Maximum Coverage

Booze! Comics! Video games! Sports! Pro wrestling! Cross dressing! Illegal surgery! Casual racism!

The definitive WAMBAG.COM post.

– He is no longer Hansel-level hot, but our boy Jeremy Lin is still getting national airtime (as well as dropping a double-double in a win against his hometown Warriors…on Asian Heritage Night!) now by starring in SportsCenter commercials! I know some of us here would have rather the media portrayed him as a rock star/sex god, instead of unsurprisingly joking about how good with the book learnin’ he is…but I mean the dude did go to Harvard. And it’s hard to hate on these ESPN commercials – they have historically been pretty great, even if you don’t grasp the sports context behind them.

– Let’s pretend that it is still last week and that the Super Bowl is still relevant. …okay, ready? Man…wasn’t it crazy when The Rock appeared? It’s not even the same sport, that was insane! If you aren’t able to appreciate the beauty of this – watching John Harbaugh worriedly talk to officials about this development, the WWE watermark, the fact that this guy even dug up that old “NEW ORLEANS SMELLS IT” footage – then I just feel sorry for you.

– There is a scientific study, sponsored by the beer industry, that claims that the beer belly is a myth, and beer actually contains relatively fewer calories by volume than other types of beverages (not included: water) and something something osteoporosis something. It’s my opinion though, that the biggest logical hole in the study is presented with the first sentence of the article (emphasis mine)…

In fact beer, the country’s national drink, has nutritional and wellbeing benefits similar to wine when consumed in moderation, it is claimed.

…yeah, basing a study on the assumption that beer will be consumed in moderation implies a significant disconnect with what the relevant, practical, real world parameters are here. The statement that beer has less calories than orange juice has little value, since there are not a lot of people that like to unwind after work by binge drinking orange juice. Well…maybe some, but that might just be ignorant racist profiling on my part. Or maybe overdosing on vitamin C leads to jaundice, I’m not an expert.

– So in addition to getting his dirty, greasy, King Midas like, lens flare illuminated paws on the next Star Wars movie, on top of already helming the new Star Trek ones…JJ Abrams is also trying to make Half-Life and Portal movies? Good God. I don’t really subscribe to the notion there is an all encompassing “nerd” demographic, but if there was one, this man is clearly trying to sit upon its chrome plated, swiveling throne. His biggest contender right now seems to be Brett Ratner (who has driven such successful franchises into the ground with shitty sequels as Rush Hour, Silence of the Lambs, and X-Men) a man who was quoted to be very passionate about a FarmVille movie and likely also the numerous wheelbarrows full of Zuckerberg brand cash and diseased hookers that come with it.

– In other “nerd” movie news, Marvel has tapped Chris Pratt to be one of the main faces of their next wave of movies, as the lead for their upcoming the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It’s hard to tell how “Star-Lord” rates as a name that Andy Dwyer would make up next to “Bert Macklin”. Pretty highly, I’d think. Presumably with a comedic lead, it follows that this action, sci-fi, space property will now have a comedic element to it as well…though that was probably a given considering the team also includes a heavily armed anthropomorphic raccoon and an anthropomorphic tree. Though those are all things you could have said about Green Lantern…and it’s debatable how conventionally “funny” that one was. I am now pretty curious who they will bring in to voice Rocket Raccoon and Groot respectively…particularly Groot, the extraterrestrial “flora colossus” and regent of Planet X, mainly because he literally only has one line of dialogue that he repeats over and over again. I hope they go big and bring in like Denzel Washington or Leonardo DiCaprio for that. All you need to do is trick them into saying it once over the phone, and you’re good!

– Conan “reviews” Halo 4, revealing that he and Andy actually recorded audio for the game. It is always a terrifying and sometimes violent experience when man is forced to confront a mirror of himself and have all the foibles and shortcomings of his own existence presented before him, and it unfolds no differently here.

– 2000 National League batting champion, four time Silver Slugger, three time Gold Glove winner, and five time All-Star Todd Helton, who has been the face of the Colorado Rockies for well over a decade, was arrested last week for DUI. The charge itself is not all that surprisingly, since I mean…it’s Colorado, so if you can’t ski then there’s not all that much to do other than drink, and presumably the public transit in Thornton (the sixth most populous Colorado city) doesn’t have a lot of options at 2:00 AM. I mean what’s he supposed to do…NOT drink and drive? Be serious. But the weird thing is that he was allegedly at a gas station picking up lottery tickets…which seems like an odd thing for a still gainfully employed multimillionaire to do. This is a man who is set to make $5 million this year playing baseball, and who Baseball-Reference.com has noted to have made over $150 million already through his career.

Regardless, it’ll be an interesting tidbit to remember when Helton’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame comes up (JAWS puts him solidly within the middle of the pack of already enshrined first basemen, so he’s got a better than decent chance). Interesting in the sense that absolutely no one will remember it, and the attention will likely continue to revolve around the players allegedly linked to HGH and how morally and ethically important it is to keep those players (even though there is absolutely no known evidence that even relates steroid use to improved performance) out of the company of the rest of the drunks, cocaine and meth users, sex addicts (seriously guys that’s not really a thing), guys with hilarious names that actually cheated by physically doctoring baseballs, and alleged KKK members who have been charged with attempted murder that reside in the Hall of Fame today.

Major League Baseball everybody!

– I have some some truly wonderful news articles today, starting with this delightful story about how this West Palm Beach man was arrested for performing butt augmentation surgery in a hotel room while dressed as a woman…for the second time this month. Though it should be noted that there’s absolutely nothing wrong about dressing like a woman (especially if you are a woman). To clarify, it’s the illegal surgery performed in a hotel room without a license part that got him in trouble. But for $200, even if he did close you up with Krazy Glue…that doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.

– This is also delicious, and to avoid diluting the flavour, I’m just going to give you the headline straight…Times Square Spiderman claims ‘punching a woman in the face for not tipping him’ was ‘self-defence’. I mean that’s tough to top. This one is absolutely chock-full of treasures, including how after the altercation with the first Spider-Man started, the alleged victim got confused and mistakenly confronted another Spider-Man. Which (in this case only) seems understandable…there were probably a lot of Spider-Men around and they do all look alike, at least to me.

The scene in Times Square got ugly after the initial altercation escalated.

But this is my biggest gripe with the article…

In a fit of passion, the woman meanwhile had approached another Spiderman by mistake.

‘A woman came to me and said, “What did you do to me, you f***ker?”‘ said the Times Square Spidey, who preferred to stay anonymous. ‘Her husband came over and said it was a different Spider-Man. They went over to the other one and started fighting.’

If you cannot spell “Spider-Man” correctly, would you at least spell it consistently, Victoria Wellman? Goddamn, I understand if you mistakenly put “Spiderman” in your headline, which is an honest mistake and it follows the lack of hyphens in Superman and Batman, but clearly you also know how to write it the proper way…so what gives!?! I’d say that the editors at the Daily Mail need to get their shit together, but the end of the article is so delectably sweet…I’m forced to steal it myself. There’s not a lot of better sounding notes to go out on, so I give you kudos, Daily Mail and Mrs. Wellman.

Back in Times Square, others are worried about the implications of such a brawl and are no doubt recalling last year’s anti-Semitic Elmo who was arrested for disorderly conduct and racist ranting in Central Park.

‘Getting arrested isn’t good for any of us,’ said Times Square worker Christian, who dresses as Big Bird. ‘It makes us all look bad.’