Just Look at This Idiot

I don't know anything about the South African Premier Soccer League but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Maritzburg United goalkeeper Glenn Verbauwhede is the worst person playing in said league. Just check out this guys buffoonery. Basically he goads the other teams players to make an attempt at the ball and then dives head first into their leagues. The balls on this guy.

Saved Links

New Doom level released by game creator John Romero. What year is this?

Report: Marco Pappa stabbed in incident with Miss Washington USA last month. How did this news story fly under my radar? It has everything, action, adventure, romance, lingerie football.

The 13 Most Nonsensical Theories About The Identity of Supreme Leader Snoke. I don't know if these are really the MOST nonsensical. They didn't really include the one where he's actually Palpatine in Vader's body.

How Batman’s Silly 1960s Series Saved The Dark Knight. Man, I LOVE me some Batman TV show. Sure it's campy but I'll be damned if it isn't super fun. I watched the TV Show movie from 1968 with my son a little while ago and he loved it too. Someone should reboot that.

The 7 Best (And Worst) Wigs of Current Comics TV. I feel like I should be watching Arrow more.

Hey, That's a Nice Goal

Some Dutch team was down one goal to some other Dutch team when they decided to push their goalie forward. Not only does it work but the goalie scores one of the craziest backheel goals I've ever seen.

I love it when a soccer team pushes the goalie forward, I wish every sport had an equivalent. Imagine if in the NFL the Seahawks could put an extra guy on the field but it meant the punter had to take the snaps or something. Wouldn't that be aweseome? Someone get Roger Goodell on that.

John Oliver is a Man of His Word

Last week John Oliver challenged FIFA's main sponsors to oust Sepp Blatter as the president of FIFA, if they did he would do crazy unspeakable acts like "wear shoes" and "drink beverage". While there's no proof that Sepp Blatter stepping down had anything to do with those main sponsors, John Oliver still promised to do stuff so doing stuff is exactly what he did.

Some People Stand In The Links

David Hasselhoff Once Gave Pam Anderson a Swimsuit Photo of Himself for Christmas. This is the most Hoff thing ever. I hope he still does it. Like I hope that's all he gets anyone for Christmas or Birthdays or Chanukah. A CD from 1997 and that picture of him in naked in front of the fireplace with the wrinkly dogs (not pictured for various google image search reasons).

Those Louis C.K. Sexual Abuse Rumors Might Actually Be True. Man, this sounds awful and I'm sure I'm being very reckless in linking to something like this that names names with out any real evidence. HOWEVER, removed from the wild speculation there's a very real story there. Some big name in comedy is totes sexually harassing/assaulting women and getting away with it because everyone is afraid for their career. It's amazing that post Cosby there's still this gross protective old boys club bullshit.

CleanBayArea on NBC to give $100,000 back to the owner of Apple 1 computer. Someone dropped off an Apple 1 at a Bay Area PC recycler. Now I understand that 4k of Ram might not be top of the line anymore but that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Especially when the baby sells for six figures.

Women’s National Teams Are Now IN THE GAME In EA Sports’ ‘FIFA 16′. Cool news. I would imagine there are going to be a ladies introduced to the FIFA franchise because of this. Finally both Boys and Girls can know the frustration of the computer TOTALLY CHEATING! WHY IS THEIR KEEP SO GOOD AND MINE SUCKS SO BAD? WHY WON'T ANYONE MAKE A RUN?

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: FIFA II

It's not often that John Oliver goes back to the well, but considering the recent corruption charges against FIFA it seemed appropriate that he re-address the issue on Last Week Tonight. As usual it's pretty brilliant, I especially liked his Ke$ha analogy.

Also nice to see someone bringing up the Women's World Cup and the moronic idea of playing it on turf. The short shorts idea's not so bad though...

Downgrade Links

Explaining the FIFA corruption arrests. I'm sure you've already seen the news this morning but if you have any questions regarding the FIFA arrests this is as good as any place to start. I'm amazed we actually got to this point, I mean I'm not amazed that FIFA is this corrupt everyone knew that. The amazing part is that finally someone has done something about it.

Of course the flip side of this is that the USMNT is doomed. We'll probably miss the next eight World Cups.

Nick, The Cubs Threw Out Your Grandma’s Personalized Brick. Back in 2006 the Cubs did this thing a lot of business or public works projects do when they're looking at raising funds. They sold bricks with your or your families name on them to use in the construction of the ball park. What did they do with those Bricks when it came time to renovate the stadium again? They threw them in the dump.

The 5 Best Book Characters That Game of Thrones Has Left Out. This is a pretty good list, Stong Belwas is the obvious number one but Coldhands and Patchface are nice inclusions too. Man, sucks thinking that we'll never learn more about Patchface. Him and Hodor seem like characters that have these big important secrets but they'll probably never amount to anything. Why answer the unanswered when you can write 30 chapters of Tyrion farting around the Free Cities.

The Witcher 3 Downgrade Controversy Sucks. Yes it does suck. There's two big things going on with The Witcher 3. The final product doesn't look like all the trailers the nerds have been salivating over AND it seems to have been nerfed on the PC. I'm afraid this is going to become more and more of a trend. Developers are trying to cast the widest net not make he prettiest games. That means developing for consoles first and PCs second. It also means protecting console sales. Until consoles are a minority share of the gaming market that's just how it's going to be.

Retro Handhelds Throughout History. Just a bunch of pictures of retro handhelds. I've played a shockingly low number of these.

Colossal Links

Microsoft Punishes Gears of War Leakers. Welp here's something that's a bit scary. A few guys that were testing early betas of the new Gears of War leaked some video onto the webs. Microsoft in turn suspended their Xbox Live accounts AND bricked their Xbox Ones. Now, they signed a big old non disclosure agreement thing so they were very much in the wrong but I would suspect no one really thought Big Redmond would go around nerfing Xbones anytime someone broke the UELA.

Sega Saturn: how one decision destroyed PlayStation's greatest rival The more articles I read on Sega's glory days the more I'm convinced they lucked their way into the Genesis. Also I totes want a Sega Saturn. I've heard for 2d gaming it's far superior to the PS1.

Brazil's World Cup Stadiums Were A Colossal Waste Of Money. Hey Qatar, here's a look into your future.

Harry Shearer's 10 best Simpsons characters in clips. Just cancel the show already. The fact that they're going to go forward with fake Mr Burns and Ned Flanders just goes to show what a creative dump hole The Simpsons has become. This has Coy and Vance Duke written all over it.

That's Not Very Gentlemanly

Last weekend a rather boorish Toronto FC fan decided it would be cute to get on the air with the old "F-her right in the pussy" meme. Well this reporter was having none of it, she stops everything and publicly shames the douche right there. Also he got fired from his job.

Good work Canada. Nice Hustle out there.

The Worst Links

The Ten Worst Cartoon Cars.I don't think I would have ranked the Flinstones car so high. Think about it, they're literally riding on dinosaurs and living in houses built of giant rock slabs. The fact that they've developed any sort of locomotion is pretty impressive. This Spongebob car/boat on the other hand is an abomination which should be killed with fire. Which shouldn't work considering they're underwater but they do have fire, this show is so confusing!

The Making And Unmaking Of Preston Zimmerman, American Soccer Player. This is a great read by Greg Howard. When it comes to talent at the youth level, the American soccer community is kind of like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it!

What I mean is that anyone can recognize talent, but what you do with it after you find it is the tricky thing. Most hardcore soccer fans will tell you that you have to go to Europe. Go ahead and read the story of Preston Zimmerman and then tell me you HAVE to go to Europe. It doesn't always work out for everyone.

AFL: The 15 Worst Fighters In The 1988 'Bloodsport' Kumite. This reminds me, I haven't watched Bloodsport or really any JCVD movie in FOREVER. That's what kids will do to you.

Growing fantasy-game universe collides with entrenched boys’ club mentality. This is one of those typical, outsider succeeds at something and everyone freaks out. In this case it's Magic: The Gathering and the outsider is a 31 year old transgender woman. It's an interesting read. It's funny, my guess is that a majority of people playing Magic have at some point been persecuted and picked on and here they are recycling that same behavior because someone from outside their circle dared do something they like doing.

Real Life FIFA

The easy joke to make here is that Real Life FIFA is still worse than Winning Eleven. Do they still make Winning Eleven? I haven't bought a soccer game since FIFA 2010 and I took that back to gamestop after like a month. Anyhoo, this video is pretty cool. I mean it's not as cool as the shot I took last night that hit some 5 foot Asian girl point blank square in the chest but it's still cool.

Evil Links

Horror Classic 'The Evil Dead' Coming to TV With Star Bruce Campbell. I'm not like an obsessive superfan of the Evil Dead series but I'm what you might call a pretty big fan so I'm really excited about this announcement. I have so many questions. Will it be a serialized format? Are we talking multiple seasons or is this a mini series? Is Ash the star or just a minor role? Is Bruce Campbell even playing Ash?

I fall into the camp of actually liking the remake/reboot from 2013. I thought the mythos of the Necronomicon and the time old horror trope of a cabin out in the woods is strong enough to carry a well written movie on it's own. Sure, I'd like to see a Evil Dead 4 just as much as the next nerd but I'm guessing that due to the combo of Campbell's age and Rami's success it's just not in the cards anymore. Assuming it's well done, a TV series is just fine by me.

Megan Rapinoe says playing a World Cup on turf is 'bullshit'. I think I commented on it briefly on twitter but there was a sort of underground social media movement to get the announcers for the World Cup to quit saying that Landon Donovan was the top goal scorer for the US in the World Cup and start adding a bit of a verbal astrisk by saying he was the top men's goal scorer for the US in the world cup. The point being that the women's game matters and should be recognized. The default position of Sports should be both female and male, not Sports and Women's Sports.

With that in mind FIFA is going to hold the Women's World Cup in a bunch of stadiums that use field turf. If it wasn't clear before, it is now just how much they value the women's game.

Man Who Helped Kill Women's Pro Soccer Dies While Playing Soccer. Speaking of Women's soccer, there's something in the above article on Megan Rapinoe that really bothered me. She said that FIFA just maked billions on the World Cup in Brasil, implying that surely they could spend some of that money on the Women's World Cup and find a few stadiums that have real grass. That's pretty much where I draw the line in the field turf. If women's sports are going to succeed they need to do it on their own. Click through all the links deadspin has on this article about the former owner of the Florida magicJack. Women's soccer has always had the athletes, they have the fans they just can't figure out a way to put together a sustainable league.

Ignored Comic-Con This Weekend? Here Are The 10 Most Important Things You Missed. I'll be honest, I wasn't that jazzed for Comic-Con before the weekend started and nothing I saw on the web really changed my default jazz status. Still a couple cool trailers premiered and Wonder Woman got a new outfit that sort of looks like Xena's. I guess that's something, right?

The Biggest Winners And Losers Of Comic-Con 2014! Speaking of Comic-Con. Sounds like actual comic books took an even further back seat to Hollywood this year. Like if Comic-Con was a station wagon they moved from that weird rear facing seat every wagon in the late '70s had to a trailer towed behind the wagon.

Booty Links

Bridesmaids Booties. Well this is the weirdest bridal trend I've seen in a while. Apparently it's a cool new thing to take a picture with your bridesmaids showing off their butts. I'm eagerly anticipating TLC's new hit show "Say Yes to The T-Back".

New Batgirl to become best possible DC Comic? Outside of the random issue of Teen Titans Go or Scooby Doo Team-Up I buy for my son I'm collecting zero DC comics right now. I've never been a huge DC guy but I can't remember another time when I wasn't collecting anything from them. All their books are just so dark and void of fun, edgy and adult just for the sake of being edgy and adult. Maybe.. just maybe this new Batgirl title will be their answer to marvel's trio of accessible and beloved titles: Hawkguy, Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel.

8 Insane Things From the Never-Made Oliver Stone/Arnold Schwarzenegger Planet of the Apes Way back in 1994 before Tim Burton tried to bury the franchise with Ape-raham Lincoln, some coked up studio exec thought it was a good idea to get Oliver Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a Planet of the Apes movie. Oliver Stone clearly had no real interest in doing it and what he pitched was the most drugged out nonsense I've ever heard.

The American FootGolf League. Soccer Golf. That's right. Soccer Golf. I'm so distraught there's no course here in Washington State. On the other hand I'm pretty sure if I had to take what I imagine are the equivalent of 18 goal kicks in one afternoon my foot would fall off.

A Trios of Reviews

WWE Network
For my birthday my wife got me a six month subscription to the WWE network. Now when the WWE network first launched a lot of people lauded it as the future of "television". I use quotes there because the WWE Network like any modern app works on Kindles, iPads, computers, etc. I still don't think that's the case. The WWE is unique in that it completely owns all of its content and is in a situation where it's old product is still highly desirable. Wrestling fans will gladly pay 9.99 a month to watch Bret Hart vs Stone Cold Steve Austin from 1997 but how many NFL fans are willing to pay a monthly subscription to watch the Bills choke away a Superbowl to (insert team name here). Anyway not the point.

The WWE Network is a lot of fun, for a long time wrestling fan like myself it's easy to just spend hours watching it. You get current Pay Per View events live as the happen, every old WWE, ECW and WCW PPV on demand, some original shows that vary wildly in quality and some random WCCW and Clash of Champions shows from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It's not a flawless app. It froze on me a couple times during last weekend's big Money in the Bank PPV and the search feature is TERRRRIBLE. For example, I searched for Raven (one of my favorite wrestlers from the 90s) and it returned about 5 results, about 100 too few.

TL/DR, for a wrestling fan the WWE Network is well worth $9.99. There are bugs they need to iron out but as a whole the network delivers on it's promises. Solid B+

My wife is awesome, she gets an A.

Heroes of Cosplay: Season 2
Last year I reviewed Heroes of Cosplay, looking back on the review I was probably a bit too kind. I felt like the shows repetitive format mixed with some really fake drama took away from what the show was supposed to be about. Fast Forward to Season 2, which had its season finale last night, and a few of my complaints with the show have been addressed, while others have been exacerbated.

Most of the stupid fake interpersonal drama has been ditched, which is great. The problem is without the drama every episode follows the exact same format. What to wear? I'm running out of time! Oh man I didn't win the contest.. or WOOHOO I won the contest!

That's literally every episode. I mean I still watched and for the most part I enjoyed the costumes but it would be nice if the producers could figure out a way to avoid every episode ending with a contest. From what I've learned of the Cosplay community having a picture go viral or hit the front page of reddit is every bit as important as winning a costume contest. Heroes of Cosplay gets a metacritic score of 72/100

The 2014 USMNT World Cup Performance
So the World Cup is over now right?

The US Men's National Soccer team showed once again that they can compete on the highest level but they also showed just how far they have left to go before we can even dream of actually winning the cup. All we need to improve is our defense our midfield and our forwards. We're pretty set at goalie.

It's hard to complain about the results, getting out of the group of death was really amazing but if you look at the Nat's record over the last two World Cups we've only won 2 out of 8 games. That's not very good. The inability to posses the ball with purpose really kills the team at this level. Turns out Michael Bradley isn't the world class midfielder a lot of us thought he was. The striker pool is as thin as we were afraid it was. It's telling that when Jozy went down with injury we started Dempsey out of position for the next 3 games as opposed to replacing him with one of the other 3 forwards on the squad. The defense is still full of potential but young guys like Besler, Cameron and Gonzalez are still trying to find out a way to actually play together and form anything that resembles a competent back line.

But hey, the games were entertaining and a lot of people watched. That's the most important thing for US Soccer going forward. More people interested in the sport equals more money which will in time provide us better players (knock on wood). I rate the USMNT 2014 World Cup Performance as plucky.

Flip the Script

Well we're about 2 hours from the US/Belgium kick off, are you pumped yet? If not here's a video that might do the trick. Still not pumped? Try this:

Nothing? Way to let the terrorist win.

Triumph The Insult Comic Dog Watches the World Cup

Here's a couple videos of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog pooping all over soccer fans and the world cup. There's two videos, watch the both, laugh, have a tasty beverage, sit back and enjoy a little you time. You've earned it champ.

Why it's hard to love the World Cup

So this John Oliver rant is 2 days old, which in internet terms is like 3 months but with the World Cup starting tomorrow I thought it was a good time to upload it. There's like a thousand things about it to love. Scrooge McDuck references, penis jokes, pratfalls, John Oliver swearing, good times.

So enjoy the World Cup, FIFA is massively crooked and screwing over poor citizens left and right. DON'T TREAD ON ME, USA USA USA!

Japan has a Pokemon World Cup Jersey

That's right Japan has a world cup Jersey with Pikachu on it because of course they do. I love it. I know I haven't talked about it much on here but I'm super super pumped for the World Cup this year. I know the USMNT has as much of a chance getting through their group as I have getting through the opening scene in Star Trek without crying but who cares? It's the World Cup baby! International soccer at it's highest level!

I plan on enjoying at least three quarters of the tournament at home sitting on my couch in my underwear eating a big block of cheese. It's the summer of Kevin!

Then and Links

Let's take a long look at Alex Morgan's golf swing. It's a link to an instagram video of Alex Morgan in yoga pants swinging a golf club and doing a little dance. I'm going to go ahead and start counting my google bucks right now.

Oh look, I have enough to replace the sliding glass door burglars smashed when breaking into my house! And here I thought I was having a shitty day...

Seattle's LEGO Superstar: Alice Finch Goes 'Beyond the Brick'. Having seen Alice Finch's work in person I feel like I'm qualified to say "holy crap she makes good Lego things". The Rivendale build is even better than the Hogwarts one she did. The amount of detail in setting up all the scenes and getting all the geography to look right is amazing. Plus the cool stuff like the tide of horses is just crazy. Even after reading this interview I have no idea how she does it.

Panni World Cup Stickers: Then and Now. Simple premise.. let's laugh at how soccer players looked in 2006. Clint Dempsey in particular. Seriously Deuce, wtf?

Confessions of a serial reality TV star. I'm not sure there will ever be a day where I'm not fascinated by what goes on behind the scenes of MTV's The Real World (or any spin-off). This behind the scenes look from Susie Meister is a bit dry and at times self congratulatory but it's an interesting read none the less. I wish she had named more names... like I need to know that Wes is even more of an a-hole in real life. I need to know it!

Winner Stays

Nike has a new commercial for the World Cup (or more specifically for shoes and jerseys associated with the World Cup) and it's pretty awesome. Maybe not as good as the addidas one from 2006 where the kids playing on a dirt field picked a bunch of allstars and legends like Zidane and Beckenbauer but it's close. Can you believe the World Cup is like six weeks away?

In other soccer related news my rec team played to a rousing come from behind 4-4 tie last night. The team we played was comprised of students from the University of Washington. Thank goodness they were kind of crap, running around chasing a bunch of kids like that is not fun at all. Wow, you can run around for 15 minutes without passing out, good for you. Guess what kid? the job market sucks, have fun living the next 20 years in debt.