Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUmyZljGlgw
Dear Ndugu-
I'll admit it up front. I'm a Lakers fan. Not since Kobe, not since Shaq, I'm a Lakers fan from way back. I was that little kid at McNichols (yeah, McNichols) in the purple and gold vinyl jacket talking smack to every sorry-ass Nuggets fan back in the day as Magic and Kareem ran primetime rampant all over Denver. I was a fan back when Kurt Rambis could have been a GeeksWhoDrink poster-boy.
Anyway, since we did as much battle with the basketball game last night as we did with the quiz I wanted to take a minute to get into one of the most obnoxious and annoying sub-species of human kind, the Boston fan. I know this is going to sound like sour grapes but I don't really care, besides I think every other non-Boston fan out there would agree. I really have nothing against the Celtics (yes, Lakers fans are supposed to hate the Celtics like hippies hate bathing). I like Paul Pierce, I was generally in favor of Kevin Garnett finally getting a shot at winning a title. In the past I would have said similar things about the Red Sox and the Patriots. But as usual, Boston fans have completely put me off their teams. Let's be honest, if a shittier group of juvenile poor-sports has ever existed, they've gotta be one of those undiscovered tribes in the jungles of South America (and I for one would like to propose that we leave them undiscovered).
I was shouting over drunken Boston fucktards all night long and it really got a little old. You know how you couldn't hear a damn thing in round seven? Even though the volume was cranked? Ahem...Boston. It's not the fanaticism that bothers me, I'm all for being an unwavering fan of your team, but there's a point where fanaticism crosses that not-so-thin line into disruptive and obnoxious. When you’re screaming loud enough at every shot to disrupt everyone else at the bar, you’ve crossed it. When your team is up about 40 with 3 or 4 minutes to go and you’re going nuts like it’s tied in triple overtime, you’ve crossed it.
I’m also completely aware that pulling for Boston teams has become the ‘cool’ thing over the past few years. It’s right up there with big, fuck-off, shiny purses, Imperial Beer t-shirts (so everyone will know how you went to Costa Rica), and American Idol. Did anyone give a shit about the Patriots before they won 3 or 4 Super Bowls? Nope. How ‘bout the Red Sox, did anyone outside of Boston (the epicenter of Mass-hole-ism) pull for the Sox until they won their first World Series since Honest Abe was in office? No sir. And now the Celtics, was anyone in the stands last year when they losing games with the kind of fervor that only Lane Meyer (yeah, Better Off Dead references, only here) could appreciate? Not a chance. Oh, but suddenly they’re selling out games like every night was a free-crack-giveaway and every fan was Tyrone Biggums.
So, a word to Boston fans. You are a miserable lot. Our country, nay, the world’s collective loathing for you falls somewhere between Rosie O’Donnell and Kim Jong Ill. You turn people off of your beloved teams with your rude and annoying behavior. Please open your dictionaries, study these two words, and have an essay prepared titled “How I Plan to Be a Better Sports Fan For Myself, My Team, and Those Around Me”.
sports·man·ship (spôrts'mən-shĭp', spōrts'-)
n.
1. The fact or practice of participating in sports or a sport.
2. Conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing.
ob·nox·ious /əbˈnɒkʃəs/ (uhb-nok-shuhs)
–adjective
1. highly objectionable or offensive; odious: obnoxious behavior.
2. annoying or objectionable due to being a showoff or attracting undue attention to oneself: an obnoxious little brat.
3. Fans of Boston sports teams
4. Obsolete. liable to punishment or censure; reprehensible.
Oh, and one last thing, as a Lakers fan, they looked like shit. Kobe shrank like Nicole Brown Simpson answering the door. A pretty poor showing from the Lakeshow.
Oh well, on to the quiz. I can’t believe Al Gore wasn’t a folk singer voiced by Anthony Daniels in a former life, I swear I have that CD here somewhere. It was an old school hip-hop extravaganza last night. Between a full round on the Beastie Boys, Sister Souljah in the visual round, and a given-name challenge on Run DMC in round eight, it was an utter rap-fest. The only thing missing was the Sugar Hill Gang rolling in and winning the whole quiz. Word to your mother. I was impressed that most of you are up on your Beastie Boys knowledge, and equally impressed that we could all rock out to “Girls” and “Shake Your Rump” during commercials.
The visual round. I swear I’m not making this up, at least half of you mistook Al Sharpton for Jesse Jackson. Now I don’t watch hour after hour of CNN or BET so I haven’t caught a glimpse of Rev. Jackson recently, but unless he’s packed on 70 or 80 pounds, there’s no excuse for mistaking him for Al Sharpton. Hell, I’d have given you credit last night if you’d have written “Jesse Jackson in a fat suit”, but just plain Jesse Jackson? You gotta be kidding me.
My many apologies for the sound problems in round seven, please see above, I blame not the Celtics, just their fans. I did love seeing how creative some of you got. People were taking pen and paper out on the deck, putting their quiz score above possible lung cancer. Others were up on chairs trying to get their ears up against the speakers. Awesome dedication boys and girls, way to give it all. Did I mention that I’m not drinking any fuckin’ Merlot?
We had a team join us from their normal Tuesday night quiz hideout at Catacombs, which was great to see. I figure they were either defecting, switching to an earlier bedtime (Catacombs doesn’t start until 9pm), gathering reconnaissance for the enemy, or trying to double up and pile 2 quizzes into one night (which means they probably racked up about 200 points the second time around since they knew all the answers). I’d like to cordially invite more teams from Catacombs over to the dark side here at Harpo’s. In fact, I’d love to see a bunch of you show up at Harpo’s and then roll over to Catacombs a couple hours later and wreck shop scoring a perfect 100%, hang on, doing the math…96 points. C’mon Catacombs, you know you wanna. Or maybe we should organize an All-Boulder Quiz-off one of these nights, us against them…battle.
So, as always it was a heated affair last night, and as almost always the same teams dominated the quiz. Victorious once again, a real shocker, The Dukes of Valmont.
We had a tie for second place. Your first sudden death round was a math-off, multiplying the number of Olive Garden restaurants in the US and Canada by 2. Going Price-Is-Right style, both teams had the same woefully low answer (clearly cheating off each others papers) of 350 (actual retail answer…1222). So…barreling into round two of sudden death, Moose In Heat took second place by coming closer to the year that Labor Day was officially made a national holiday.
Left behind in third, possibly the worst-luck sudden death team in history (not kidding, they’ve come up on the short end like 5 or 6 times), but not letting it dampen their spirits, and looking dead sexy I might add, Beard and a Mustache, 2 Bits.
The imperical data: Dukes of Valmont 64 Moose In Heat 54+1 Beard and A Mustache, Two Bits 54 There's 2 "O"'s in Goose 46 Kramerica Industries 45 CU Carpet Munchers 38 Iced Monkey Brains 34 Elena's a Fraud 33 Team Extreme 29 Jackson 5 19 The Unstoppable Drunkernaught 15 Rajon Rondo's Rimjob 12 FB (Fuck Boston?) 10 No Mo Boot 5 LSU 2
NBA shenanigans or not, it was a good night, so glad to see all of your drunken, smiling faces. See you all next week, I’m off to the puticlub.
I should probably out myself as a NY Yankee fan here...
That is an entirely different thing as I'm sure you are aware. Dropping trou in public is illegal and people do not have to "deal" with people who commit crimes. It's not illegal to be annoying. "Deal with it" may sound assholic but seriously, what other options are there? Shall the next Boston team to make the championships forfeit the final so they don't hurt anyone's feeling? My experience is that there is always a lot of bad behavior by some fans no matter what city happens to win the big one. Boston fans only appear worse because the rest of you have had the pleasure of watching us celebrate so often these last few years.