Return of the SWoS Friday Roundup!

Or, put another way, me posting links to stories from Deadspin and combined with mediocre one-liners…
– This article in Time Magazine about underage drinking has one of the best anecdote leads I’ve ever read. Honestly, if you were to pick one athlete to do this, wouldn’t it be John Daly?

– What’s the worst name you could see in front of “Sex Tape”? Well, yes, Larry King. But #2 has to be Patriots coach Bill Belichick… America just let out a collective shudder

– Somebody stole about $200-worth of Duke and UNC merchandise from a Cracker Barrel restaurant in North Carolina. I didn’t know there was $200-worth of stuff in a Cracker Barrel.

– Baron Davis in suspenders, riding a tandem bike with Steve Nash. My job here is done.

Doing Something (Else) Kerry Didn’t Do

Barack Obama’s campaign launched a website dedicated to responding to negative ads from the McCain campaign. Called “The Low Road Express,” the website references the McCain campaign bus by saying “The Straight Talk Express Has Taken a Nasty Turn Into the Gutter.” This comes as the McCain campaign releases another ad designed to mock Obama’s celebrity status (just days after the ad “Celeb” came out earlier this week) they’re calling “The One”:

For many Democrats, seeing a Presidential candidate willing to respond to attacks will be a relief. John Kerry vowed to stay out of the mess when he ran in 2004 (even when the criticisms were, for Democrats, painfully easy to put down), and for a while it seemed like Obama would too. But now he’s going after the claims by the McCain campaign and other sites (the site invites users to send in “Low Blows”), paving the way for a rocky campaign from all sides. Like I said at the start of the general election: it’s gonna get rough.

No Way? Way!

I did something I haven’t done since 7th Grade last night: I sat down and watched the X-Games. And you know what? It wasn’t all that bad.

You could say I was drawn to the “Big Air” skateboarding by the massive Jake Brown fall at last years’ X-Games (Deadspin’s preview of the event this year was titled “The Potential For More Men Falling Four Stories And Almost Dying Begins Tonight“), but once I’d seen a few runs off the massive ramps, I was hooked. And then, this happened:

Danny Way’s crash would have probably broken the legs of most mere mortals, but this guy walked away and WENT BACK OUT to finished the competition. Not only that, Way got into a three-way fight for the gold medal with Bob Burnquist and Jake Long, eventually taking silver and inspiring the Waynes World reference/bad pun title for this blog entry.

Watching that performance, I couldn’t help being reminded of Colin McRae at the X Games rally two years ago, where he rolled his car one turn from the finish but continued once he was on four wheels (his co-driver said McRae was back in first gear, ready to go, before they were right-side-up). I expected that from Colin – he’s the greatest rally driver ever and is famous for alway driving flat out (early in his career, he was nicknamed Colin McCrash) – he was showing the wannabe rally punks how it’s done. But having seen Danny Way’s fall and recovery last night, I have some newfound respect for the X-Games. If there are more events like the Big Air competition last night, I just might get in touch with my eXtreme side and watch.