the uncivilized beast that he IS!”
And maybe there is merit to be found in all opinions, both sympathetic and dissenting.
He did lose over $300,000 in the ordeal, has been publicly humiliated and one would assume that this makes a large mark on his permanent record. On the other hand, his players have been punished in a more severe manner for similar transgressions—in terms of suspension, that is—and he DOES make a dick-load of money to begin with.
But no matter what you’ve decided, the facts surrounding his arrest speak for themselves.
@sptwri (Mike DeArmond, Mizzou writer, KC Star)
“Cops asked gp to recite alphabet starting with letter E. He said E F G H R. LATER WENT A B C D E F G H R.”
“COPS ASKED GP TO count from 73 to 62. "Gary stated he could not do that normally."
“Cop asked how big were the servings of red wine he had consumed. Cop said Pinkel said "Jumbo."
The jumbo answer is priceless. Despite the seriousness of the situation—even I don’t think drinking and driving is a laughing matter, and I’m pretty hard to offend—“jumbo” will forever provide exquisite fodder for those wanting to take a quick jab at MU.
Leftridge: Weekend Recap; BCS Insanity, Sausage Scented Ladies and the Return of Thiggy
My father-in-law grew up in Oklahoma.
He went to both OU and OSU. Weird, huh?
Used to be, when I thought of Oklahoma, I though of SE Hinton novels. You know, the Outsiders, a violent teenage socioecomic drama where the Greasers fought the Soc’s, and Cherry Valance was forever conflicted.
Now I just think of my father-in-law, a proud Oklahoman who can root with candor for whichever of the two teams happens to be winning. Needless to say, this was a rough weekend for him.
Meanwhile, Justin Blackmon is dropping passes from his elderly quarterback and Landry Jones is gasping for air as his dwindling Heisman candidacy circles ‘round the porcelain poop-drop.
I knew the OU/Baylor game would be good. I called that. But I’m not stupid enough to pretend that I also pegged OU as the loser. Didn’t think there was any way in hell they’d lose to Baylor, despite RG3’s super-cyborg abilities.
But man… that Robert Griffin III kid is something else. He set records—500 yards through the air, Jesus H. Christ—and ultimately saved the last drive for his legs, beautiful redwoods of indisputable virtue.
I want the Chiefs to pick him in next year’s draft. It’s possible, by God, so make it happen Pioli.
Leftridge: What to Watch This Weekend; Double-Dose of Bears & Retro Beat-Down
The year: 2007. The site: a cold and icy Arrowhead Stadium. The participants: Kansas, led by their diminutive gunslinger Todd Reesing, and Mizzou, led by their… well, diminutive gunslinger Chase Daniel.
Take yourself back, if you will, to a moment in time long since forgotten. Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z was riding high on the music charts, and movie fans the world over were flocking to see “Pirates of the Caribbean: How Many of These Fucking Things Can There Be?”
Going into the game, the Jayhawks were 11-0 and ranked second in the polls behind LSU; Missouri had lost previously in the season to the Sooners and were 10-1, ranked third behind their border adversary.
If you were a Kansas fan, I’m sorry.
Leftridge: Tales From the Tweet: Penn State Perspectives, Ultimate Fighting & Javier’s Pee-Wee Love
So the big news over the past couple of weeks—obviously—has been the unfolding of events at Penn State. There have been hundreds of stories blogged, Tweeted and shared since the news first broke, and the fact of the matter is, I have nothing to add. I have no personal experiences to relate (and for this, I am grateful) and every thought that I’ve had regarding the situation has already been emoted by a plethora of others.
Twitter, unsurprisingly, played a large role in the dissemination of the story and allowed people around the world to share their thoughts, both well-articulated and ridiculous. Here were a handful of Tweets, both interesting and stupid.
@jcharles25 (Jamaal Charles, Chiefs RB)
“Took long enough for Paterno to get fired. Now he should be sent to jail along with his child molesting assistant coach!!!”
It’s always refreshing to hear an athlete with balls say what they think, whether you agree with them or not. I don’t know anyone who’s a fan of the whole, “man, whut a tuff situation for all them peoples.” If you’re going to take the time to tap our your 140 characters, make them count.
