This Gay Week in Sports: Kyle Kendrick, Condoleezza Rice
29th October 2008
Less than one week until Election Day and even the sports world has taken on a bit of a political bent. World-famous hockey mom and Tina Fey impersonator Sarah Palin followed up her jeer-inducing stint dropping the ceremonial first puck at a recent Philadelphia Flyers game this week by doing the same thing in St. Louis before the Blues played the Los Angeles Kings. But instead of skating out onto the ice, the Republicans' last hope waltzed out on a red carpet (reports that the rug was purchased at Neiman Marcus remain unconfirmed).
Said carpet managed to trip up Blues goalie Manny Legace when he entered the rink, causing him to collapse with a strained hip flexor, thereby rendering him useless for at least two games and leading to a 4-0 victory by the Kings.
Although Legace went on record and said he held “no grudge” against the First Lady of Aerial Wolf Hunting, Palin seemed to have been demoted, as the next night saw her receiving an honorary jersey from a minor league team in Des Moines, Iowa. The best part is that the team was the Iowa Chops, as in pork.
Yes, the honorary jersey has a pig on it. Sans lipstick, but you get the idea.
Another juicy morsel of political sports news this week surrounds the rumor that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is mulling the idea of taking over as a boss of the San Francisco 49ers.
Rice, who has several times hinted that she would be thrilled to be in charge of the NFL, even over residing in the Oval Office, may have no experience running a football team, but a). the woman knows how to handle powerful drunken rednecks, and b). the 49ers lately make Iraq look like a success story.
As Dancing With the Stars behemoth and former NFLer Warren Sapp said this week, “The multi-tasking didn’t work in Washington so maybe the single-tasking will work in San Francisco.”
Plus this should clear up any remaining doubts that Rice is a big lez.
Speaking of which, how gay is the World Series? Or at least the opening acts.
Game 1 saw the national anthem being performed by the four remaining Backstreet Boys (who, like men creating personal ad screen names, should probably abandon the “boy” thing since most of them are pushing 40... “Backstreet Daddies?”), much to the delight of Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick.
In his World Series journal, Kendrick wrote that he texted his “buddies” back in Seattle to tell them, “You won't believe this, the Backstreet Boys were here...It was pretty exciting for me.” After four paragraphs about the Boys, including the tidbit that as a freshman in high school “my buddies and I used to listen” to their “big CD,” Kendrick goes on to discuss his love of Carrie Underwood and George Strait before dropping a quick, purposeful mention of his “girlfriend.”
Then in Game 4, America was treated to a 2-minute 28-second Star Spangled Banner by diva extraordinaire Patti LaBelle, almost managing to delay the game longer than Game 3's menacing thunderstorms. The jury is out on which one was less pleasant to witness.
Apparently the Los Angeles Galaxy is a little tired of their meal ticket amounting to the equivalent of very expensive pork and beans (so to speak).
The Galaxy is leasing underwear model David Beckham to a team in Milan during the break, bringing up questions about whether Beckham will be in the States much longer. Los Angeles Times blog The Fabulous Forum (this ain’t called Gay Week in Sports for nothin’) recently wrote about Beckham fatigue in the City of Angels, while other sports talking heads called for Beckham’s release back to the European wild, having done what he came here to do: make lots of money while soccer is still an American laughing-stock of a sport.
We’ll send you off this week with a couple of amusing tidbits from the video world. In the wake of openly gay diver Matthew Mitcham, the fad has spread to the equine community, as The Onion carried a piece on the “first ever openly gay horse” to run at Santa Anita.
Ship’s Captain, as the hoofed homosexual is known, doesn’t make a ton of friends in the satirical news video (including one redneck fan who postulates that other horses might get “horse AIDS or something”), but his trainer glows with pride. “I see him at the head of the field and I think, there’s no way that horse is gay. But he is!” I could make some horribly crude jokes about anatomy and internet penis size reporting among the Black Beauty set, but I can’t seem to stoop that low today.
A new television ad spot for the game Guitar Hero features several Gay Week in Sports column alumni dancing, lip-synching, and playing instruments in their underwear (and pink shirts, I’m afraid) that is worth a good gander. Alex Rodriguez, Tony Hawk and Michael Phelps can be seen goofily playing backup to Kobe Bryant singing “That Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll.” My favorite is the bit where Phelps and Rodriguez lie on their backs on their respective couches, jamming with their feet kicking the air like members of the chorus of Bye Bye Birdie (or, in this case, the Pink Ladies).
And finally, the Freudian Slip of the Week comes from Missouri quarterback Chase Daniels, speaking —nay, raving— in an interview about Texas quarterback Colt McCoy. “I trust what he does,” Daniels gushes. “He has, uh, such a great ass…er, grasp…"
I thoroughly agree.
Source: Gaywired