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This is a photograph I found on Facebook of my friend Brandon Ehrlich kicking a ceiling. Impressed by the feat (no pun intended!), I asked him a few questions on what makes and motivates an elite ceiling kicker. Here is what he had to say:
I would have to say that it all starts with the passion. You have to really want to kick the ceiling. Without that fire in your belly, you will always be resigned to walking on floors. One of the best tips I can give a person hoping to join the exclusive ranks of ceiling kickers is to imagine someone or something that you really want to kick. Picture that person or thing on the ceiling and then go for it. For me, I picture Clay Bennett's face and am always aiming for the teeth and nose.
An effective ceiling kicker is someone that is flexible, has long legs, can jump higher than most folks, and has the ability to time those jumps correctly. Many so-called experts compare this skill to being able to dunk a basketball. You need to make sure that your foot hits its target, which in this case is clearly the ceiling at the top of your jump. Many of my predecessors have been able to hit the ceiling on their way up. It is almost impossible to do so on the way down.
The best way to train for a career in ceiling kicking is lots of stretching, yoga, and any leg strengthening exercises.
Originally I got into ceiling kicking after many skeptics said that it couldn't be done. After proving them wrong, I took a nearly-two-year hiatus from the sport. Recently I have re-enlisted myself after many requests from my fans that had felt as if they had been abandoned. The announcement of the city's settlement with what is now the OK City Thunder just before the 4th of July was the final piece of motivation that I needed.
Open category winner Lindsay struggles to summit a flat
Saturday saw the 22nd annual observance of a summer tradition in sporting ambition, an event that has spanned eight states and the nation of Haiti, a grueling crucible of mind, body, and liver: The Beer Gut Triathlon. The brainchild of a prominent human rights lawyer named Brian Concannon, Jr., the BGT is a pointless, stupid affair wherein “athletes” swim roughly 1/5 of a mile, run roughly 3 miles, and then chug exactly four (women’s category) or six (open category) watery beers. Vomiting results in a five minute penalty and an extra beer. An athlete who has consumed her allotment must hold the empty cans upside down over her head for 69 seconds; if anything more than isolated drops comes out, she must pay, again, a one-beer penalty.
The following are photographs from this year's competition, held in Seattle's Lake City neighborhood:
Another season of hydroplane racing has sadly come and gone and with it the annual opportunity to watch clips of old vintage thunderboat crashes spliced between soliloquies by Pat O’Day about how great the sport was fifty years ago.
As a Northwest native this writer loves the hydros. It’s one of those secret handshake deals we few remaining locals can use to show how we really belong here and you don't. Slo-mo-shun V, Hawaii Kai, Miss Bardahl. They’re secret passwords that are used to know who is really in the club.
With that said, yesterday’s Seafair Chevrolet Cup had to rate way down there in terms of being a wet squib.
For those of you who weren’t drunk and passed out by the time the final hydroplane heat ran, the U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing, piloted by driver Jean Theoret was stripped of the checkered flag by being penalized on the start for being “off-plane”; i.e. being too slow on the start.
So instead of a classic finish with the U-1 Miss Elam Plus reeling in the “Freakin’” Beacon in a duel of dual rooster tails you had a four minute exhibition heat where the boat that won the race really didn’t.
Unlimited hydroplane racing has finally returned to the point of actually being competitive again now that the 800-pound gorilla of the Budweiser racing team is gone from the sport. And for the past two decades boat race watchers have been treated to the same sob story put out by the American Boat Racing Association bemoaning the fact that no one pays attention to the thunderboats anymore.
Here's a suggestion.
How about figuring out a different way to start your boat races? It’s an arcane, arbitrary and pedantic exercise which makes harness racing look space-age in terms of how drivers get off the starting block.
Boat drivers spend more time milling about in a circle, trying to cheat and get into the inside lane and jumping the starting flag than they ever do actually racing. Maybe a page needs to be taken from auto racing by introducing a "pace boat" to the racing scene.
Extra: Tracking down the root to this year’s lame Seafair Cup is tricky. The one thing that sticks out is the use green, “environmentally friendly” biofuels in the hydros. This is obviously an affront to King Neptune and pussified eco-conscious Seattleites risk his wrath at their own peril.
A little Monday morning paparazzi action for you, courtesy of "The Dirty" and a hot tip from my man, Matt N.
It's Spencer Hawes and the Durantula hanging out with what appears to be next year's pledge class. More photos here.
Twin Cities newspaper the Star-Tribune is reporting that Latrell Sprewell is in fresh financial trouble. Just months removed from the seizure of his yacht, the former NBA star is poised to lose his suburban Milwaukee home as well, thanks to his inability to make mortgage payments. Of course, the the Tubes are abuzz with jokes about Sprewell's famous "I've got to feed my kids," line--his justification for turning down a 3-year, $21 million contract that he deemed insufficient. (Spree's agent also said that $5 million a season was a level beneath which [Sprewell] would not stoop or kneel.")
The amazing and sad thing is that Sprewell's career earnings from basketball alone have topped $96 million. Granted, his strangling of current Sonics coach P.J. Carlesimo meant that he's never caught on as a product endorser, but he still had other business ventures, including the Washington-state based Sprewell Racing.
I'm reminded of a quote from the currently incarcerated Keon Clark (drug possession, driving on suspended license, etc.), who retired at the relatively young age of 29 and turned down overtures from multiple NBA teams:
"People don't understand, if you can't live the rest of your life off one year in the NBA, you can't live off 21."
A YouTube tribute to Spree as the self-proclaimed American Dream. He sure was fun to watch:
Warning: video's lyrics contain some NSFW language
Thanks to Nick for the tip.
The end of the year is the time for top ten lists. However, 2007 was not kind to Seattle sports fans, so we decided to make it a bottom ten instead:
10. May 24th - The Mariners lose to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 13-12. Third base coach Carlos Garcia gets two runners thrown out at home. Explaining his decision to send not-so-fleety Jose Lopez home against the near legendary arm of Delmon Young, Garcia says, "It was the first time we played them. I didn't know he had such a good arm. But now I know." The club defends Garcia against fans who point out that the strength of Young’s arm is widely recognized and could have been gleaned by reading a scouting report, or merely conducting a google search. “The fans who are expressing their discontent are displaying an unsettling level of cultural insensitivity,” declares Howard Lincoln. When asked to identify the culture to which the fans were being insensitive, Lincoln replies simply, “losing.”
9. Date unknown - Wally Szczerbiak takes rookie teammate Kevin Durant under his wing, explaining to the young star that he can boost his scoring average by largely ignoring those pesky things called teammates. “Unless, they’re setting a pick for you, they’re not there,” he says. (This may not have happened yet, but it’s a scary thought, no?)
8. The Weekend of November 10th to 11th - Let’s start on Sunday: Moving like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle minus the Teenage Mutant Ninja part, Robert Swift has zero points, two rebounds, and two fouls in 12 minutes of play. As he struggles to lug his freshly tatted 280 lbs up and down the Key Arena floor, some fans wonder whether, knee injury or not, the new bulk will ruin the agility that was his previous strong suit. One night earlier, the player the Sonics should have drafted in 2004, Al Jefferson, scores 17 points and grabs 12 rebounds for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
7. January 1st - Ty Willingham’s Huskies look totally unprepared for their bowl game matchup with...oh, wait, nevermind.
6. December 12th - Unable to resist his stunning array of “out” pitches (as in “quickly headed ‘out’ of the park”), the Seattle Mariners tender Horacio Ramirez, the man who accrued more walks than strikeouts and hits than innings in 2007. “It was a difficult decision,” explains Bill Bavasi. “Had he been signed by a division rival, we might have been able to keep Richie Sexson’s batting average over .220 for the season.”
5. November 15th - Howard Schultz signs up to sponsor a youth basketball team.
4. August 28th - With the Mariners needing a win against the 1st place Angels to stay in the pennant race; with the bases loaded, the team down one run in the 8th inning, and Vladimir Guerrero due up, John McLaren digs deep into the throat of bullpen suckage to pull out Rick White. The barrel-stomached veteran, a piece of waiver wire flotsam that somehow landed in the Safeco bullpen (care to explain, Bill?), takes the mound and promptly makes a mound of his own. Two batters later, the bases -- and Rick’s bowels -- have been emptied, and the game is all but over.
3. Sundays, generally - Shaun Alexander sees tacklers, falls down.
2. December 3rd -- Citing his dissatisfaction with the community center facilities, Schultz transfers sponsorship duties to an Oklahoma City car dealership, but asks if he can still attend the year-end pizza party.
1. November 1st -- Sonics owner Clayton Bennett celebrates the newly begun Kevin Durant era by filing with the NBA for relocation of the team. Here’s to you, Mr. Bennett. May all your years be as bad as our 2007.
Sports do not come any better than mutton bustin'. Here's the summary, for you sad sacks who've never witnessed mutton being busted: Since the dawn of recorded time, humankind has manipulated livestock for its own benefit, subjecting sheep and cattle not just to lives of toil but painful indignations such as castration and branding. In return for helping us reach the Industrial Revolution, some kind soul invented muttton bustin', which gives enslaved animals the chance to unload centuries of anger onto our littlest and most tender representatives.
The game is simple. An adult takes a child, who if not bawling yet will soon be, and places it on top of a sheep penned in a corral. The gate is opened and the sheep rockets off with the child hanging onto its neck hair. The pair gain momentum and G forces—the passenger utterly terrified and the driver, not at all looking forward to a return to the cramped stable, having the thrill of its lifetime—until the ride ends with an abrupt discharge of the child into an iron fence. The kid cries, the audience claps, and the process is repeated with the next unlucky, soon-to-be-burdened-with-psych-bills individual.
I caught some mutton bustin' last Saturday at the Puyallup Fair. My video is of horrible quality, but the important parts are there if you look closely: The gradual buildup of speed, the package of fear latched to the animal's back, the roar of the crowd as the kid's head hits the fence like a cannonball. As the number of sheep milling around the arena grew throughout the show, the eventual impact of kid on fence became sandwiched between a buffeting of ambient sheep and an ignominious landing in a pool of fresh sheep urine. Like I said, this is unarguably the apex of sportsdom in the U.S. Where's ESPN?
UPDATE: Injury videos here!
Wade Boggs has long been known as one of the best hitters of his generation, as well as a man of many idiosyncrasies, the most famous of which may have been his habit of eating chicken before every game. Recently, however, a friend introduced me to an article detailing another of Boggs' strange habits: drinking large amounts of Miller Lite. According to a couple of his former teammates, Boggs would drink somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-70 Miller Lites in the course of an ordinary East Coast to West Coast day of travel. Exaggerated or not, these stories indicate that Boggs loved beer as much as he loved chicken. This, of course, can bring to mind only one figure. It's a shame Boggs played about twenty years too early for his perfect entry music.
Nevertheless, Boggs and Ludacris both appeared in this year's Wrestlemania 23. What does that tell us? Despite considerable career earnings, they're both still looking to make a little extra cash. What better way for them to do it--and for us to be entertained--than to send them out to Wing Domes, roadside barbecues, and sports bars nationwide to sample the chicken and beer and mingle with the locals. (Of course, Wade might have to expand his beer repertoire, but I think he could do it. And Miller Lite makes a great chaser.) It'd be low-cost TV--just a crew with a couple cameras and mics--no rides to pimp. And it'd be entertaining. Odd couples sell; it's a proven fact. MTV, Food Channel, Discovery Channel execs: make it happen.
