Getting Ready For R. Kelly At Pitchfork: A Beginner’s Guide

The weekend is approaching, and you’ve bought tickets to Pitchfork 2013.  Amidst all the band names that involve either A) Plural Nouns (Woods, Savages, Swans, Metz), or B) Something Foreign-Sounding (Mikal Cronin, Toro Y Moi, Autre Ne Veut), you’ll see a familiar name: R. Kelly.

Saturday night, it’s all happening baby.

Maybe you’ve heard Aziz Ansari’s take on seeing Kelly in concert .  You’ve definitely heard of his sex scandal, but let’s not get into that right now.  The point is: have you heard the man’s stuff?

ForMITTable Opponents: Rejected Romney Running Mates

Sexxi can I?

After months of vetting potential running mates, presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally selected Paul Ryanas his partner on the G.O.P. ticket. Here are some of the potential nominees who couldn’t quite make it through the Vice Presidential vetting process.

Tony Horton
Like Paul Ryan, Tony Horton is committed to the P90X home fitness program. Unlike Paul Ryan, Tony Horton probably doesn’t want to eliminate all social programs in America that have been enacted since the Hoover administration. Also, between instructing both Usher and Pam the Blam, Tony Horton has worked with more black people than Paul Ryan has ever met in Janesville, Wisconsin.

A Cardboard Cutout of Ronald Reagan
Although deemed to have more personality and charisma than Vice Presidential contender Tim Pawlenty, the cardboard cutout never made it out of the vetting process due to rumors circulating that the 40th President had once been a Democrat. Instead, the Romney campaign intends to use the cutout as a portable beer pong table to be installed in the back of the bus for the “The Romney Plan for How We’ll Gut the Shit out of the Capital Gains Tax a Stronger Middle Class” tour.

Vet this, bitch.

Jesse Pinkman
Originally vetted as a pugnacious businessman who is willing to take on the establishment and appeal to youths nationwide, Pinkman, like Marco Rubio, was brought down by allegations of his connection to organized crime. Also, Mitt’s waiting to watch Season 5 of Breaking Baduntil it comes out on Netflix, and doesn’t want to accidentally overhear any spoilers.

Benjamin Netanyahu
It would be much easier for Romney to Likud Benjamin Netanyahu’s Knesset (if you know what I mean…)* if the Israeli Prime Minister was just a short walk away from the Oval Office. Seeing as Romney and Netanyahu worked together at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s, and the leader evokes more respect from Congress than the President of the United States, Netanyahu’s rejection — Article II of the Constitution notwithstanding — was one of the worst defeats in Israeli politics since the breakup of the Tribes of Israel with the death of King Solomon.

Morty Schapiro
Nobody’s quite sure why the Romney campaign passed Morty up, but rumors persist that it had something to do with Morty, a $10,000 bet, and Ann Romney’s horse.

Mitt Romney circa 2004
A moderate Republican willing to compromise with his political opponents in the name of good governance, the Governor of Massachusetts was hampered by his commitment to reform health care and cover virtually all of the uninsured, as well as his willingness to provide basic civil rights to women and homosexuals. The raging gay feminista-socialist Romney, who had the audacity to sign legislation requiring individuals to obtain health insurance, was deemed too radical for a Romney 2012 campaign trying to shore up its conservative image.

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*Bill Clinton sex.

An Open Letter to my Unborn Grandson Explaining the Sport of Football

Dear Unborn Grandson,

Still waiting for the Houston Texans’ upcoming “Divisional Round Dubstep.”

If you are reading this now, two things must have happened. Apparently, a) I have lived like I died, drunkenly paddling a canoe in the buff down the Chicago River, and b) President Malia Ann Obama has outlawed the sport of football in our once-proud United States of America. Luckily for you, I predicted that such travesties would happen — mostly because canuding through the poisonous sludge that is the Chicago River while belligerently intoxicated can have adverse effects on your health — but also because the sport of football was pretty damn dangerous. What follows is all the important knowledge you will ever need to know in order to preserve the memory and history of the sport of football and ensure that you never ever fall prey to the allure of its metrosexual European cousin.

You see, Unborn Grandson, football was the greatest sport ever invented. The perfect combination of brawn and strategy and cheerleaders. Good God, don’t ever let us forget the cheerleaders.

Speaking of God, Yahweh fucking loved football. Just fucking loved it. Loved the sport so much that members of both teams would pray to God, asking for strength, fortitude, a sturdy offensive line, and a guaranteed contract plus incentives. God rewarded good Christians who couldn’t throw a spiral with an impregnable defense, while punishing other franchises with the likes of Cade McNown and Rex Grossman.

God loved football because football fucking ruled. In America, pro football was more popular than if Justin Bieber and cholesterol teamed up with all other major sports combined. No other game combined savage violence with cunning tactics and celebration dances quite like it. The game induced grown men in Philadelphia to throw D-batteries at Santa Claus, wear slices of cheese on their heads as they froze their asses off in Wisconsin, and even every once in awhile travel willingly to Detroit (this, after all, was before the city was overtaken by the mole people).

The athletes who played the game were revered as gods among men. If, you know, the gods were really great at running hitch and go routes and sending pictures of their junk to women they weren’t married to. Even the kickers, whose sole purpose in life was to — you guessed it Unborn Grandson — kick a ball still got laid, an impressive feat for somebody like Sebastian Janikowski.

Back before Google installed screens in all of our heads, we used to watch this magical sport from early Fall until February on things called “televisions,” which showed us the game and expert analysis of the game and hot women drinking shitty beer during breaks in the game. Sidenote: One day, Unborn Grandson, you might think that drinking Busch Light is “hip,” and “retro,” and “ironically hilarious,” but let me tell you, it’s not. All of your little hipster friends in the year 2063 might think it’s really cool to ironically drink your old man’s beer while you listen to Skrillex mp3’s and wear skinny jeans or some shit like that, but those kids have no idea how painful these things were at the time. Just be advised that my will specifically strips you of all rights to my Pokemon card collection if you are ever found Tebowing.

But yeah, TV was pretty great for football, and at the very end of the season, America held a special sacred holiday called Super Bowl Sunday. For one day the entire nation turned its eyes on the two best football teams of the year, who tried very hard to win the championship game and the ensuing confetti and the pretty metal trophy and the rights to wear rings the size of diamond-crusted nuva rings and to cry into Chris Berman‘s microphone. Halftime entertainment featured the very best aging classic rock stars had to offer, and even the occasional rogue booby or floating Usher.

The only thing better than professional football was college football. The college game was as passionate as Sicilians, and its governing body was as corrupt as, well, Sicilians. The rivalries were intense, and the pregames before a noon kickoff were unseemly in the best possible way.

Now, I’m sure grandpop’s alma mater has made quite a name for itself in the future, thanks to alumni like Ross Packingham (Beer Pong Olympic goldmedalist, 2024, 2028) and Chet Haze (Bratz 3D, Forrest Gump 2: Gump n Grind), but we were once a pretty respectable football institution too. We’re talking, like, the 7th most feared Big Ten team.

College football had things called “bowl games” instead of the Super Bowl to commemorate the end of its season. It worked kind of like youth soccer, where almost everybody got a trophy. I can still remember the thrill of victory when Northwestern won its first bowl game since the Rose Bowl, defeating the South Dakota State Jackrabbits in one of the most thrilling Overstock.com Money Grab Bowl in years. Those were the days. Half of the school erupted into celebration while patiently explaining to the other half what a first down was.

But I can only assume that the goddamn liberals and the socialists and the gays and the concussed NFL retirees will collude together to pressure President Malia Obama to ban the sport from America altogether in the near future. I cannot express how tragic of a mistake this will be, on par with our future decision to defrost Walt Disney or replace football with children fighting to the death for our entertainment.

Alright, Unborn Grandson, I hope this letter has reached you well. Please understand how important the sport of football was to all Americans, and don’t judge us too harshly for our cultural transgressions during the YOLO era. Things like twitter and Four Loko seemed like pretty great ideas at the time.

Well, that’s about it. I hope things are well in the future for you and your Roomba overlords. Are they still making teenage fiction about vampires? Has Christopher Nolan won an Oscar yet? How does your generation feel about the Black Keys?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a river to canude down.

Sincerely,
Evander