Over The Limit Dodgeball: Season Four Starts NOW!

January 25, 2012

For the uninitiated:

OVER THE LIMIT!!!

Action shots are hard.  

I swear it's more exciting than this.

All pro athletes ice their arms.
That's why there's Pro-Ice.


Linkage:
Portlandia: Hide and Seek League
The Sherlock Homies vs. The Punky Bruisers

This both celebrates and ridicules adult sports leagues.
And the old lady is phenomenal.

The Dan Plan

This guy is learning golf from scratch.

He's going to practice for 10,000 hours.

He's planning to be a pro.

So only 9,970 more hours of Dodgeball until I'm a pro.

My High School Got Made 
by Addison Engelking on Grantland

For those readers who don't watch much MTV these days — or aren't middle school girls — MADE is a resilient little teen-makeover show that has been airing on MTV since 2003, which is also the same year I started teaching English at RAHS. Each episode plays like a cross between Pygmalion and Flowers for Algernon: A kid expresses a wish to change something about themselves; a MADE coach and "expert" in some field or other comes in and helps the kid achieve his/her dreams; the kid performs in a public forum and is warmly received, after which everyone lives happily ever after. It's lighthearted, fairly dull reality fare, closer to a pragmatic, let's-put-on-a-show series like Sell This House than it is to the atrocity exhibitions and epics of self-delusion that you can find on Bravo, A&E, or on other MTV time slots, for that matter.

The MADE episode that partially takes place at RAHS stars senior Mary Beth Bibeau as a girl who wants to "come out of her shell." There are about a dozen archetypal MADEtransformations. In this one, Mary Beth wants to stop being an outcast and start being a Hip-Hop Dancer. (MTV has filmed fifteen other Hip-Hop Dancer episodes, including three this season. Other popular transformations include Prom Queen, Ladies' Man, Boxer, and Cheerleader. In one episode — which I really, really need to see — MTV tries to make a kid into a "High School Graduate." As far as I know, this is the only time they've tried to help a student earn a diploma. How did that go, I wonder?) The last two Hip-Hop Dancer episodes showcased nerdy kids who proved to the world that there was more to them than 4.0 GPAs and weekend sessions with gastroenterology textbooks.

MLS Changes Ball From Jabulani to Prime

I might be the only person in America who cares about this.

And when are the Sounders going to get a mascot?