The 1998 NFL draft was a memorable one. A debate raged around whether the Indianapolis Colts should use their first round pick to select Ryan Leaf or Peyton Manning. Everyone had an opinion about these two quarterbacks, including Hunter S. Thompson. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell’s Angels sent a letter to Colts owner Jim Irsay, urging him to select the highly-touted Leaf.
Dear James,
In response to yr addled request for a quick $30M loan to secure the services of the Manning kid — I have to say No, (sic) at this time
But the Leaf boy is another matter. He looks strong & Manning doesn’t — or at least not strong enough to handle that “Welcome to the NFL” business for two years without a world-class offensive line.
How are you fixed at left OT for the next few years, James? Think about it. You don’t want a china (sic) doll back there when that freak [Warren] Sapp comes crashing in.
Okay. Let me know if you need some money for Leaf. I expect to be very rich when this [Johnny] depp (sic) movie comes out.
Yr. faithful consultant,
HUNTER
Twenty years later, we know how things played out. The Colts ultimately picked Manning, who became one of the most productive and celebrated quarterbacks ever. As for Leaf, he played four seasons and exited the sport, considered by some the No. 1 “draft bust” in NFL history. But he’s certainly a good sport. Leaf posted Thompson’s letter (above) on his Twitter stream last month.
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Today, as the 2018 World Cup draws to a close, we’re revisiting a classic Monty Python skit. The scene is the 1972 Munich Olympics. The event is a football/soccer match, pitting German philosophers against Greek philosophers. On the one side, the Germans — Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Marx and, um, Franz Beckenbauer. On the other side, Archimedes, Socrates, Plato and the rest of the gang. The referee? Confucius. Of course.
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Could it be a case of authorial oversight that all subsequent rules are exclusively concerned with such practical matters as dress and fight duration?
Because doing so might diminish Fight Club’s street cred just a bitsy…
Filmmaker (and popular audiobook narrator) Emily Janice Card has a good deal of fun in Jane Austen’s Fight Club, above, marrying Palahniuk’s tropes to the social mores of England’s Regency period.
“No corsets, no hat pins and no crying,” Tyler Durden stand-in Lizzie instructs the eager young ladies in her circle. Soon, they’re proudly sporting bruises beneath their bonnets and stray blood spots on their tea dresses.
While young women of the fictional Bennet sisters’ social class refrained from brutal fisticuffs, there’s ample evidence of female combatants from the proletarian ranks. They fought for money, and occasionally to settle a disagreement, training hard for weeks in advance.
Their bouts drew spectators to the amphitheater owned by boxing promoter James Figg, and the marvelously named Hockley in the Hole, a seedy establishment whose other attractions included bearbaiting, bullbaiting, and fighting with broadswords and cudgels.
The female fist fighters challenged each other with paid notices in local papers, like this one from “championess and ass-driver” Ann Field of Stoke Newington:
Whereas I, Ann Field, of Stoke Newington, ass-driver, well known for my abilities, in boxing in my own defense wherever it happened in my way, having been affronted by Mrs. Stokes, styled the European Championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of her best skill in Boxing for 10 pounds, fair rise and fall; and question not but to give her such proofs of my judgment that shall oblige her to acknowledge me Championess of the Stage, to the satisfaction of all my friends.
Mrs. Stokes promptly announced her readiness to come out of retirement:
I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought in this way since I fought the famous boxing- woman of Billingsgate 29 minutes, and gained a complete victory (which is six years ago); but as the famous Stoke Newington ass-woman dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I do assure her I will not fail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with will be more difficult for her to digest than any she ever gave her asses.
Rather than keeping mum on Fight Club, these female pugilists shared Muhammad Ali’s flare for drumming up interest with irresistibly cocky wordplay.
In a chapter devoted to public entertainments, sports and amusements, Alexander Andrews, author of The Eighteenth Century or Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of Our Grandfathers,documents how the Merry Wives of Windsor, a crew comprised of “six old women belonging to Windsor town” took out an ad seeking “any six old women in the universe to outscold them.”
On June 22nd, 1768, a woman called Bruising Peg “beat her antagonist in a terrible manner” to win a new chemise, valued at half a guinea.
In 1722, Hannah Hyfield of Newgate Market, resolved to give her challenger, Elizabeth Wilkinson, “more blows than words,” promising to deliver “a good thumping.” Both parties agreed to hold a half-crown in their fists for the duration of the fight. William B. Boulton, author of 1901’s Amusements of Old London, speculates that this was a practical measure to minimize scratching and hair-pulling.
Over at The Intercept, Josh Begley, a data visualization artist, has posted a video entitled “Field of Vision — Concussion Protocol.” By way of introduction, he writes:
Since the season started, there have been more than 280 concussions in the NFL. That is an average of 12 concussions per week. Though it claims to take head injuries very seriously, the National Football League holds this data relatively close. It releases yearly statistics, but those numbers are published in aggregate, making it difficult to glean specific insights.
I have been tracking these injuries all season. Using a variety of methods, including reviewing daily injury reports from NFL.com, I have created what I believe is the most complete dataset of individual concussions sustained during the 2017–2018 season.
The resulting film, “Concussion Protocol,” is a visual record of every concussion in the NFL this year.
He goes on to add: “This film does not make an argument for ending football. Rather, it invites a set of questions… When we watch American football, what are we seeing?” Or, really, what are we missing? It’s only by “cutting together these scenes of injury — moments of impact, of intimacy, of trauma — and reversing them,” that we “see some of this violence anew” and underscore the sheer brutality of the game.
Tom Petty grew up in Gainesville, Florida, in the backyard of the University of Florida. On Saturday, during a football game against LSU, some 90,000 Gators fans gave Petty a raucous send off, singing “I Won’t Back Down” in unison. Don’t know about you, but it gave me the chills.
BTW, if you’re wondering what the occasional boos are all about, it’s the U. of Florida fans taking the LSU marching band to task for disrupting the Petty sing-along. Or so it was perceived.
Over the years, we’ve shown you various household objects being made–everything from crayons and ink, to vinyl records, old fashioned books and paper. Today, you can get a mesmerizing glimpse into how tennis balls are made. Created by Benedict Redgrove for ESPN, the short film above shows “the manufacturing process of [Wilson] tennis balls for the US Open.” Combined, it takes 24 different processes to make the final ball. And it’s fun to watch.
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Above you can watch what was arguably the first surf movie ever made–the very beginning of a long cinematic tradition that gave us Gidget in 1959, and TheEndless Summer in 1966. And lest you think the surf movie reached its zenith during those halcyon days, some would argue that the best surf films were later produced during the aughts–Thicker Than Water (2000), Blue Crush (2002), Step Into Liquid (2003), Riding Giants (2004), etc. And don’t forget this great little short, “Dark Side of the Lens.”
In 1906, smack in the middle of the aughts of last century, Thomas Edison sent the pioneering cinematographer Robert K. Bonine to shoot an ‘Actuality’ documentary about life in the Polynesian islands. The blurb accompanying this video describes the scene above: “The first moving pictures of surfers riding waves — Surf Riders, Waikiki Beach, Honolulu — shows a minute of about a dozen surfers on alaia boards in head-high, offshore surf at what is probably Canoes. These surfers are shot too far away to detail what they were wearing, but they all appear to be in tanksuits.”
The blurb to the Youtube video above reads as follows: “In 2004, 24 enterprising Yale students created the non-existent “Harvard Pep Squad” for the big Harvard-Yale football game. As the Pep Squad pumped up the Harvard fans, they distributed 1800 pieces of red and white construction papers with the understanding that when all the cards were held up, it would spell “GO HARVARD” See what happens next!”
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