Reader Extra Participation Friday: Let's Go With Something Related To The Ol' "Stranded On A Tropical Island" Cliche
I'm working on a post that's actually long enough to make you scroll down your screen in order to read the whole thing, but rather than rushing through it to finish tonight (it's a big day at the hot air balloon tour ranch tomorrow so I'm getting up extra early), I decided to hold off until Saturday just to make sure I do a decent job on it. You know why? Because I care about you people, that's why. You're special to me. I don't want to give you a big post of half-baked dick jokes and capitalized expressions of exasperation. Fuck that. You readers are big deal to me. I want to impress you. Does my hair look good? Be honest, but tell me you like it. I got it buzzed this way with you guys in mind. And I lost weight too, can't you tell? Please notice my effort. I even put on makeup and high heels for you.
What?
Long story short, substantial post to arrive on Saturday. In the meantime, let's all compete for an imaginary junk food prize and a meaningless title which is awarded completely arbitrarily after being judged by a panel of one. This week's topic: you're stranded on a tropical island with no rescue coming. Would you rather:
1) Have an unlimited number of friendly natives around to play sports with? Or
2) Have a TV that gets every live sporting event (even those on MLB Extra Innings, NBA TV, NFL Sunday Ticket, etc.) plus all the sports analysis channels (We're talking all the ESPNs, FSNs, NFL Network, etc.)?
Keep in mind the following limitations for situation 1- Equipment and facilities will be extremely crude at best. We're talking nothing but tropical plants with which to make things. The natives will take a long time to learn any sport you try to teach them if they can even learn them at all. Good bet- football. Bad bet- baseball. If you injure yourself there's no doctor around to help you heal. Tore up your knee? Well, I guess that's the end of your sports playin' days. Hope you taught the natives enough to be entertained by watching them. And finally, the natives will not let you into their society or associate with you in any way except to play sports.
Also keep in mind the shortcomings of situation 2- You will be totally and completely alone. You may never see another human again, unless they're swimming to shore to be stranded with you, in which case you should probably just kill them in their sleep and eat them. You will have no methods with which to interact with people about the sports you watch. No internet. It's a one way conduit of information. And you won't be able to fix your TV if something happens to it. Especially something hilarious like a coconut falling on it.
Your responses might indicate otherwise, but I honestly feel like it's a tough call. Option 2 is pretty straightforward, it's more or less how most of us sports fans live now minus a few distractions like career, family, and model railroads. Comparing it against option 1, which is so hard to imagine, is the hard part. If you go with option 1 you'll effectively live in a time capsule until and if you're rescued. That would be fucked up to say the least. And you'll be bored whenever you're not playing, which would be a lot of the time. But then again how badass would it be to wake up under a palm tree and know that although you've basically lost everything you cared about in life, you can still go out that day and quarterback your team to an island championship? Or go dunk a coconut off some guy's face on an 8 foot rim? (No one said you couldn't distort the rules a little.) Or if you're patient enough to teach them baseball, hit a walk-off home run?
In the end I think I'm going to choose option 1. Although I haven't left this basement for any reason in almost ten months, played a pick-up sport in over six years, or played an organized team sport since I was six, I seem to remember sports being really fun. I think being able to actively participate in them would trump being able to watch "Rome Is Burning" and "Skip Bayless's Magical Happy Funtime Half Hour" every day. It would be nice to be able to catch all my favorite teams' games, but who would I bitch at after they screwed up? Without being able to do that watching sports becomes less enjoyable for me.
Your thoughts? Even if you have no analysis, feel free to post an unexplained vote for one or the other. We need to have popular opinion answers to questions like these. SportsNation is counting on us.
This week's prize: Freeze Pops! Three of them! Purple, orange, and blue! Sorry, I already ate red.
12 comments:
hmm. Well, can the natives speak english, cause if not, then might as well be alone.
So...bring on option 2! 42inch HD with attached DVR unit, with all sports all the time! Got a little place to watch it in (cause it had to be protected from the elements somehow)so I'm all set.
Either way, my happy arse is gonna starve in a month anyway, since I can't fish, hunt, or figure out what's poisonous or not among the plant life.
So, to clarify. If easy speaking communication is possible, option 1. Charades and grunting, option 2.
Now what would the choice be if it was an instance of living in a nice house with ample food and drink, plumbing and central air, but just choosing between people and no contact with the outside world at all, or no people but all the sports one could handle on tv? Does the amount of luxury items available change the dynamic of the choice? For me, the more comfort, the less contact I would need with others. On Giligan's Island I much more need socail people interaction then on Bill Gates Isle of Luxury for One.
play sports or watch sports? for the blogger, it's not even a question...
maybe if you said "would you rather have the televised sports or a piece of paper on which to play sports?" then there'd be something to choose!
god I love freeze pops (flavor ices where I come from)
if these are natives like the ones from airplane, I'll teach them basketball and take them. But my guess is island natives are not going to respond well to games not focused on survival, so I'm going option 2, hands down.
Don't be too hard on the natives. While they won't speak English, they are intelligent enough to learn games. And they're living comfortably, so they're not too worried about survival.
(Yes, this is just a comment to make option 1 seem more appealing because the first three responses have all gone with option 2)
Also, C-Dub, pwnag3 on bloggers.
Option 1 my friends. I would teach the natives to play the games and play sports all the time. The trick is I would teach them to play sports in a way that would make me look like a god. Meaning, leaving out all the rules I don't like or don't favor me.
1. No dunking in basketball, you have to shoot outside of 10 feet from the basket and once the ball has left the shooters hand, no one else can touch it until it misses or goes through the net. Tall people=no advantage.
2. Baseball. 600 foot fences, the better to utilize my gritty, uniform dirty speed and make me look like Ty Cobb. Also, you get to go to second on a walk. Excessively strong people=no advantage.
3. Football. If you injure someone during play, it is a great shame to you, and we will have to sacrifice you to take the shame off our island. No hard tackling=better chance for me to look good and be killed.
I have other rules under my "How to Teach Natives How To Play American Games But With Different Rules That Make Me Look Good" but I will share them a later time. Option 1 will make my ego large and honestly, no one will ever know, so I could be legend somewhere in the world for my games skills.
Is Evangeline Lilly on the island also? Just asking...
I could play basketball for 8 hours a day, but if my court is a plot of sand, the ball is a coconut, and the hoop is the tallest islander standing on a rock forming a circle with his hands, then fuck it I'll take the TV.
If my court was in a gym with a retractable roof, hardwood, regulation everything, 5 ball racks filled with balls, a scoreboard, a water cooler nearby and natives who didn't hack on defense, ball hog, or push off/go over the back for rebounds...now we're talking. But that's just unrealistic, because natives are total thugs on defense.
In the meantime, let's all compete for an imaginary junk food prize and a meaningless title which is awarded completely arbitrarily after being judged by a panel of one.
Eh, still means more than the Gold Glove.
By the way, Bengoodfella, I'm not sure mixing natives and Ty Cobb in any capacity is a good idea. Unless you brought your stabbing knife, of course.
Anyway, to business...
I think the trick to this question is figuring out how to get the most hidden value out of each option and, after thirty seconds worth of thought, I've got to go with option 1 here. A few key reasons:
1. If all I'm doing is playing sports all day with a bunch of natives who want nothing else to do with me, I will emerge from this an uber-muscular, ripped, bronzed Adonis. Like, um, how I am right now. Uh, yeah...I'm totally already a hunk...totally. But this'll definitely making things easier for me to maintain my physique. Because platinum membership at five gyms is expensive, dammit!
2. Since I'm defining what a sport is, it'll give me an opportunity to try out all the games people in the know said were too crazy to even contemplate. You laughed at five-down football, Trev Alberts! Well now is my time!!! Also, human chess. Actually, probably human checkers - chess is hard.
3. What about a poker tournament? Assuming I was paying attention during Casino Royale and not just lost in Daniel Craig...er, Eva Green's eyes the whole time, I'm feeling pretty confident about my playing skills. Who knows? I might win leadership of the tribe from them. Then we'll see who isn't allowed to fraternize with whose women then! Just generally, starting a massive gambling operation designed to undermine their entire society seems like a good idea. (With credit to The Simpsons episode that, yes, came up with it first.)
4. Total stretch here, but what if I challenge them to a gaming tournament? (Counted as a sport by ESPN, which is good enough for my purposes.) Next thing I know, the random mega-genius among them constructs a computer out of a coconut (which we all know from that documentary about the shipwreck is totally possible) and then it's just a matter of a quick email to the Coast Guard for rescue and...well, actually, I'd probably need to blog about this first. Experience like mine would totally get Deadspun, right? Speaking of which, I'd have a lot of reading to catch up on. Hmm...might need a couple weeks before I ask for rescue. But still, helluva resource to have.
5. You know what counts as a sport? Rowing counts as a sport. Hell, it isn't even a stretch like poker or gaming. "What's that? We've rowed all the way to New Zealand? Well, I said it wasn't going to be a short race. No, no, I think I'll just stay here, thanks. But good luck on the return leg!"
So yeah, option 1 for me, thanks.
Well I don't believe the rules state I can ONLY play sports. which means in this totally hypothetical situation, I can assume that my posse of teamates would have females. So assuming that is true, along the lines of bengoodfella, I take option 1, design the games to highlight my strengths and bang the native bitches when i'm done being an uber sports god in my new kingdom.
If there are no women on the island, or i have to play sports all the time, then fuck that, I'll take the TV. As long as I get skinemax...
Blanco, I think Larry's label might have something to say about your otherwise watertight "banging native bitches" reasoning:
no you cannot hook up with the native women they're only there for sports
Although hooking up and banging are, I believe, two different things. It's here that, if I were a lawyer, I imagine I'd talk about implicit and explicit powers and narrow constructionism and some shit. But I'm not, and I won't.
BUT...if the Supreme Court would like to settle once and for all the distinction between hooking up and banging vis-a-vis "native bitches"...well, they have my number if they need a demonstration. Or someone to argue either side. Or a tenth justice. Or a coffee boy. Honestly, I'd just be happy to be there.
I would have to choose option 2. Having a TV and being able to watch all of my favorite sports teams all the time would be great, especially since I can hardly see any of my favorite teams play because there in a different region than I am. I would love being able to watch every Notre Dame football and basketball games, as well as the New York Giants and the Yankees. Oh yeah, and I have to have my daily dose of Sportscenter, I can't leave that out.
man i didn't see that label. oh well, i guess since i'm a lazy piece of shit and don't really leave my computer/tv ever, i'm going with option 2.
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