Sportsology: Because you know you want to

This week, we are here to talk about sports and the current state of athletics in North America (don't worry, everyone's invited). A lot of stuff goin' on in the media, and we don't take kindly to the way media has been portraying these athletes.

I'll go ahead and list the highlights of this post right now, so if you aren't interested, go do what you please. I won't be offended:

• How I feel about LeBron James as of right now
• The Tom Brady thing
• Protentials with US sports due to USA being sandwiched between Canada and Mexico
• Personal favorite athletes who exemplify true sportsmanship

Like I said, won't get offended this piece doesn't fit your fancy. Just here to spread some opinions, nadameen? Let's get crackin'!

LeBron, LeBron, LeBron...

Oh LeBron James. I'm not gonna lie; you play games with my mind like a teenage relationship. You do one thing really good, and you seem like a great person, then you do something that's like meh. I get it. You are media target number one at all times. Companies wanna pay you to promote their shit, you wanna play basketball, ya need to get paid to support your family, every little kid wants to be you and/or be better than you, and that's a lot of pressure. But I can sorta tell that your genuinely a good person, and probably one of the top athletes in the world. I still have a problem with the way your basketball game is, although that you've been producing like you have for so long, I'm starting to overlook it. You move too mechanically, you play as if you came from the future with supreme knowledge and half-cyborg, which to me, isn't a very appealing style of play. I personally think Carmelo and KD are more exciting to watch. Plain and Simple.

But Bron Bron, you gotta keep it loose, mentally and physically. I know you say the haters don't get to you, but I can tell the do a little bit, through the way you play, you speak to the media, etc. If you're the best basketball player in the world, you gotta look at it differently: no reason to keep reaching perfection, you'll never reach it. You just gotta gotta have fun with it, cause it won't last. And when it ends, do YOU want to remember yourself as the hardest working man in the league, or do you want to have fun and go out with a bang?

Deflategate: I feel dirty just saying it

This wasn't a scandal. It was a premeditated action. It was cheating. Sanctions. Punishment. I think I have the perfect picture for this:

Ahhh, that's better. Well, now that we have that out of the way, I'm going to make this as short as possible. Guys, this isn't the first time its happened. Any sort of sports scandal you see in the media, it's probably been done before, and to make it even worse, its more than likely been done at minor and youth levels. Now, deflating balls is cheating. Horrible sportsmanship, but now that the Patriots have been found out, they are gonna come back, clean and play by the rules and still dominate. And I'm not even a Boston sports fan. The fact that this is getting more coverage than the Aaron Hernandez case (you know, that guy that killed somebody) leaves me puzzled.

USA, Canada, and Mexico: Powerhouses, but could (and should) become a powercontinent for sports

America is in a great geographical location for sports. To the north, we have the Canadians, strong winter sports athletes, not to mention the best of the elites in the hockey world. As an American, I totally understand that the USA-Canada Olympic Ice Hockey rivalry is purely territorial. We never stand a chance, but we like to take our chances from time to time.

Now, to the south, our lovely neighbor Mexico. Mexicans have a passion so deep for soccer, it makes them good. Not that they need to make up for skill (traditionally, Mexico plays a very dribbling heavy style of play, individual skill is an absolute must), but its their love of the game that makes them always a serious opponent in international soccer. 

What I don't get is why USA wants to continue to excel in sports at a national level? Truth be told, if American Football became an international sport, nobody would be able to compete with us. Look at the US Men's Basketball team. We don't even have to send our best players, and yet we still dominate basically every other country in the world. Woop-de-fucking-doo. We are good at something that no other country plays and a sport which we have no true competition. But any other sport that other countries play, America stands little to no chance in sports. Canada is the best hockey country in the world, makes up a large portion of teams in the NHL, and yet, the league struggles every year due to poor attendance, horrible marketing, and just a general lack of interest in the sport. If we had any sense and true pride, we would be pushing hockey more in the media, instead of some 4x6 inch ad that offers free parking if the Stars get a shut out.

Same goes with soccer. Americans always have this surge of soccer, usually during the world cup. Which is fine. You will never see me disapprove of someone else's patriotism expressed by supporting your countries national team. But, as with hockey, the sustainability of the interest for soccer fades rapidly once the USMNT gets knocked out. In my opinion, I think we need to start integrating the MLS more with international soccer. Sure, MLS teams stand no chance against a polished team like Manchester United, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich, and that's okay. It's the exposure to better, foreign opponents that's going to raise interest in the volatile mind of an American sports fan. And once we can raise interest and awareness, uhh, I don't know if y'all know this, but sports with strong fan followings profit immensely financially and increase overall potential talent ceiling of the team, league, organization, club, etc, etc. Simply put: The more fans you have, the more money you make. The more money you make, the more financial freedom to spend on keeping better players playing in their home countries. The more your better players play in your home country, the better your national team becomes. The better your national team beco- I think you get the point.

Lastly, Good ole fashion Sportsmanship Awards (TVD Hiem style)

If you read all the way through this post so far, thank you and please share your comments down below. If you didn't read the post, but you were interested in seeing if your favorite athletes are on this list, I'm all for it and I hope I don't disappoint you too much. FINALLY, WITH THAT BEING SAID, I would like to hand out some TVD Hiem Sportsmanship Awards. This is more hall of fame, league of extraordinary gentlemen type shit rather than the Espys. Enough talk, here are 3 individuals well deserving of this award.

1. Brock Hekking, American College Football

Awarded For: Mullet. Check. Beats. Check. Pregaming Ray-Bans. Check. Dude, this guy is just a shining display of what its like when you have fun playing sports. Not to mention, he's a first-team conference player in a pretty talented conference.

2. Andrew "Hamburglar" Hammond, NHL Hockey

Awarded For: This guy earned is award for 2 things: 99% of it is what he did on the ice. Basically, 3rd string goalie, other guys get hurt, Hamburglar steps in, goes 20-1-2 (don't know hockey well, but that's gotta be pretty damn good), helps the Sens get into the playoffs, and just recently singed a deal worth about $3 million USD over 3 years. The other 1%? He's got the fucking Hamburglar painted on his goalie mask. Enough said.

3. The entire company GoPro

Awarded For: You really want to see happy people? Just go sift through the GoPro YouTube channel and you'll see tons of athletes and professionals doing some of the craziest things you can imagine. Definitely worth the look. Here's a personal favorite:

Throwback Thursday- The Weeknd Edition

#TBT to last year, when I heard this song literally one million times a day on Flow 93.5 while driving my Weed Man truck around. Flow recently switched to some dumb format where it's apparently #TBT every day, which means all they play now are Aaliyah songs from 1998. So I guess #TBT to last year when Flow 93.5 was still good.

Lol jk. I still love you Melanie.

Celebrity Mindreader, vol. 1

Holy shit, if your like me and getting stoned in the middle of the afternoon while watching Jeopardy, than you will be well amused by the entity that is Celebrity Jeopardy. Now, normally, 2 bowls deep, I do pretty well through the first round and kinda fall asleep by final Jeopardy. I'm no fucking Einstien, but I manage. But now, Alex Trebeck, a highly respected Canadian among the American population, had decided to stoop down to retard level so some B list celebrities can give a couple grand to some charity that no one has ever heard of. The true gold comes from Mr. Trebeck asking these "celebrities" questions about their own shows and personal lives, and still manage to get them wrong. I swear, the faces these people make are beautiful. So it has inspired me to create a new series called Celebrity Mindreader. I would explain it, but if you read through I think you get the jist:

1. Debra Messing 

"I'm, like, 5000% sure I said no milk in my latte. But you're a 16 year old stupid ass bitch who calls herself a barista; I'm sure you know exactly what the fuck you're doing."

2. Bruce Jenner

"Swerve, bitch."

3. Jennifer Lawrence

"OH YOU THINK YOUR SPECIAL, MEGAN?!? BITCH I GOT AN OSCAR WHILE YOU IN MICHAEL BAY'S TRAILER BLOWING A JANITOR NAMED OSCAR!"

4. Jeff Goldblum

"Alright guys *sniff*, first things first: we need to get some more of that coke."

5. Rob Gronkowski

"Well Tom, Heim's theory wasn't meant to become factual or certain at any point in time. Sure, he claimed that his theory could produce particle masses from fundamental physical constants and all of the resulting masses are in agreement with his original experi- OH SHIT CAMERA! QUICK, HIDE YOUR INTELLIGENCE!"

I will normally only be doing about 5ish, but this week yall get a special bonus

6. Ryan Lochte

"(Ryan Lochte's thought process is an enigma, a pandora's box of treasureful quotes and quips. It would be disrespectful to the comedy gods to even attempt to read such a pure and perfect mind, so here is a actual Ryan Lochte quote.)"

What the sports just happened?

Freaky sh*t (haven't posted in a while, don't know if we gotta censor our sh*t now) went down the other day in sports. We all know Atlanta has some of the worst sports fans in the world, and somebody decided to play a very tasteful prank upon the city:

In the NBA Playoffs....

• Paul Pierce scored a buzzer beater against the Atlanta Hawks
• Paul Pierce plays for the Washington Wizards
• Paul Pierce wears no. 34

In MLB Regular Season...

• Bryce Harper had a walk-off hit in the bottom of the 9th against the Atlanta Braves
• Bryce Harper plays for the Washington Nationals
• Bryce Harper wears no. 34

I'm not saying, but I'm just saying...

SEX! SEX! SEX! (are you reading this yet?)

she finna turn ur kids gay

Now that I have your attention, let's talk about education. Can you believe 3,000 people showed up at Queen's Park yesterday to protest Ontario's new sex education curriculum? I mean, even by idiot mob standards, that's a lot of people. As the Toronto Star points out, the throng wasn't without "the usual suspects (aka homophobes)" -- but the sheer volume of people at the protest makes me feel like there's a lot of normal people out there who aren't entirely comfortable with the province's new sex ed curriculum either.

If you feel a bit of trepidation about the new curriculum teaching grade ones about consent or introducing the concept of "sexting" to your 12 year old, I can understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, you're an idiot. The new curriculum is necessary to implement, and here's why: 

The last update to the Ontario sex ed curriculum was in 1998. I was born in 1991, so the entirety of my classroom-based sex education was administered under the current curriculum. That curriculum was outdated when I was in elementary school, and I graduated a decade ago -- pre-smartphones and social media. By the time I was 10, sexual intercourse was regularly discussed on the playground, but it wasn't even addressed in class until I was 12 (after I had already been watching porn for about a year). In contrast, I don't ever recall an in-depth lesson on gender identity, even though there were trans kids at my high school. Nor do I remember sexual consent being fully addressed in class until I took an elective sociology credit in Grade 12. And when it was, the idea was vocally dismissed by the young men in the class. Shit, I didn't fully understand consent or gender identity until I was 22, and that was after extensive personal reading and dialogue with university-educated peers. This is my experience, and I was enrolled in a higher learning stream at a good school in a well off neighbourhood.

You people think "sexting" is scary?

Look, Ontario's new sex ed curriculum probably isn't perfect (it was made by teachers and liberals, after all), but it does take big steps to correct the failings of our impersonal, STI-obsessed current curriculum. Some people would argue complex lessons about the human aspects of sexuality are better taught at home; but a quick Google search for statistics on sexual assault or suicide among LGBT youth raises some serious questions about the validity of that statement. And whether you like it or not, the internet has introduced sex to kids at an earlier age. If the current curriculum continues to provide no meaningful or timely subtext to whatever your kid is picking up from Alexis Texas and Young Thug, what's the point in even teaching it?  I mean, shit. The last sex ed curriculum was developed under Mike Harris. It's time for a change.

Bracketology: Cheerleader Fashion Edition

It's that time of year again! March Madness is about to begin, and for two weeks, everybody on the face of the planet will be pretending to care about basketball so they can watch TV at the office. The best part about March Madness imo is the "bracketology" aspect -- filling out a bracket via complete guesswork and then watching TV to listen to self-appointed "experts" tell you why you're wrong.

As a journalist and sports fan, there's nothing more I enjoy than sharing my unsolicited, speculative opinion on things I have very little knowledge of. So for this year's bracket I've decided to kill two birds with one stone, combining two things I know nothing about (college basketball and women's fashion) to decide my picks in the NCAA Tournament. 

The process was simple: I filled out a traditional bracket, but instead of deciding which team I thought would win the game, I picked the team whose cheerleaders were better dressed (in my opinion). The results are below.

The Tournament

click to zoom

And for the Final Four...

I'm picking Cincinnati to win, which probably isn't gonna happen, but let's not kid ourselves. You didn't come here to look at my bracket predictions. Let's get to the good stuff!

The Outfits

The Final Four

4: Arkansas Razorbacks:

Most SEC schools have more than enough pomp, pizzazz, and booster funding to dominate the first few rounds of the tournament, but extravagance will kill them later on. The Razorbacks rock the Southern charm but leave the Bedazzler at home, and the results are good enough to earn them a Final Four appearance.

3. Michigan State Spartans:

When your school colours are forest green and white, you have to be trying pretty hard to make your uniforms look bad. Michigan's sleek, sexy new age attire should allow them to slash and burn their way through a relatively weak East division.

2. UCLA Bruins:

I'm a big fan of most UCLA sports jerseys, and the cheerleading uniforms are no exception. Like Michigan State, they have a colour scheme that really appeals to me. When you add that all of their uniforms look more like cute vintage sundresses than cheer outfits, you get a winning combination in my book. Look for the Bruins to do some damage in the tournament.

1. Cincinnati Bearcats:

This looks like somebody combined a cheerleader getup with the kind of "little black dress" you'd see at a really nice club in downtown Toronto. Excellent work.

Consolation Prizes

Miss Congeniality

Valparaiso Crusaders:

The "turd and honey" colour scheme falls into the "so bad it's good" category, and I actually really like the style of the dress. Unfortunately, Valpo is in tough against a much flashier Maryland squad and I don't see them making it out of the first round.

Worst Outfit

Virginia Cavaliers:

I don't exactly know what's going on here, but I do know that I don't like it.

Most Surprising Outfit Based on School Rep

BYU Cougars:

I would expect a school full of Mormons to be real prudish when it comes to cheerleading outfits, but the Cougars' getups are actually pretty sexy if you ask me.

Least Surprising Outfit Based on School Rep

Harvard Crimson:

Yup.

So there you have it folks; my extremely analytical, well informed breakdown of the 2015 March Madness bracket. When the tournament is over, I'll update you on how I did.

The Musical Progression of a Successful Punk Band

Title Fight rockin' Sneaky Dee's

Punk rock is a wild ass genre of music. Like I said in a previous post, when you first get into punk, every band seems radically different, but once you hang around long enough, it becomes apparent most of the bands are carbon copies of each other. This goes not only for the sound and style of music, but for the trajectory of the band's musical evolution.

I've outlined this strange phenomenon below, using the trajectory of one of the most successful bands of the last decade or so, Title Fight, as an example. It is important to note, however, that this model only applies to successful bands, as the vast majority of punk bands (thankfully) never leave their parent's basements. Enjoy.

Stage 1: Highly Derivative Demo Material

Not bad for a bunch of 14 year olds

During the first stage of evolution, the median age for a punk band is estimated to be 17.4 years old. At this age, most musicians have a pretty limited breadth of musical reference and an even more limited grasp on how to play their instruments. As a result, the fledgling musicians pick two or three bands they want to sound like and try to mash the styles together.

Most grizzled scene vets (read: 21 year olds) don't really fuck with this material because of how derivative it is, but other 17 year olds don't know any better and eat this shit up like cake. Eventually, the band's buzz gets the attention of a small regional label, and things start to change.


Stage 2: Hype AF First LP 

At this stage, the band has grown out of their parent's basement and started doing support shows with larger regional acts. Their exposure to the world of "punk rock tastemakers" and improved playing ability (by virtue of touring 9 months out of the year) allows them to grow as a creative entity. The band's creative process is still quite derivative, but they now have a larger pool to draw from.

This limited but important growth usually results in a full length album that sounds like a more polished, fleshed out version of the band's demo. The band may also start to hint at a different creative direction with one or two "weird songs", but most of the material from this stage of evolution remains consistent with the band's previous output.


Stage 3: Fleeting Moment of Creative Brilliance

In a culmination of hard work, dedication, and perfection of craft, the band finally reaches a creative apex. By this time, most of the band's members have started listening to music outside the confines of punk rock, introducing them to complex musical concepts such as dynamics, rhythm and song structure. In addition, the band's members have played together long enough to form chemistry, but not long enough to hate each other's guts. This combination usually results in the band's finest material.

In addition to their musical accomplishments, the band has often created a large public profile via playing every inhabitable US city three times a year since their last album. During this time, the band is regarded as an "integral part of the scene", and their watershed album will be mentioned at least three times in the Punknews Editors' Best of 20XX Roundup for that calendar year.


Stage 4: Poorly Recieved Crossover Attempt

At this stage of evolution, most of the band's members are over 24, which is widely regarded as the age where it's no longer socially acceptable to listen to punk music. It's also the age where most people start making a little bit of money, and the prospect of living in a stinky van for 9 months of the year starts to become unappealing. While the band is still outwardly successful to punk kids, it's members begin to feel the ebb and flow of the outside world weighing them down. This pressure forces the band to make a drastic change.

The science is inexact, but most of the time, the direction of that change can be predicted based on the band's past output. See the figure below for more detail.

Punk rock's established transformation paths 

• "EpiFat" skate-punk/PBRcore -> boring dad rock (eg. Bad Religion, Hot Water Music, Against Me!) 
• Tr00 Post-Hardcore -> NPR indie w. bad singing (Mewithoutyou, La Dispute, Thursday)
• Pop Punk -> terrible music for 14 year old girls and softs (eg, Blink-182, Piebald, Saves the Day)
• Emotional Guy Hardcore/Skramz -> melodramatic breakup (eg. American Nightmare, Orchid, Refused)
• Tough Guy Hardcore -> incarceration, death.

This new direction, while compelling, fails to resonate with the band's prior fans, or with the pub rock/SXSW/shoegaze/drone metal communities from which it draws. These releases are largely glossed over, but often heralded as "under-appreciated" by internet trolls ten years later.

Stage 5: Fade to Irrelevance/Demise

After a failed attempt to cross over, the band is in the twilight of it's career. They may release a few more albums, but by this point, nobody really cares anymore. Eventually all the members move on with their lives, occasionally reuniting to headline a fest or record something, but the band has by and large run it's course. 

All good things must come to an end. Even this article. So on that note, I leave you to discuss my findings amongst yourselves.