It's almost enough to make me watch C-Span

The Howard Stern prank call reminded me of C-Span, which, as you will see in the video below, is pranked often. Beware, some of these are really dirty:

"... and I look forward to a future of worshipping the prostate of Howard Stern."

It's early, by we think we have already seen our favorite thing of the day. Yesterday, a fan of Howard Stern prank called ESPN's SportCenter ("SportCentre" for our Canuck readers) while they were live on the air by pretending to be Brian Westbrook, the All Pro running back for the Philadelphia Eagles who was cut by the team.

Vintage Prince video surfaces

An old video of Prince rehearsing When Doves Cry from before he was a big deal has surfaced on YouTube here (embedding is disabled for the video). It's an interesting piece of rock memorabilia.

There's nothing more metal than curling

University of Miami fans go all Lord of the Flies on Duke

Wow, a real conch shell. If memory serves, In Lord of the Flies the conch is a symbol of civility, which is definitely what comes to mind here. I guess the symbolism was lost on Coach K.

Speedo Guy II

One of our favorite things we've ever posted was Speedo Guy.


Here is another rendition of the meme from Valentines Day this year:

Four years of training put to good use

Have you ever watched an Olympic athlete and thought "I could probably do that," knowing full well you can't? Well, here is what a French downhill skier did in yesterday's event:


In this case, we actually could do better. Don't worry young lady, 2014 is right around the corner.

Two thumbs way.... OH MY GOD!

If you want to be depressed, read this article about Roger Ebert. As depressing as it is, it is also a great piece of journalism. We're giving it our second Gold Hippo award.

USA! USA! USA!

We here at The Tao recently besmirched the Olympics. We stand by our assessment but we caught some highlights of yesterday's Snowboard Cross (or "SBX" as we youngsters like to refer to it) and we have to say it looks pretty awesome. Here is a link to yesterday's men's SBX finals.

A few things stand out about SBX. First, it gets The Tao's seal of approval as a Real Sport because it consists of an objectively timed race to the bottom. Second, it actually looks like fun, which is more than we can say for, say, figure skating. Third, the American SBX-ers started a controversy by making fun of the host Canadian's tight pants. And finally, we have to admit that the U.S. Snowboarders team uniform is pretty splendid.



Somewhat relatedly, Nate Silver, the math whiz behind Baseball Prospectus and who, based on complex algorithms, predicted every state correctly in the 2008 presidential election, now has the U.S. in a dead heat with the Canucks and Nazis to win the most medals in Vancouver.

The curious case of the bearded bride

Strange story out of Dubai. Probably embellished or fake, but still amusing. This will only embolden those who want to ban burkas in France.

H/t: Josh

We don't know why people propose at sport events, but we're thankful they do

UPDATE: Apparently, it's a hoax, done for the couple's own amusement.

New mascot trick

Steve Nash is making a habit of starring in strange commercials

We've previously documented Steve Nash's weird commercials. We really like this spoof of the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man In the World" commercials:

This will be of interest to readers with $25 million to spare

Pretty neat:

A Salute to "The Eagle"

Today, someone told us here at The Tao that the Winter Olympics are starting soon (for readers in warmer climes, it's like the X Games with Metamucil commercials). Sorry, but we find it hard to get excited about sports dominated by countries where half the population is named Sven. However, this does strike us as a perfect time to celebrate the Winter Olympics phenomenon that was Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

If you don't know Eddie, he was like the Jamaican bobsled team, only for ski jumping. Eddie was a top ranked British skier -- which means he knew how to make a pizza wedge with his skis -- who realized if he learned to ski jump he would be the only person from England competing for a spot. A few months of training and, voila, Eddie was the British representative in ski jumping, and British ski jumping record holder. There were two problems. First, Eddie was exceptionally near sighted and his coke bottle glasses would fog up while skiing, which meant he had to guess where the jump was. Second, he weighed 180 pounds, which is apparently not ideal for a sport that consists of trying to fly as far as possible. Technically, there was a third problem: he was scared of ski jumping, but we can't really fault him for that because it seems like about the craziest thing a human could try. In any vent, Eddie represented England valiantly, finishing dead last in both ski jumping events at the 1988 Olympics and developing a huge fan following. He got a standing ovation at the closing ceremonies of the games and was considered such a disgrace to the sport that a new rule was passed (known as the "Eddie The Eagle Rule") that made it much harder to qualify for the Olympics.

So Eddie, we salute you and deem you the official The Tao ambassador to this and every Winter Olympics. Your job is to tell us what happened when it's over. Seriously, we don't care.

A profile:

UPDATE: Part of what, in The Tao's view, makes the Olympics stupid is the presence of a large number of "sports" that rely on subjective factors (we're looking at you figure skating and snowboarding). In our view, a sport is something that can be objectively measured. Seeing who can jump the farthest is a sport. Seeing who can get to the bottom of the hill the fastest is a sport. Seeing who, in the Russian and Swedish judge's view, completed the most aesthetically pleasing skating routine -- and by "aesthetically pleasing," we mean "according to arcane scoring rules that only a trained professional can detect" -- is not a sport.

Nothing beats a BBQ slow jam

That's one way to score a goal

Alexander Ovechkin scored a goal last night by bulldozing everything in front of him. The goal was eventually disallowed for some reason.

Bourbon Street after the interception.

h/t: Eric

I don't know what they're saying so I can't be sure whether this is intentionally funny.

H/t: Shayna

I hope I burned some eCalories and lost some eWeight while doing this.

This is kind of random. The National Park Service put together an "eHike" of the famous, and deadly, Angels Landing hiking trail in Zion National Park. Pretty cool.

Kick it, VIP.

The Toronot Raptors had a fan vote for who should perform yesterday's halftime show. The winner was Vanilla Ice:

I find this strangely awesome. I don't know who the other nominees were but I probably would have voted for him too. It's also reassuring to know that even in this economy Mr. Ice is still gainfully employed. Hopefully Suge Knight didn't come to his hotel room afterward.

If The Tao ever has some sort of get together or convention for our loyal readers we are totally hiring Ice for entertainment. Him or William Zabka. If anyone knows how to reach William Zabka, send us an email.

UPDATE: Per DanTheMan's comment, and apropos of the recent posts on In Living Color and Vanilla Ice (glace à la vanille, for our French fans), here is Jim Carrey doing Vanilla Ice:

Carly Fiorina has the laser-eyed sheep demographic locked up

Is it just me, or is this the weirdest political ad ever?

When Super Bowl halftime shows were super

With the Super Bowl -- which is neither super, nor a bowl (discuss) -- this Sunday, it seems an apt time to hearken back to the days when In Living Color ran its own halftime show.

Jim Carrey doing his thing:


And how could we ever forget Men On Football. Three snaps in an I formation:


Are we forgetting any classic alternative half-time shows? If so, let us know in the comments and we will post them. No Lingerie Bowl suggestions, please.